The “fog of war” is a reference to the moral chaos on the battlefield as well as the rampant confusion. Individuals kill others for no other reason than that they are ordered to. Things deemed unambiguously bad in civilian life are authorized and even lauded in war. The killing and maiming of acknowledged innocents — in particular children and the elderly — is excused as “collateral damage.”

No wonder that some individuals thrust into this morass sometimes act differently from how soldiers behave in romantic war movies. The hell of war is internal as well as external.

We might remember this as the story of Sgt. Bowe Robert Bergdahl unfolds.

Bergdahl volunteered for the U.S. military and was apparently a gung-ho soldier. Americans have not been conscripted since 1973, but young Americans are propagandized from childhood with the message that time in the military is service to their country. Few question this narrative; fewer seek rebuttals to it. You have to want to face the facts that governments lie and that the service is to an empire having nothing to do with Americans’ security.

This, however, doesn’t relieve military personnel of responsibility for their own conduct. In 1951 — while Americans were fighting in Korea — Leonard E. Read, one of the founders of the modern libertarian movement, published “Conscience on the Battlefield,” in which a dying American soldier hears his conscience say that he — not the army or government — bears responsibility for his deadly conduct: “Does not the fault inhere in your not recognizing that the consequences of your actions are irrevocably yours…?”

Bergdahl seems to have been plagued by this question. (See Michael Hastings’s revealing 2012 article.)

In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a regime that used war to keep its population too frightened to ask questions and in which the enemy could change without notice. Orwell may have exaggerated, but not by much. The United States sided with one Afghan faction against the Soviets and their Afghan allies in the 1980s, then switched when it replaced the Soviets as invaders in 2001.

On the surface, the war in Afghanistan seems easy to understand. The Taliban government gave sanctuary to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, which attacked American targets in the 1990s and on September 11, 2001.

But things are not so simple. During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the U.S. government sided with the future Taliban and al-Qaeda. President Reagan called the Afghan mujahideen“freedom fighters,” subsidized their war, and hosted them at the White House.

After the Soviet exit and years of  civil war, the Taliban became the brutal theocratic government of Afghanistan, but not an anti-American terrorist organization. Indeed, as late as May 2001, President George W. Bush was helping the Taliban suppress opium production. After 9/11, the Taliban made various offers to surrender or expel bin Laden, but the Bush administration was uninterested. (This lack of interest predated 9/11.) Taliban attacks on American military targets since the U.S. invasion should not be construed as terrorism, but rather as combat between former government officials and the foreign force that overthrew them.

Anand Gopal, author of No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes, points out that soon after American forces invaded Afghanistan, “there was no enemy to fight”:

By mid-2002 there was no insurgency in Afghanistan: al-Qaeda had fled the country and the Taliban had ceased to exist as a military movement. Jalaluddin Haqqani [whose “network” held Bergdahl captive] and other top Taliban figures were reaching out to the other side in an attempt to cut a deal and lay down their arms.

But, Gopal writes, “driven by the idée fixe that the world was rigidly divided into terrorist and non-terrorist camps, Washington allied with Afghan warlords and strongmen. Their enemies became ours, and through faulty intelligence, their feuds became repackaged as ‘counterterrorism.’”

When Haqqani, a celebrated freedom fighter during the Soviet war, turned down a deal from the Americans because it included detention, the U.S. military attacked his home province and other areas, killing his brother-in-law and innocent children.

If he wasn’t with the Americans, he was against them, and therefore it was open season.

In this whirlwind of cynicism and relativism, can anyone be blamed for wondering what the point of the war was?

The release and return of American POW Bowe Bergdahl started off as simply cause for relief and celebration for his family and friends. Thanks to politics, it keeps taking on additional layers of interpretation for others. The revelation that Bergdahl questioned the continuing mission in Afghanistan prior to his capture has many of the same people who usually revere soldiers as an ideal condemning this particular soldier as a turncoat — even stating that he should have been abandoned to whatever fate the Taliban came up with for him as punishment for his doubts.

Such talk places a darker, callous spin on the concept of sacrifice, commonly spoken of with regard to military service, than most are used to hearing in public: “Shed your capacity for critical thought, or we shall shed YOU.”

When contemplating what people see themselves as fighting for, though the theme of nationalism is included, there tend to be more ground-level concerns within average people. They think of their neighbors, their families, their friends, their way of life, as what they are defending. With additional thought, however, there’s more to consider. In this case, the war has stretched well beyond its claimed trigger, with the occupation of Afghanistan now in its 13th year. The spread of US troops and weapons throughout northern Africa and central Asia, the drone program now operating in several countries other than Afghanistan, even the revelation that that entire country is effectively being wire-tapped come to mind. With the stated target of the mission long dead, civilian deaths mounting and war crimes by the US now common knowledge, to expect anyone, even a soldier, to not think twice about why they are where they are is to demand a robot in place of a human soul.

A recent piece on The Daily Beast points out that Bowe Bergdahl’s father Robert, during a 2010 speech at an Idaho GOP fundraiser, actually brought up the other side of the matter, saying that a drone strike killed the child of one of the people holding his son at the time. One quality we are taught to shut off in the run up to war is empathy. I can’t help but imagine what desperate thoughts may come to the mind of an American in rural Alabama if a weapon from the heavens, sent by the Pakistani government, robbed them of their sons & daughters. Yet the average citizen at either end is not the one giving these orders, nor is it for loved ones that the orders are so given.

Our understandable allegiances have been swallowed by allegiances to flags. Our identities have been forced into a shotgun wedding to the state. Within this poisonous relation, we are required to be no more than confused when violence in our names is responded to with more violence. On a neighborhood scale we would recognize this as gang activity, lament the destruction of lives all around and seek to end the cycle of violence. Why do we praise the mediators seeking peace in the streets, but condemn anyone deciding to leave the gang life of the nation-state and seek peace in the world?

Renee Parsons discusses the U.S. aiding of Syrian rebels.

Nicola Nasser discusses the fake revolutionary character of the Syrian opposition.

Uri Avnery discusses the stewing of Israelis and Palestinians in their own juices.

John Laforge discusses remembering Memorial Day.

Jim Miles reviews The Idea of Israel-A History of Power and Knowledge.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses a military coup in Thailand.

Radley Balko discusses the criminalization of poverty.

Joel Whitney reviews No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald.

Seumas Milne discusses how coups and terror are the product of NATO’S war in Libya.

Jacob Sullum discusses fake rights, but the editor would like to note that this doesn’t mean the social issues raised are not important.

Kelly Vlahos discusses a Memorial Day nightmare.

Brink Lindsey discusses what Thomas Piketty gets wrong about capitalism.

Grant Mincy discusses the abolition of slavery as a triumph for liberty.

Kevin Carson discusses class, “identity politics”, and stigmergy.

Steve Breyman discusses Anne-Marie Slaughter’s penchant for war.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses statist patriotism vs libertarian patriotism. I don’t agree with the theistic focus though.

Clancy Sigal discusses Memorial Day and wars.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses World War 2.

Patrick Cockburn discusses the coup in Libya.

Anne Applebaum discusses why there wasn’t a good war in Warsaw.

Wendy McElroy discusses the framing of the debate on World War 2.

Justice Frank Murphy discusses the Yamashita V. Styer case. He dissents from the majority.

Robert Higgs discusses World War 2 and the military-industrial-congressional complex.

Sheldon Richman discusses the consequences of World War 2.

Simon Jenkins discusses the bombing of Dresden.

Anthony Gregory discusses whether World War 2 was necessary or not.

Gregory Bresiger discusses the road to the permanent warfare state.

Richard M. Ebeling discusses the causes and consequences of World War 2.

Alexey Shirov defeats Veselin Topalov.

Alexey Shirov beats Teimour Radjabov.

Among the barrage of selfies, South Korean pop sensations and videos of women twerking, it is easy to forget just how wonderful an invention the internet is. The ways it has been abused and sabotaged should not detract from the fact that it has the potential to bring about incredible change and influence.

Since its inception the internet has grown at an astonishing rate and now almost three billion people have access to it. Despite the best authoritarian efforts of some states – and I include the US and the UK in here, as well as the likes of China and Turkey – the internet has remained relatively free. My biggest concern is that the internet, and the online community that we are continually shaping, becomes nothing more than a cyber re-creation of our every day lives.

When our modern societies were just beginning to take shape, when communities and peoples were coming together, certain decisions were made that would have far-reaching consequences. The introduction and creation of money, the spread of religion and its influence upon laws, and the decision to implement a system of governance where leaders were possible.

As well as these was the belief in, and the right of, ownership. This principal, though fundamental for us, was unheard of and illogical to many. The testimony of Massasoit, a Native American leader of the Wampanoag, showed confusion at the thought of ownership, and buying and selling. He stated:

What is this you call property? It cannot be the earth, for the land is our mother, nourishing all her children, beasts, birds, fish and all men. The woods, the streams, everything on it belongs to everybody and is for the use of all. How can one man say it belongs only to him?

Massasoit’s beliefs, though perfectly logical and acceptable, would be a hindrance to the society that needed to be created. After all, if nobody owned the earth how would you sell plots of land? If nobody owned the contents of the earth how would you sell the precious metals found within it? If nobody owned slaves how would you get them to work for you?

And so despite the thoughts of the people such as Massasoit, society expanded under a strict set of rules and principles. It swept aside all that stood before it, as of course it was bound to do. An ideology that promoted the idea that people could own something, would inevitably steal everything from those people who followed an ideology that promoted the idea that ownership did not exist.

Free running animals became fenced off and marked, land became the sole property of certain individuals, and material from the earth belonged only to those who extracted it.

Like our pre-society past, I see the internet as a place of a great freedom, where there are limited restrictions, where creativity prospers, and where cooperation can benefit everyone. It is therefore essential that this new society does not follow the same path as the ones we have already created.

In July of 2011 the founder of Spotify, Daniel Ek, said that ownership was not the future of music, access was, and though he may have only been addressing the topic of music, his statement has wider applications.

It is refreshing and optimistic to read such a statement, as it signals a significant shift in belief about how our societies should be constructed. Rather than repeating the errors of the past and promoting ownership, we now realise that there is more to gain collectively if priority was given to access.

Sites such as Google ask for no subscription fee to search their vast database, Wikipedia provides incredible knowledge at the push of a button, and films, music and images can be shared, uploaded and downloaded from anywhere on the globe.

If society had followed such a path imagine where the human race would be currently. The notion of nationalism would be non-existent as people would realise that just because they were born on a certain land mass it does not give them any more ownership rights than somebody who was not born there. There would be a highly intelligent population as everyone received the opportunity to get university education.

Life saving drugs and treatments would save hundreds of thousands of lives each year because they were made, and manufactured to do just that, not to be sold as a product. Famine would be eradicated because access to food is a fundamental human right, and as no one owns the food that grows from the ground, everyone would share in its abundance.

The internet has given humans a second chance to create a society that is equal, inclusive and accessible by all, to all and for all. It is vital that we take that chance.

Brazil’s Congress just passed a Proposal of Amendment to the Constitution (PEC) known as “Slave Labor Amendment.”  The new law aims to broaden the power of land confiscation without compensation by the government, including  properties on which there is exploitation of slave labor.

After the modifications, Article 243 of the Constitution reads as follows: “Rural and urban property anywhere in the country where psychotropic had been cultivated or where slave labor was exploited, as described by law, will be expropriated and destined to agrarian reform and popular housing projects, without any compensation to the owner and without prejudice of other lawful sanctions.”

This is quite interesting for libertarians. First, a person who enslaves another one in their land can be legitimately expropriated. For a libertarian, unowned land becomes property through occupation and labor. If you’re forced to continue to work on land you’ve already used or if you’re taken to another location and obligated to work, the plot of land you worked is legitimately yours, not your captor’s.

Even if the slaver were the legitimate owner previously, his violation of your rights in forcing you to work the land make his property rights void. Hence, expropriation of slavers in favor of the enslaved is fair and just.

However, there are two significant risks in applying this principle: 1) Expropriation does not benefit the victims and increases state control over land; 2) The definition of slave labor is problematic.

It’s worrying that the expropriation of land in the project isn’t as reparations for violation of someone’s rights, but a policy of expropriation for the supposed common interest in agrarian reform or popular housing. Even if people formerly enslaved should be prioritized, this doesn’t change the fact that this policy does not acknowledge the rights of the victim in the crime. In practice, it would impair the victims’ rights to use their rightful land as they see fit, because government regulates agrarian reform and popular housing projects according to its own priorities.

The new law may come to strengthen the obsessive control the Brazilian state exercises over access to land by poor people, supposedly to protect the interests of a generic class of people who need rural land or housing, not the real victims of slavery.

Moreover, it is the very control by the state over the access to land that has created a whole contingent of people who are in dire need of agrarian reform or popular housing. The first measure the (then Portuguese) state when it occupied Brazil was dividing it up in hereditary captaincies and creating the latifúndio. The practice of grilagem* only came to be in the Amazon due to the vulnerability of property rights in the countryside, that privileged artificial property titles (that is, not based on occupation and use). At its peak, the system made it possible for “Carlos Medeiros,” a person who has never existed, to own 1.5% of the national territory – land equivalent to the territories of Portugal and Belgium combined.

Meanwhile, poor people’s properties remain “irregular” in the country – especially lands owned by indigenous peoples and quilombolas – a factor that has contributed to their exclusion and social vulnerability.

The constitutional guarantee of expropriation with due compensation is very little, being a system prone to manipulations and that serves to a “model of urban development that evicts the poor from the city centers and pushes the value of their labor even lower,” as the World Cup has made clear.

On the subject of expropriation without compensation, since 1988 until the passing of this amendment, there was only one case where that could happen: When the land was used to cultivate psychotropic drugs. Government wants to discourage internal production (thereby protecting the drug dealers cartel that control the imports of several illegal drugs) to sustain its failed drug war, which has not only made Brazilian countries world champions in murder rates, but also kills disabled children, by denying them access even to medical marijuana. Your civil disobedience in cultivating marijuana that could help children could make your property title void without compensation.

Besides all these problems, there’s also the issue of the problematic definition of slave labor in our legislation, which does not equal “forced labor.” Our Penal Code criminalizes the “reduction to condition analogous to slavery,” which can comprise one of these cases: 1) Subjection to forced labor; 2) Debt serfdom; 3) Exhausting labor hours; 4) Poor work conditions.

The two first are clearly valid. But the latter two are not. Poor work conditions, while in some cases derived from severe fraud in labor contracts, are not forced labor.

The expansion of the concept of “conditions analogous to slavery” means that it is government that is going to dictate what those conditions are and cheapen the definition of slavery. Being outside a few state labor regulations would be enough to prosecute someone, without investigation about local customs, the willingness of the workers, and the specifics of the situation.

This legal insecurity also motivated the addition of the term “as described by law” in the amendment, so that the norm will depend upon further regulation about what it means to exploit slave labor.

Thus, while we should be happy that a libertarian principle has been added to the Brazilian Constitution, there are legitimate concerns about its application. For, instead of making expropriation a reparation to victims of slavery, the state has transformed it into a policy of control of the land.

*Grilagem is the practice of counterfeiting property titles to establish fake customary rights to government or other people’s lands. Those who carry it out are called “grileiros.” The term comes from the use of crickets to make paper documents appear older than they are.

Translated from Portuguese into English by Erick Vasconcelos.

King Juan Carlos I of Spain’s announced abdication has instigated a flurry of commentary contrasting dictatorship and democracy. The consensus views the remaining non-honorary power of the dozen remaining monarchies in Europe, particularly in diminutive monarchies like Liechtenstein and the Vatican, as vestigial holdouts from the relentless trend towards the representative-democratic nation-state as “the end of history.” A beloved monarch’s role in leading a transition from the Franco regime’s capital-F Fascism to a conventional modern democratic state is an anomaly.

Yet Spain is a textbook illustration of two devastating criticisms of the consensus view made by anarchist Karl Hess in a July 1976 Playboy interview. First, when Hess denied “that the medieval monarchs were much different from our Presidents now,” and was incredulously challenged that “Surely, even as an anarchist you must be willing to admit that there are some differences between Presidents and kings,” he insisted: “Presidents achieve power by hoaxes and handshakes, while kings take the far less tiring route of being born. That is the only difference I can discern.” Second, while “Most analysts see the political spectrum as a great circle, with authoritarian governments of the right and the left intersecting at a point directly opposite representational democracy. But my notion of politics is that it follows a straight line, with all authoritarian societies on the right and all libertarian societies on the left,” with the opposite of both representative democracy and dictatorship being “a world of neighborhoods in which all social organization is voluntary and the ways of life are established in small, consenting groups.”

In his introduction to The Anarchist Collectives, Murray Bookchin scorned the mainstream liberal and Old Left interpretation of the Spanish Civil War as “a struggle between a liberal republic that was valiantly and with popular support trying to defend a democratic parliamentary state against authoritarian generals.” In fact, the ordinary people of Spain “viewed the republic almost with as much animosity as they did the Francistas,” and “were concerned not to rescue a treacherous republican regime but to reconstruct Spanish society.” Following Bookchin’s introduction is detailed primary documentation of their success when state power was pushed back enough to give them a fighting chance.

Far from being what the Old Left saw as a quixotic last stand of preindustrial “primitive rebels” against the tide of history, the Spanish anarchists seem ever more prescient of tomorrow’s post-industrial age.

The seemingly unstoppable power of the state and its plutocratic appendages — the modern successors of what Bookchin called the Spanish people’s “historic class enemies, ranging from the landowning grandees and clerical overlords inherited from the past to the rising industrial bourgeoisie and bankers of more recent times” — to crowd out alternative socioeconomic organization has always entirely stemmed from their ability to extract wealth involuntarily — in Franz Oppenheimer’s phrase, “political means.” The roots of the political means are steadily drying up as economic production becomes ever more localized and less capital-intensive, and correspondingly harder to efficiently levy tribute from. In the military realm, the might of the standing army is being increasingly challenged by fourth generation warfare techniques reviving the popular spirit of the voluntary, decidedly un-state-run Brigadas Internacionales.

Human-scale social organization decentralized enough to make Monaco look cumbersome, functioning without requiring any individuals to give up sovereignty over their personal lives, will bear out George Woodcock’s observation that “In reality, the ideal of anarchism, far from democracy carried to its logical end, is much nearer to aristocracy universalised and purified.”

Criei a expressão “libertarianismo vulgar” alguns anos atrás para descrever a atitude de notórios libertários ao defender reflexivamente o sistema capitalista corporativo atual como se fosse o “livre mercado”. Para eles, os princípios de “livre mercado” justificam os males da economia corporativista. Recentemente, pude testemunhar um dos piores exemplos desse fenômeno, cortesia de John Stossel (“Debunking Popular Nonsense About Income Mobility in America“, Reason, 4 de junho).

Os libertários vulgares que fazem apologia ao capitalismo usam o termo “livre mercado” de maneira equívoca. Parecem ter dificuldade em lembrar, de um momento ao outro, se defendem o capitalismo existente ou os princípios de livre mercado. Assim, vemos os artigos convencionais que afirmam que os ricos não podem enriquecer às custas dos pobres porque “não é assim que o livre mercado funciona” — presumindo implicitamente que vivemos em um regime de livre mercado. Quando provocados, esses libertários relutantemente admitirão que não vivemos em um livre mercado e que o sistema atual inclui diversas intervenções em benefício dos ricos. Porém, logo que pensam ter se safado das acusações, eles voltam a defender a riqueza das corporações existentes com base nos “princípios do livre mercado”.

Stossel dá um dos melhores exemplos dessa prática. Inicialmente, ele concede o argumento elaborado por Thomas Piketty, no livro O Capital no século 21, de que a concentração de riquezas nas mãos dos super-ricos atingiu seu auge. É verdade, afirma ele, que “a disparidade de renda cresceu”. “Agora o 1% mais rico possui mais riquezas que os 90% mais pobres!” Mas não há com que se preocupar!

Stossel alega que o importante não é a divisão relativa da riqueza entre os vários setores da população, mas a mobilidade entre eles. E ficar rico está mais fácil do que nunca. Veja, por exemplo, Oprah Winfrey (que chegou a precisar de assistência estatal)! E Sam Walton (que era empregado em fazenda)!

Tudo isso não passa de bobagem. Em primeiro lugar, Stossel subestima injustificadamente a dependência de trajetória. Por exemplo, há diferenças estruturais contínuas entre a segurança econômica e o bem estar de famílias negras que viveram em áreas em que o exército americano concedeu terras a antigos escravos durante a época da Reconstrução após a Guerra Civil dos Estados Unidos e aquelas famílias que não viveram. Também há outras injustiças estruturais contínuas, como a remoção dos agricultores negros de suas terras após a Segunda Guerra Mundial ou o redlining promovido pelos bancos.

Além disso, sempre houve significativa mobilidade social entre as classes durante a história. Sem essa mobilidade, se transformariam em sistemas de castas incapazes de se adaptar a mudanças. É por isso que o Partido Interno, em 1984 de George Orwell, é uma meritocracia que recruta indivíduos talentosos do Partido Externo e dos Proles a cada geração. O sistema soviético de classes provavelmente era mais móvel que o americano; a maior parte da economia estatal, no século 20, era povoada por milhões de trabalhadores e camponeses (e por seus filhos), que entraram no Partido nos anos 1920 e 1930 e foram mandados para escolas vocacionais. Mesmo em Roma, alguns escravos que fossem mais empreendedores ou astutos conseguiam comprar a própria liberdade e acabavam se tornando, eles mesmos, donos de escravos. Esses fatos significam que o domínio do Ingsoc em 1984, dos apparatchik soviéticos sobre os cidadãos médios ou dos senhores romanos sobre os escravos eram legítimos? É um argumento incrivelmente estúpido.

Mas o libertarianismo vulgar mostra mesmo a sua cara quando Stossel despreza considerações de justiça ou injustiça na distribuição de riquezas: “Além do mais, os ricos não ficam ricos às custas dos pobres (a não ser que roubem ou se aliem ao governo)”.

Parece que esse “a não ser” é bem importante. Stossel escreve como se a legitimidade das fortunas dos super-ricos fossem a regra e cumplicidade com o governo fosse uma rara exceção. Na verdade, Stossel ocasionalmente fala sobre alguns privilégios estatais canalizados aos ricos (como subsídios aos seguros de suas casas de praia) ou sobre o assistencialismo corporativo. Mas suas reação instintiva, quando alguém ataca a polarização da riqueza e do poder das grandes empresas, é interpretar o argumento como um ataque ao “livre mercado” e levantar a voz em defesa dos ricos e poderosos.

O capitalismo corporativo que conhecemos, porém, é definido por sua relação com o estatismo e a esmagadora maioria das riquezas dos super-ricos é retirada de direitos de propriedade artificiais ou da escassez forçada pelo estado. Duvido que seria possível acumular uma fortuna de 100 milhões em um livre mercado — muito menos de 100 bilhões. As corporações que compõem a lista da Fortune 500, sem qualquer exceção de que eu me lembre, devem seus lucros e participações no mercado a subsídios, monopólios, barreiras de entrada e cartéis regulatórios patrocinados pelo governo.

Stossel não está atacando a intervenção estatal. Está defendendo um sistema baseado nela.

Desertion is often treated as equivalent to cowardice, treason, and other such things generally considered distasteful. As any anarchist could tell you, treason only makes sense if you feel some kind of loyalty to the nation-state or government or state you’re born into or under. This left-wing market anarchist most certainly doesn’t. As for cowardice, it takes quite a bit of courage to walk away from a cause considered popular or just by the vast majority of people. You’re truly on your own or with few allies in that scenario.

Desertion is an eminently libertarian approach to dealing with an unjust war as a soldier. It would seem that many pro-war conservatives think an individual should continue fighting and killing people unjustly rather than walk away from the battlefield. This is akin to mindlessly obeying orders and committing war crimes in the process. The libertarian and especially the anarchist preferably knows better.

That still leaves the question of desertion from a just war unanswered. It may be morally reprehensible to do so, but that doesn’t mean the behavior should be criminalized. The criminalization of desertion under any circumstances amounts to involuntary servitude. Desertion is another term for quitting your job. Something that the law recognizes in cases of non-military work. No private employer could rightfully conscript you based on the enforcement of a contract alienating your will. The same is preferable in the case of government employment.

Some might object that desertion endangers the other participants in a war, because the fighting strength of the army from which a person is deserting will go down. In the case of an unjust war, this objection has little power to persuade. The soldiers engaged in an illegitimate war don’t have their rights violated by someone refusing to assist them in mass murder. In fact, it is unfortunately true that the lessening of the fighting strength of said army would be a plus. It would mean less people die unjustly. As for the case of desertion in a just conflict, it may be morally wrong, but it’s no legal duty. The notion of a legal duty to serve as part of a military force engenders indentured servitude at best and slavery at worst. No person has an unconditional acontextual legal obligation to help fellow soldiers in even the context of a just war. Let’s work towards ending imperialist wars of aggression, so no one has to decide whether to desert as a matter of justice ever again.

C4SS Feed 44 presents Jason Lee Byas‘s “Who is the Government?” from the Students for a Stateless Society‘s Volume 1, Issue 1 of THE NEW LEVELLER read by Stephen Ledger and edited by Nick Ford.

On this month 29 years ago, the Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on a row house in order to attack the black liberation organization MOVE. The fire raged on, destroying 61 houses and killing 11 people. Was that just a standard demolition planned by and for the neighborhood to get rid of some houses they didn’t really want anymore?

Of course not.

That these people all held the right to vote clearly did not guarantee to them any meaningful control over how the government’s resources would be used. They were not the government, and they were kidnapped, shot, or burned alive by someone whose interests were not their own.

Feed 44:

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After gathering in Derby Square, in downtown Recife, SlutWalk went on to take Conde da Boa Vista Avenue, one of the most important streets in the Pernambuco state capital. The Union of the Socialist Youth (União da Juventude Socialista, UJS) were there and took posters, slogans and pamphlets with them. I was able to overhear someone, behind me, asking, perplexed, “What is UJS doing here?”

It was appropriate. UJS, linked to the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) — basically a branch of the dominant party in the country, the Workers’ Party (PT) — hasn’t been the most consistent organization when it comes to the defense of the rights and freedoms of women. That’s understandable when we take into account that sometimes their need of defending the government and the status quo come before any other considerations.

Nonetheless, they did show up and they exchanged pamphlets with us. Our libertarian group, Coletivo Nabuco, distributed pamphlets with the essay “Seduzidas e desonradas” (“Seduced and dishonored”), by Brazilian anarchist individualist and feminist Maria Lacerda de Moura. UJS’s had an article against the World Cup and ended with an appeal, probably to appease the feminist crowd present, “For more women in spaces of power!”

They printed the same slogan on their largest banner. When we went to talk to the people who were in the walk, we immediately inverted it: “For less spaces of power to oppress women!”

UJS’s slogan betrays a misconception about what characterizes the fight for female emancipation. According to it, women’s issues are little more than representation problems, which can be alleviated with the presence of a higher percentage of women in the state and its decision-making instances. It’s as if we should allot quotas to each group in society: if women are 50% of the population, they should make up 50% of government.

It’s also an idea that keeps intact all the power structures in society that guarantee that women continue to be oppressed. Not only by the iron fist of the state, but also by the dominant patriarchal culture — which dictates which behaviors, clothes, jobs, studies, hobbies, gestures, and sexual activities are appropriate to women.

Representation in government is not a proxy for real and significant political authority. An analogy with racism can make this problem clearer. Around 7.6% of the Brazilian population is black. If government destined 7.6% of its offices to black people, what would change in their political situation? Little. The very number of people who describe themselves as blacks in demographic surveys is artificially low because of the racist culture in which we’re inserted. Proportional representation in the state, thus, doesn’t solve the bigger problem — racism (as well as sexism) feeds back into the power structure the state is a part of.

For the same reasons, reserving of placement quotas for black students in public universities means very little, for public universities themselves are excluding spaces that are unable to respond to the needs of the black population. They can only ever serve the needs of a small (and generally already privileged) minority, so a “progressive” ethnic composition of students doesn’t break the system of privilege. It’s just makeup.

Thus, we don’t need representation in spaces of power, because power is inexorably force and oppression. The power structure we have nowadays is sustained by the intersectional oppression of several minorities (affecting them differently in kind, if not in intensity), combined with the systematic oppression, though less manifested, of the people as a whole.

Women in power should be seen not as forces of change, but as results of change. Social and cultural changes open the doors of previously closed off spaces to women, but their representation in power shouldn’t be conflated with empowerment.

We don’t need more diversity in power, we need less power.

Oppression is the raison d’être of power. It doesn’t matter what its gender composition is.

I coined the term “vulgar libertarianism” several years back to describe reflexive mainstream libertarian defenses of the existing corporate capitalist system as if it were the free market, and using “free market” principles to justify the evils of the corporate economy. I recently saw one of the worst examples of this phenomenon ever, courtesy of John Stossel (“Debunking Popular Nonsense About Income Mobility in America,” Reason, June 4).

Vulgar libertarian apologists for capitalism use the term “free market” in an equivocal sense: They seem to have trouble remembering, from one moment to the next, whether they’re defending actually existing capitalism or free market principles. So we get the standard boilerplate article arguing that the rich can’t get rich at the expense of the poor, because “that’s not how the free market works” — implicitly assuming that this is a free market. When prodded, they’ll grudgingly admit the present system isn’t a free market, and includes a lot of state intervention on behalf of the rich. But as soon as they think they can get away with it, they go right back to defending the wealth of existing corporations in terms of “free market principles.”

Stossel’s piece does that in spades. He begins by conceding Thomas Piketty’s claim, in Capital in the 21st Century, that the concentration of wealth in the hands of the super-rich is at an all-time high. It’s true, he says, that “the wealth gap has grown. Now the top 1 percent own more assets than the bottom 90 percent!” But not to worry!

Stossel begins by arguing that what matters is not the relative shares of wealth between various percentiles of the population, but the mobility between those percentiles. And moving up is just as easy as ever. Just look at Oprah Winfrey (once on welfare)! And Sam Walton (a former fieldhand)!

Actually this is a load of buncombe. First of all, Stossel in my opinion unjustifiably minimizes path dependency. For example, there are persistent structural differences between the economic security and well-being of black families generations later, depending on whether they lived in areas where the U.S. army granted land to former slaves during Reconstruction — not to mention ongoing structural injustices like black sharecroppers being tractored off their land after WWII, or bank redlining.

But even leaving that aside, there’s been a significant amount of social mobility in most class societies in history. Without such mobility, they would ossify into caste systems incapable of adapting to change. That’s why Orwell’s Inner Party in 1984 is a complete meritocracy that recruits talent from the Outer Party and Proles in each new generation. The Soviet class system was probably more mobile than the American; most of the Party apparatus and the state economy’s managerial establishment, in the mid-20th century, were populated by the millions of workers and peasants (and their children) who swarmed into the Party in the ’20s and ’30s and got sent to vocational schools. Even under Roman chattel slavery, there were more enterprising or cunning slaves than average who bought their freedom and eventually became slave-owners themselves. Does this mobility mean that the dominance of the Ingsoc Party in 1984, or the dominance of the Soviet apparatchik over the average citizen, or the Roman slave-owner over the slave, was legitimate? It’s just an amazingly stupid argument.

But the real vulgar libertarianism comes in when Stossel dismisses considerations of justice or injustice in the distribution of wealth: “Also, the rich don’t get rich at the expense of the poor (unless they steal or collude with government).”

Um, that’s a big “unless.” Stossel writes as if the legitimacy of the super-rich’s fortunes were the rule, and collusion with the government were some sort of rare exception. To be sure, Stossel occasionally writes about some government boondoggle for the rich (like subsidized insurance for their beach homes) or corporate welfare. But his instinctive reaction, when someone attacks the polarization of wealth or the power of big business, is to interpret it as a leftist attack on the “free market,” and to circle the wagons in defense of the rich and powerful.

But in fact corporate capitalism as we know it is defined by statism to its very core, and the overwhelming majority of the income of the super-rich consists of rents on artificial property rights and artificial scarcities enforced by the state. I doubt it would be possible to accumulate a fortune of 100 million on the free market — let alone 100 billion. The Fortune 500 corporations, without any exception I can think of, owe their profits and market shares to government-subsidized inputs, government-enforced monopolies, entry barriers and regulatory cartels.

Stossel isn’t defending against government intervention. He’s defending a system based on it.

Quando começou a demolição dos galpões abandonados do Cais José Estelita no Recife, a mobilização que ocorria desde 2012 do movimento #OcupeEstelita mostrou ter sido necessária. No dia 21 de maio último, quando os tratores da empreiteira Moura Dubeux se posicionavam durante a madrugada para passar por cima dos antigos armazéns de açúcar, vários indivíduos, articulados principalmente pelo grupo Direitos Urbanos, estavam posicionados para barrar o avanço.

Na última terça (03/06), o #OcupeEstelita teve sua vitória (parcial, até o momento) formalizada pela prefeitura, que, a contragosto, suspendeu o alvará de demolição dos galpões.

Abandonados há anos, os armazéns do Cais Estelita, relíquias da economia canavieira do estado de Pernambuco, pertenciam à hoje extinta Rede Ferroviária Federal. A área dos galpões foi leiloada em termos extremamente camaradas para um consórcio de empreiteiras que planejou, junto à prefeitura, o projeto Novo Recife.

O Novo Recife consiste na construção de 12 torres de mais de 40 andares na área, que é uma das mais bem localizadas da cidade. Além disso, projeto também consiste na captura do debate pelo governo. Pela lógica plutocrata da prefeitura e das empreiteiras, que tem conquistado muitos adeptos, há o time a favor do progresso, de novos apartamentos e do desenvolvimento urbano, e há o time que torce pelo retrocesso, pela manutenção de uma área potencialmente nobre como a do Cais abandonada e desvalorizada.

Falsa dicotomia evidente, que vem sendo combatida pelo grupo de ativismo Direitos Urbanos (o qual deu origem ao #OcupeEstelita), que pretende discutir soluções urbanísticas para a cidade. O Direitos Urbanos, enquanto fórum de discussão e ativismo, reúne posições diversas a respeito de como a cidade deve ser ocupada e planejada. Infelizmente, além de diversas, suas posições também são vagas e levemente enviesadas para uma visão urbana de classe média, que enfatiza não a legitimidade do uso e da propriedade dos espaços urbanos, mas uma visão específica de como esses espaços públicos devem ser utilizados: em comunidades mistas de casas e comércio, praças, espaços arborizados, ciclovias, etc.

Não há nada de errado em espaços urbanos mistos, que devem ser preferíveis e não desestimulados pela legislação (como são atualmente). Porém, o problema fundamental do uso do espaço urbano permanece, mesmo com a rejeição estética da utilização do espaço do Cais Estelita pelas empreiteiras. A discussão mais básica é: quem deve usar o espaço público?

Podemos discutir os detalhes sobre como esse espaço será utilizado mais tarde. Em primeiro lugar, deve-se falar sobre como desestatizar os terrenos públicos. Claramente é injusta uma privatização que coloca um terreno gigantesco e extremamente bem localizado como o dos antigos armazéns nas mãos de um consórcio de construtoras.

Não se tratam de terrenos legitimamente estatais e o governo não tem qualquer legitimidade para excluir o resto da população da possibilidade de se apropriar da área. Infelizmente, os detalhes de um processo de desestatização que abrisse suas portas a todos poderiam ser bastante complexos.

Por isso, eu gostaria de fazer uma modesta proposta.

No Brasil, calcula-se que entre 200 e 250 mil pessoas tenham sido despejadas de suas casas com as obras para a Copa do Mundo e das Olimpíadas. Muitas receberam indenizações risíveis e outras tantas sofrem com a falta ou a insuficiência do auxílio-aluguel prometido.

Proponho uma solução: façam os 12 prédios que querem, mas coloquem nos apartamentos as pessoas que foram violentamente expulsas de suas casas pelo governo.

Parece justo: se o governo orquestra um processo excludente de privatização, que ao menos ela favoreça aqueles que foram deliberadamente destituídos.

Se as vítimas da Copa forem beneficiadas, podemos pensar no impacto urbano depois. O que acha, Direitos Urbanos?

C4SS Feed 44 presents Cathy Reisenwitz’s “Occupational Regulations and the Gender Wage Gap” read by Trevor Hultner and edited by Nick Ford.

The truth is neither side has it right. The left says the gender wage gap results from discrimination. The evidence for this is shaky at best. The right says the gender wage gap can be chalked up to women’s choices. But this doesn’t take into account how government-mandated barriers such as the high cost of child care and occupational licensing laws influence those choices.

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About a week ago, a friend and fellow classical music aficionado posted the following on Facebook:

I’ve waited my whole life to come to realize, through some dawning revelation, why precisely I’m supposed to like the Symphonie Fantastique. Today, right now where I sit, I’m fully prepared to say what I’ve put off saying for as long as I can remember: the Symphonie Fantastique is wrongly named.

For numerous reasons, I vehemently disagreed with his assessment. But there’s one reason I want to focus on in particular. The individual who posted this also happens to be a libertarian like me and like Hector Berlioz, the composer of Symphonie Fantastique.

My response:

I’m going to have to disagree with you here…Symphonie Fantastique is a grand example of a composer breaking conventional molds of form and orchestration. Five movements. Strange instruments. An implied program. Intentionally irreverent use of religious cantus. One of my personal favorites. Hector Berlioz don’t care!

Hector Berlioz embraced an attitude of intentional, intelligent irreverence toward all things customary and conventional. Throughout his life, he challenged the status quo, musically and otherwise. He wasn’t a rebel just for the sake of being a rebel; he understood exactly what the state of the world was and how he could change it. He held individual expression up as a pinnacle virtue, harnessing his own to influence others peacefully and thoughtfully.

Like many libertarians, Berlioz was a voracious autodidact. Unlike many other composers of the era, he received no formal musical training early in his life. Nor was he precocious like Mozart. Rather, he diligently studied harmony textbooks, teaching himself how to write music.

When he turned eighteen, Berlioz left home to study medicine in Paris. After a short stint at the university (and a reviling experience of viewing a human corpse being dissected), he abandoned medicine and attended the Paris Conservatoire. There, under the tutelage of Jean-François Le Sueur and Anton Reicha, Berlioz refined his composition skills.

This was a time not unlike today: A “new economy” was emerging. “The decay of absolutism on the European continent spelled the end of artistic patronage on the part of the aristocracy and the church,” writes musicologist Richard Taruskin. “The broad middle-class public now replaced the traditional elite.”

According to historian Giorgio Pestelli, these economic allowed for the emergence of the modern freelance musician. “Free from immediate detailed instructions from his master or protector,” composers and musicians “could be subject in a similar way to the kind of demand imposed by the musical market.” The “new course” appealed “above all to the competitive spirit” and, in so doing, rewarded entrepreneurial insight.

Like many young entrepreneurs today, Berlioz needed to supplement his income. In addition to composing, young Hector also worked as chorus singer and vaudeville performer. Over time, his hard work paid off as he became famous as a composer and conductor across France and western Europe.

Berlioz’s most famous and most remembered work is Symphonie Fantastique—by far. Since its first public performance in 1830, critics and audiences alike have proffered their strong opinions on the 50-minute-long behemoth. Some love it. Some hate it. Some are downright flummoxed by it.

Symphonie Fantastique called for ninety instrumentalists at a time when the standard orchestra employed half that. Compared to contemporaneous scores, Berlioz’s presents dynamics, articulations, and other expressive markings with revolutionary explicitness and meticulous detail. Brass players need mutes and the timpanist needs “sponge-headed sticks.” The range of wind instruments extends from the piccolo to the tuba. While all of these things are commonplace now, they were utterly radical at the time.

To add to the uproar, Berlioz tied the music to a program in a particular way. Purely instrumental music was elevated, becoming sacrilegiously tantamount to opera. “Berlioz wished to have [the program] distributed to audiences to prepare them to understand the work,” says Taruskin. “[M]any in the Victorian era understandably found shocking.”

The program describes each of five (five!—as opposed to the standard four) movements in scenic detail. “Funeral knell, ludicrous parody of the Dies irae,” part of the fifth movement program, alludes to Berlioz’s satirical use of a Catholic funeral hymn in a movement entitled “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath.”

Libertarianism has an ideological component. Economic freedom, civil rights, free speech, private property—they’re all part of the package. But libertarianism also has an attitudinal component. Liberty lovers aren’t afraid to brazenly resist established norms and expectations. Like Hector Berlioz, we don’t fit nicely into the mold society prescribes. We question what others accept and rebuke anyone who stands in our way.

After reading Maureen Dowd‘s gripping tale of her recent experience with the devil’s lettuce, a wave of compassion and sadness for her washed over me. Marijuana poisoning is no laughing matter. As she recounts, for hours she lay incapable of moving from her hotel bed. The weed came on strong, mere minutes after she ordered a bottle of alcohol from the front desk. Now, lying there in the grip of an uncontrollable chemical which has driven literally one to suicide, she was completely helpless to pick up the liquor which would no doubt end her hellish experience.

During this harrowing tale, certainly one of the most compelling drug stories in modern memory, I could not help but wonder: What if the law had protected Maureen from this? I decided to re-imagine Maureen’s experience if she had been so lucky as to be watched over by the benevolent drug laws of our country.

As Maureen enters the dingy basement of a certainly armed individual she has had no previous contact with, she is filled with a thankful spirit that she could not perform her transaction in a more safe and open environment. If that were possible, she thinks to herself, people would most likely overdose daily in the streets from the toxic chemical she wishes to ingest. Fortunately for Maureen, the dealer she’s been sent to turns out to be an undercover cop assigned to bust craven drug users such as herself. “Get your hands in the air, perp,” Officer Friendly says graciously. Maureen complies fully with the officer’s commands and is dragged by her hair from the basement apartment into the back seat of the officer’s unmarked police vehicle.

Maureen expects to be given a slap on the wrist, but is pleasantly surprised when she’s questioned, berated and strip searched by Officer Friendly in a cold, bleak holding cell. After days of uncertainty locked inside the cage meant to protect us from criminal miscreants like her, she’s informed of the layout of her trial. “This judge has no tolerance for drug users, Maureen,” says the warm and inviting prosecutor. “Nor do I, for that matter.” Maureen is informed she has two options: Save the state time and money by foregoing her right to due process and get a light sentence of one year or go to trial and be at the mercy of a judge and jury’s decision. Maureen, still possessing some manner of dignity after this experience, takes the lenient bargain offered by the prosecutor.

As Maureen is transferred to her home for the next year, she wonders what manner of crime the woman placed next to her on the bus committed, as she is fondled and violated in a manner she could easily resist in any other environment. Suddenly it dawns on her that she deserves this. The next year of her life will be well-spent staring at the walls, the ceiling and the bars of her spacious 8×10 cell. She knows this was how it had to be, that in order to wipe out this killer disease in society, she ought to be subjected to total control and humiliation, her every day survival and eventual release being the only thing on her mind. She ponders the horror of a society which allows women like her to freely roam their hotel rooms in a slightly uncomfortable buzzed state. Officer Friendly has done her and all of a society a favor by kidnapping her, taking her away from her loved ones and dooming her to endless hours of violence and sexual assault. When she gets out, she says to herself, she can forget about this all with a stiff drink.

Depois da concentração, na Praça do Derby, no centro do Recife, a Marcha das Vadias avançou em direção à Avenida Conde da Boa Vista, uma das mais importantes vias da capital pernambucana. A União da Juventude Socialista (UJS) estava lá, levou cartazes, palavras de ordem, panfletos. Consegui ouvir de quem vinha atrás uma pergunta perplexa: “O que a UJS está fazendo aqui?”

Era pertinente. Afinal, a UJS, ligada ao PCdoB — que, por sua vez, é basicamente uma filial do PT —, não tem sido, historicamente, a mais consistente das organizações em defesa dos direitos e das liberdades femininas. Pudera, às vezes as necessidades de defesa do status quo e do governo passam por cima com frequência de quaisquer outras considerações.

Porém, compareceram à Marcha e trocaram panfletos conosco. Os panfletos de nosso grupo libertário, o Coletivo Nabuco, vinham com o texto “Seduzidas e desonradas“, da anarco-individualista e feminista brasileira Maria Lacerda de Moura. O panfleto da UJS, por sua vez, vinha com um texto contra a Copa do Mundo e terminava com um apelo, provavelmente para aplacar o público feminista presente: “Por mais mulheres nos espaços de poder!”

Era o mesmo slogan que o grupo levava em sua maior faixa durante a manifestação. Ao conversar com os presentes, imediatamente invertemos o slogan: “Por menos espaços de poder para oprimir as mulheres!”

O slogan da UJS transbordava uma falsa compreensão do que caracteriza a luta pela emancipação feminina. De acordo com ele, os problemas femininos não passam de problemas de representação, que podem ser aliviados com a presença de uma porcentagem de mulheres dentro do estado e de suas instâncias decisórias. É um entendimento cotista da sociedade: se as mulheres compõem 50% da população, elas devem compor, ao menos, 50% do governo.

É também uma compreensão que mantém intacta toda a estrutura de poder que garante que as mulheres continuem a ser oprimidas não apenas pela mão de ferro do estado, mas também pela cultura patriarcal dominante, que pretende ditar qual o comportamento, as roupas, os trabalhos, os estudos, os hobbies, os trejeitos e as atividades sexuais adequadas a mulheres.

Representação dentro do governo não é procuração para autoridade política real e significativa. Uma analogia com o racismo pode deixar o problema com essa visão mais óbvio. Cerca de 7,6% da população brasileira é composta por negros. Se destinarmos 7,6% dos postos do governo aos negros, o que muda em sua situação política? Quase nada. O próprio número de indivíduos que se intitulam como negros em pesquisas demográficas é artificialmente baixo por conta da cultura racista em que estamos inseridos. A entrada proporcional de um grupo na estrutura do estado, portanto, não resolve o problema mais amplo — a cultura racista (ou sexista) realimenta a estrutura de poder de que o estado faz parte.

Da mesma forma, significa muito pouco o fato de que são reservadas cotas em universidades públicas para negros, uma vez que as universidades públicas, em si, são espaços necessariamente excludentes e que jamais atenderão às necessidades amplas da população negra, mas somente às de uma pequena minoria (geralmente já privilegiada), não importando sua composição étnica. É uma maquiagem do sistema.

Assim, o que precisamos não é de representação dentro do poder, porque o poder significa inexoravelmente força e opressão. A estrutura de poder atual é sustentada pela opressão interseccional de diversas minorias (que afeta de forma qualitativamente diferente cada uma delas), combinada com a opressão sistemática, porém menos manifesta, à população como um todo.

A participação de mulheres em espaços de poder deve ser vista não como força precipitadora das mudanças, mas como causada pelas mudanças. São as mudanças culturais e sociais que abrem as portas para as mulheres, mas sua participação nos espaços de poder garante poucas conquistas palpáveis para as mulheres.

Por isso, não precisamos de diversidade no poder, mas de menos poder.

A opressão é a raison d’être do poder. Não importa a sua composição de gênero.

There are two ways of approaching analysis of the death penalty. They are the practical and the moral. It’s the latter that most concerns me, but it’s important to note that the two can and do run together. A sole focus on practical considerations can lead one to justify anything and everything as long as the consequences can be shown to be positive by standard. An example relevant to the topic at hand would be the notion that genocide or torture is justifiable as long as it reduces crime. An argument frequently employed with respect to the death sentence.

Without the practical line of attack represented by disputing whether capital punishment reduces crime or not, the ethical dimension enters in the foreground. The primary ethical objection to the death penalty, I have, is that it represents state or government sponsored blood vengeance  against a person largely rendered defenseless. It’s difficult to distinguish from murder, because the individual doesn’t have to be threatening or carrying out an aggressive attack against anyone during the process of killing them. An equivalent act in principle would be shooting a POW rendered non-threatening in the head.

Another important ethical consideration with respect to capital punishment pertains to the manner in which it energizes the warfare state. One of the awful things about the “War on Terror” is the manner in which it has normalized extrajudicial killings on presidential whim. This kind of summary execution is the absolute worst form of the death penalty. It’s conducted with zero legality or objective accountability. It has contributed to the deaths of countless people.

The final moral consideration to seriously consider is how it creates a warped entitlement to kill mentality among police forces. The numerous unjust shootings one can read about in the libertarian and left press confirm the existence of said outlook. It’s the whimsical militarist presidential worldview brought into the realm of nominally civilian policing.

Despite the big focus being on the morality of capital punishment, there is an important practical consideration that does relate to practicality. That would be the potential of killing an innocent person. There is a new study showing that 4 percent of death row inmates are innocent, so this is no idle concern. It’s better for a guilty person to escape death than for an innocent individual to die, because the proper role of the law is to protect the rights of all rather than to kill them. Let’s work to make sure the law sticks to that.

C4SS Feed 44 presents Gregory Boyle’s “Consumer Protection in a Free Society” from the Students for a Stateless Society‘s Volume 1, Issue 1 of THE NEW LEVELLER read by Stephen Ledger and edited by Nick Ford.

The distributed reputation system of the black market site Silk Road functioned as a brilliant and effective alternative to licensing. Because almost all of the products sold on Silk Road were illegal, consumers couldn’t simply take legal action against dishonest vendors, and because products were paid for with bitcoins, chargebacks could only be issued if vendors agreed to them.

Given the total lack of legal recourse available to consumers, one might have thought that the site would quickly devolve into a mass of scams and fraud, yet it maintained a customer satisfaction rate of over 97% until it was shut down in 2013. Justice was administered by the sites users simply by refusing to do business with dishonest vendors. Many users only bought from vendors with flawless reputations, which provided vendors with an incentive to maintain such a reputation. Many of them went above and beyond to gain the loyalty of customers, offering full refunds at their own expense if they found that their product had not reached their customer.

Feed 44:

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Few reading this will find it in anyway a novel insight that the Drug War has always been about control. The elimination of drugs was a useful narrative, but it’s one which has fallen into disfavor. As we learn what little threat these banned chemicals pose, all that is left is the gripping fist of the state. It will come as no surprise then that the federal government does not merely target the lives of those seeking to get high, but of anyone seeking a substance deemed prohibited. This was recently manifested by the FDA’s seizure of 19,618 parcels of “unapproved” prescription medication. More plainly, the FDA stole people’s medication and denied them any reasonable manner of attaining it again.

Among the medications seized were estrogen, insulin, tramadol and many other drugs with no recreational value. These substances were stolen by the FDA under the guise of consumer protection. “Consumers have little or no legal recourse if they experience a reaction to the unregulated medication or if they receive no therapeutic benefit at all. In addition to health risks, these pharmacies pose other risks to consumers, including credit card fraud, identity theft or computer viruses,” said one FDA parrot. No word on why they continue to impose these risks on consumers through the strict regulation of these chemical compounds rather than opening them up to the stabilizing forces of the market.

Laid bare, the actions of this federal gang are wholly unsympathetic. After the seizure, the online pharmacies were reported to internet providers and domain registrars, effectively shutting down the consumer’s ability to obtain their medical supplies. These people are not the junkies the FDA so easily demonizes. These are people medically restricted by government decrees. These are people priced out of the official prescription drug market. These are the disempowered, but the FDA has unknowingly empowered them through their theft.

I have a question for the FDA: How long do you think this can last? How sustainable is your policy of controlling what we put in our bodies? Surely at this point, the DEA has learned that online drug markets are a Hydra. Cut off one head and two shall appear. How long until you give up the vain attempt of managing our lives? It is becoming, everyday, more and more impossible.

By swiping the medication of thousands, the FDA has in fact acted in the best interest of those who have already moved to a world free of control. The online pharmacies which dealt in illegal prescription drugs have made their home on the clear web. To the credit of our federal foes, these pharmacies have remained under their influence and will indeed become an extinct species soon enough. But those seeking their medication will remain, and will be left with two options: to acquiesce to your will or to join those of us who have descended into the Darkweb.

The undeniable, unpreventable fact our would-be central planners must face is this: There will be markets. Over the past four years, the online narcotics trade has proven this time and again. Through takedowns and arrests of vendors and market kingpins, the federal government has been unable to slow the traffic of this burgeoning agora and not a second goes by that any heroin user cannot within a matter of minutes purchase her own stash in almost any personal quantity she desires.

By pushing online pharmacies off the clear web, they empower young entrepreneurs with new opportunities. These victims of yours, they will receive their medication again, and they will have the black market to thank for it. They will contribute to the revolution which is increasingly making you irrelevant. We have the Food and Drug Administration to thank for this.

These are our bodies. These are our minds. You can no longer control them. We are taking them back and there is no amount of guns or legislation which can stop this. Your best move in this waning game of chess is to back down, to cease driving more and more people to a world you cannot hope to control or participate in.

Todos parecem apreciar a privacidade — tanto que, com frequência, expandimos o conceito e usamos a expressão “direitos de privacidade”, indicando que não apenas se trata de algo bom, mas algo a que todos temos direito. Isso, contudo, nos deixa sem a resposta para uma importante pergunta: Até que ponto e em que aspectos? Mês passado, a Corte Europeia de Justiça ofereceu uma resposta interessante a essa pergunta, estabelecendo o “direito a ser esquecido”.

O tribunal, julgando um processo aberto por Mario González, na Espanha, ordenou que o Google removesse de suas buscas um artigo de jornal de 1998 que falava do leilão público da casa de González. González não afirmava que o artigo era inverídico ou impreciso. Afirmava, apenas, que as informações relativas a ele (em particular, informações que possam colocá-lo em situação desvantajosa, de forma justificada ou não, se facilmente disponíveis aos outros) devem ser colocadas sob seu controle exclusivo, indisponíveis a buscas na internet.

Assim nasceu o “direito a ser esquecido” — ou melhor, esquecido pelo Google. O Google tem cooperado: disponibilizaram um processo online para aqueles que desejam que informações específicas sobre si próprios sejam removidas dos índices de busca. O critério do tribunal para avaliar esses pedidos é que a informação em questão seja “inadequada, irrelevante ou que tenha deixado de ser relevante”, embora essas regras abram o caminho para a questão de quem decide o que é ou não adequado ou relevante.

O caso de Mario González e seu resultado lidam com diversas questões que libertários civis e políticos, além dos próprios anarquistas, como eu mesmo, têm enfrentado há algum tempo. Embora seja incontestável que a privacidade seja bastante valorizada, não é óbvio como os processos de mercado produziriam resultados similares aos atingidos pelas cortes estatais ao lidar com esses problemas.

De fato, aqueles que acreditam que os “direitos de privacidade” sejam tão amplos quanto a corte europeia parece considerar (ou ainda maiores), a decisão pode constituir um argumento em favor do estado de poderes “limitados” (embora a decisão de um tribunal em Luxemburgo sobre um caso que envolva um espanhol contra uma empresa nos Estados Unidos em relação a conteúdo disponível em uma rede mundial não pareça algo tão “limitado”, certo?).

A mim, parece que a decisão evidencia o oposto. O fato de que os processos de mercado não produziriam resultados como os do estado é evidência de que as cortes estão indo longe demais em sua defesa dos “direitos de privacidade”. Se forem direitos legítimos, eles não são tão extensos quanto a decisão afirma.

Neste caso específico, o processo parece envolver não uma questão de privacidade, mas relativa à “propriedade intelectual”. González não afirma que o Google olhou para dentro de sua janela e o viu escrever uma nota sobre o leilão de 1998. Ele reconhece que, naquela época, se tratava de um evento público. Porém, agora ele afirma que, 16 anos depois, ele é “dono” do conhecimento daquele evento e tem direitos de controle sobre ele, enquanto o Google não os possui.

Nós chegamos a um ponto em que os esforços de proteção à privacidade devem navegar entre a Cila da informação livre e a Caribdis dos monopólios estatais de propriedade intelectual. Em minha opinião, a ideia de que a liberdade de informação seja um monstro ameaçador como Cila é fantasiosa. O poder do estado ao forçar o esquecimento é muito mais perigoso que qualquer informação que se possa liberar.

Traduzido do inglês para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.