La cosiddetta Pietra Miliare Civile di Internet, approvata dalla camera dei deputati brasiliana il 25 marzo, si avvia al senato. L’aspetto più seducente del progetto di legge è “neutralità della rete”, uno strumento legale che impedisce ai fornitori di accesso di internet di offrire diversi piani di accesso. Ad esempio, un piano economico per accedere a pochi siti tramite cellulare e uno più caro per un accesso illimitato.

La neutralità della rete attrae. Dopotutto, se lasciamo che le compagnie offrano qualunque piano che loro giudicano adatto, l’impressione è che gli utenti dovranno pagare di più per avere un accesso illimitato, o che le compagnie bloccheranno il contenuto giudicato concorrenziale. Dunque, questo è il ragionamento, occorre trattare tutto il contenuto di internet alla stessa maniera.

Ma questa difesa della neutralità di internet serve solo a distrarre dal vero problema.

Nel mercato libero, la neutralità si ottiene con processo di competizione, non rifiutando la richiesta di “non-neutralità”, dove, ad esempio, le persone possono optare per un piano tariffario che dà accesso solo alle email, i social media e qualche altro sito specifico ad un prezzo basso, mentre le grosse società che usano montagne di dati e ingolfano le infrastrutture potrebbero pagare di più. In questo modo, i clienti di fascia bassa non sarebbero costretti a pagare per chi fa un uso massiccio della rete.

Nel mercato, la “neutralità” si ottiene tramite la libertà di scelta: se un fornitore non offre un accesso neutrale ad un prezzo ragionevole, si può sempre migrare altrove. Questo incentiva la concorrenza e sprona ad innovare, dando come risultato un menu di offerte e opzioni più ampio, oltre a fornire una soluzione al problema della congestione dei dati e altro.

Il disegno di legge arriva a riconoscere che la neutralità di rete non è senza costi. Secondo voi chi avrà il potere di determinare quando la neutralità non vale il suo prezzo?

§ 1º La discriminazione o il deterioramento del traffico di internet saranno regolati dal Presidente della Repubblica con i suoi poteri personali… sentito il consiglio del Comitato per la Gestione di Internet e l’Agenzia per le Telecomunicazioni Nazionali, e deve essere fatto seguendo:

I – i requisiti tecnici essenziali per la fornitura e l’applicazione dei servizi; e

II – dando la priorità ai servizi di emergenza.

Dunque sarà soltanto lo stato (specificamente il presidente) ad avere il potere di determinare quando applicare la neutralità. La teoria della scelta pubblica dimostra che lo stato non è neutro e che una democrazia rappresentativa non opera per il bene della maggioranza ma per le minoranze organizzate, compresa la grande impresa che gode di appoggi politici, e che può pagare la burocrazia per regolare il rapporto tra neutralità e non-neutralità secondo il proprio bisogno.

Dunque, la Pietra Miliare Civile di Internet non affronta il vero problema: gli ostacoli alla libertà d’ingresso nell’industria, e l’assenza di incentivi alla sperimentazione e l’innovazione, a causa della legislazione o della burocrazia.

Questi ostacoli frenano la capacità del mercato di determinare la proporzione ideale tra neutralità e non-neutralità che meglio soddisfa la domanda di servizi internet in un dato momento attraverso la libera interazione tra utenti, che sono gli unici che sanno veramente cosa è meglio per se stessi. Uno dei vantaggi di questa libera contrattazione sul mercato è che non impone costi sulla società in generale, mentre lo stesso non può dirsi della nuova legge.

La Pietra Miliare Civile servirà solo ad ingigantire i problemi del mercato già esistenti in Brasile, perché darà al governo il potere di determinare il significato della neutralità. Se è vero che le grandi imprese controllano Brasilia, dare più potere allo stato significa cedere questo potere a queste imprese.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

C4SS Media presents Jonathan Carp‘s “Eleven Years of War” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford.

“The Iraq War was, as wars go, not an especially harsh or brutal one, and was largely conducted according to all the latest precepts of “humanitarian intervention.” The free-fire zones of Vietnam were largely absent, as were the brutalities of massed, prolonged aerial and artillery bombardment. And yet, the results are unimaginably horrific to us in our First World comfort. Sandy Hook and Columbine reverberate to this day in America; in the hell into which we plunged Iraq, neither would even make the front page. There is no war without horrific violence and nightmarish suffering. Never forget.”

Justin Raimondo discusses the pattern of disaster in U.S. foreign policy.

Charles R. Pierce discusses the torture scandal and the Obama admin.

Brian Cloughley discusses the warmongering of NATO.

Alexander Reid Ross discusses Hollande’s trip to Nigeria.

Brian Doherty discusses five gun rights cases to watch.

Raphael Cohen and Gabriel Scheinmann discuss the Libyan war.

Chase Madar discusses Micah Zenko.

David S. D’Amato discusses the new economy and the cost principle.

Alex Miller defends Jeffrey Tucker.

Thomas L. Knapp discusses Jeffrey Tucker’s use of the term brutalism.

Kent McManigal discusses road signs.

Timothy J. Taylor discusses statists in libertarian clothing.

Paul Detrick discusses the killing of Kelly Thomas.

Jim Davies discusses Murray Rothbard vs Robert LeFevre.

Paul Bonneua discusses reasons for not rejecting the non-aggression principle.

Jim Davies discusses Murray’s missing plan for change.

Alex R. Knight the third reviews the book Everything Voluntary.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses the disbanding of NATO.

Jacob Sullum discusses the GOP abuse of executive power.

David Cole discusses the CIA’s abuse.

Robert A. Levy discusses libertarianism 101.

Christian Elderhorst discusses taxation.

Mark Thornton discusses how the drug war failed Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Hugh Gusterson discusses the forgotten Iraq War.

Gareth Porter discusses the crisis with Iran.

Scott Horton discusses John Rizzo’s new book on the CIA.

Nathan Smith discusses zoning laws.

Jeffrey Tucker discusses wages.

Levon Aronian plays a great game against Anand.

Levon Aronian plays Alexey Shirov.

It was a cool, blustery, October morning in 2007 when I realized the difference between work and labor. I was standing on the side of a country road in Tumwater, Washington waiting for my work crew to come pick me up. I had moved from Tennessee to the area just days before – a recent graduate with a service year ahead of me. I had accepted a contract position with the Washington Conservation Corps, a program dedicated to salmon habitat conservation and restoration ecology. I was soon picked up by my fellow corps members and taken to our lock-up. Here, we loaded our rig with numerous tools for trail construction – Pulaski’s, Macleod’s, chain saws and more. By that evening we had bagged Eagle’s Peak in Mount Rainier National Park, completing the fall drainage on the trail. It was my first day of “spike,” eight days in the back country digging re-routes and building trail – my first vivid memory of inclined labor.

I had of course labored before this day, but this experience sticks out because I was fortunate enough during my time on the mountain to wake up every day and enjoy my labor. I enjoyed the manual exercise, crafting trail, working lightly on the land and exploring the forest. These activities were required of the job, but they did not feel like work. I viewed these tasks favorably, I was disposed towards these activities – to labor with the rock and soil of Earth. The job felt different from anything I had done before, it fit with my belief system and attitude towards life. I was practicing conservation and further developing a sense of wildness.

During this service year I befriended a fellow corps member by the name of Nicholas Wooten. We would talk science and philosophy, argue politics, talk about how things could/should be and would sometimes just get wild and drunk. Most of the time, however, Nick and I talked philosophy (and still do). During one of our conversations, Nick shared with me a quote that is rather important to him – it is now rather important to me. It is from the work of Marcus Aurelius in his piece The Meditations:

In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present- I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself warm?- But this is more pleasant.- Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion? Dost thou not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees working together to put in order their several parts of the universe? And art thou unwilling to do the work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do that which is according to thy nature?- But it is necessary to take rest also.- It is necessary: however nature has fixed bounds to this too: she has fixed bounds both to eating and drinking, and yet thou goest beyond these bounds, beyond what is sufficient; yet in thy acts it is not so, but thou stoppest short of what thou canst do. So thou lovest not thyself, for if thou didst, thou wouldst love thy nature and her will. But those who love their several arts exhaust themselves in working at them unwashed and without food; but thou valuest thy own own nature less than the turner values the turning art, or the dancer the dancing art, or the lover of money values his money, or the vainglorious man his little glory. And such men, when they have a violent affection to a thing, choose neither to eat nor to sleep rather than to perfect the things which they care for. But are the acts which concern society more vile in thy eyes and less worthy of thy labour?

How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is troublesome or unsuitable, and immediately to be in all tranquility

There is much to say about this quote. Personally, it has helped me mold together an idea that I call inclined labor. I write about inclined labor often but I have never defined the concept. It is my wish to do so in this blog post.

To be inclined is to feel a willing to accomplish, or a drawing toward, a particular action belief or attitude. Labor is physical or mental exertion – but it is very different from work. Work is a series of tasks that must be completed to achieve a certain goal – be it to gain a wage or to see that something functions properly. Labor is categorically different. Individual labor happens on its own terms, willed by the desire to complete a task. Work must be done, it is an intended activity. Inclined labor, however, is the physical and mental exertion that human beings are drawn to.

Inclined labor, then, is directly tied to the opening of Marcus Aurelius’s passage:

In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present- I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world?

Inclined labor is the true work of a human being – and it can only be actualized in liberty.

Today we work plenty but struggle to find time and energy to award ourselves the opportunity to truly labor. Work for economical means is a relatively new activity of human beings. Every civilization has had to work – chores need to be carried out for society to function. For the vast majority of our 200,000 year history as a modern species, however, our societies were much more egalitarian. In our early history there was much more labor – individuals knew their interests and carried out their functions and roles within their communities. It was not until the rise of power structures in the age of the ancients that human labor was viewed as something to command and control. Such authority has only exacerbated under the rise and fall of nation-states. Work as we know it today has only been dominant across the whole of society since the advent of industrial capitalism. Work is no longer something that is shared cooperatively for the functioning of society – work now defines a controlled economic system.

But we are a vigilant species. Over the millenia, and ever persistent today, human beings have continued to labor. How could we not when labor is inclined?

Imagine an economic system crafted by liberated human beings. What are the possibilities of humanity? How would the products of self directed labor progress and build society? What can we craft together during our time in the sun? What will liberated labor gift to future generations as we progress for millenia to come? How wondrous our civilizations and progress will be!

Inclined labor, whether a physical or mental exercise, is the creative expression of our interests and ingenuity – it is what we are driven to do. Our labor deserves to be liberated for it is ours and solely ours. Inclined labor is the true calling of human beings.

Last Friday, Rodrigo Constantino, in his blog on Brazilian magazine Veja’s website, made a strange comment: “I have no doubt that ‘good girls’ are under less risk of sexual assault.”

The statement was widely discussed and displeased many in social media, especially for following IPEA‘s research in Brazil, in which 58.5% of interviewees agreed with the assertion, “If women knew how to behave, there would be less rape.”

It is true that Constantino considered that the research’s results indicated the backwardness and the macho culture that are still prevalent in Brazil. Nevertheless, he does not notice that his statement is an accomplice of this toxic culture. The quote, in context, goes as follows:

While the machismo culture does not fade away and exemplary punishment does not come, it would be recommended that women should be more cautious, that they should try to look just a little bit more prudish, and preserved somewhat their intimate parts. I have no doubt that “good girls” are under less risk of sexual assault.

Constantino commits the fallacy of moralizing the explanation of rape. Let us compare: Say sex workers had a bigger chance of being raped than the average woman. This is just an empirical question, of knowing whether sexual work increases or not the risk of rape.

Now, imagine we said this: “Sex workers, because they’re acting immorally, have a higher chance of being raped, while ‘well behaving women’, because they act morally, have a lower chance of being sexually assaulted.” This offhand comment about the morality of the act adds nothing to the explanation and, worse, makes “having a lower chance of being raped” something moral, worthy of celebration. It is a subtle instance of slut shaming.

Sarah Skwire notes correctly that one of the distinguishing features of the rape culture is arguments such as “the victim shouldn’t have been there/shouldn’t have drunk/shouldn’t have worn these clothes/shouldn’t have gone to that party.”

As Charles Johnson highlights, here we see the “unwritten law of patriarchy:” culture puts the woman in a position of dependence by the relationship between the violence committed by a few men and the attempt by other to protect and control women. These two behaviors work in conjunction to impose rules on women’s personal lives, limiting their freedom. The moralizing explanation of rape is part of this cycle.

Constantino may as well say, “Women who don’t leave their houses are less likely to be raped.” Well, it depends. If family members or acquaintances rape them, that statement is false. He could also say, “Women who don’t drink are less likely to be raped.” All right, but only if he is talking about sexual assaults committed against drunk women. We cannot extrapolate.

We live in a world where women are deceived into accepting false job offers abroad and forced into prostitution. Where women are raped only for going back home from work late at night. Where women are raped because their house has been broken into. Where there is child prostitution and sexual abuse. Where agents of the state can throw a 15-year-old girl in jail along with several men. Where a community council can condemn a girl to collective corrective rape. Where women might be in the middle of war and cannot flee. Where women hop on a van with their boyfriends not knowing who is inside. Where family members, acquaintances and even sexual partners are ill intentioned.

In a world where women are raped only for being women, Constantino should, at the very least, apologize for his pointless moralizing.

Charles Koch of Koch Industries, wounded to the core of his being by allegations from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and others that his championing of the “free market” conceals lobbying efforts to rig the system in his favor, sufficiently recovered his composure to respond in a Wall Street Journal op-ed (“I”m Fighting to Restore a Free Society,” April 2).

“Instead of encouraging free and open debate,” he writes, “collectivists strive to discredit and intimidate opponents. … Rather than try to understand my vision for a free society or accurately report the facts about Koch Industries, our critics would have you believe we’re ‘un-American’ and trying to ‘rig the system,’ that we’re against ‘environmental protection’ or eager to ‘end workplace safety standards.'”

In an effort to supply those missing facts and elevate the public debate, Koch immediately launches into what amounts to a corporate press release (probably actually written for him by his company’s flacks) consisting entirely of bullet points (“Did you know …?”). It starts out “Koch companies employ 60,000 Americans, who make many thousands of products that Americans want and need,” and only degenerates further into Official Happy Talk from there. “Koch employees have earned well over 700 awards for environmental, health and safety excellence since 2009” — many of them from the EPA and OSHA! “EPA officials have commended us for our ‘commitment to a cleaner environment’ and called us ‘a model for other companies.'”

As for charges that Koch Industries tries to shape federal regulations in its own interests, Koch indignantly notes: “Far from trying to rig the system, I have spent decades opposing cronyism and all political favors …”

On closer examination, the Gospel According to St. Charles appears to have been heavily redacted in transmission. Let’s start with all those awards and praise from the EPA and other government agencies. I have to say, just as an aside, that it’s probably not all that hard to get an environmental award from the EPA; all Koch Industries would have to do is call up the same EPA inspectors who had sex with BP management before the Deepwater Horizons spill. Even so, the claims are still misleading. PolitiFact.com evaluated the claims and found them “mostly false”: All the quotes of praise and commendation were cherry-picked from specific projects by specific Koch Industries subsidiaries or companies working on contract for them, and simply edit out a much broader record of negligence, malfeasance and outright criminality.

Among the many awarded damages for negligence and malice associated with Koch Industries oil pipelines and refineries: A fine in Minnesota for knowingly discharging aviation fuel into a Minnesota wetland and adjoining waterway, releasing benzene from a Texas refinery, and a $30 million settlement in 2000 for 300 oil pipeline leaks in six states.

So when it comes to his defense on environmental performance, Koch is a lot like Lincoln’s anecdotal Jesuit who, accused of murdering ten men and a dog, triumphantly produced the dog in court.

As for Koch’s claim about opposing all forms of cronyism and market rigging, that’s much less ambiguous. He’s flat-out lying.

For starters, most oil drilling in the continental U.S. is carried out on vacant land to which original title was preempted by the federal government, and then preferentially granted to politically connected mining, logging and oil interests. Or retained as federal property and leased out on a preferential basis for drilling. This saves industry from the inconvenience of having to deal with the ordinary people who might otherwise have homesteaded the vacant land first. And according to Bill Koch, a third Koch brother who was squeezed out by the other two, Koch Industries has a history of stealing more oil than it paid for from drillers on federal lands and Indian reservations by using falsified measurements. Koch employees privately referred to this cheating as the “Koch method.” In the ’80s alone this amounted to 300 million gallons of oil, with a profit of $230 million.

Also, considering the number of miles of pipelines Koch Industries owns, and considering his support for the Keystone XL pipeline project, it’s fair to say Charles Koch supports one very big form of cronyism and market-rigging — i.e., government facilitating pipeline projects by stealing land from ordinary people and giving it to the oil industry.

Another form of cronyism Koch supports is so-called “tort reform,” which amounts to the government rigging the legal system — via liability caps, indemnities against liability, loser pays provisions, etc. — to protect them against paying damages to the victims of their leaks, spills, frauds and coverups.

Over two hundred years ago free market economist Adam Smith pointed out that, when businesspeople get involved in government, it’s to protect themselves against competition and rob the public. That’s just as true of the Kochs as of the rest of them.

Più di un decennio fa, i blogger neoconservatori coniarono il termine “Fisking” per indicare uno strumento polemico (usato per la prima volta contro il giornalista di sinistra Robert Fisk) che consiste nel fare a pezzi un commento, frase per frase, tagliuzzandone analiticamente ogni parte fino a ridurla a coriandoli. Anche se la posizione dei neoconservatori in questo dibattito oscilla tra il fuorviante e il ripugnante, la tecnica in sé è buona. E le osservazioni del presidente Obama sulla crisi della Crimea, durante il suo discorso ai giovani europei del 26 marzo, si prestano ammirevolmente a questa decostruzione. Diamo uno sguardo a queste importanti osservazioni, punto per punto, e confrontiamole con la realtà.

Inoltre, la Russia ha citato la decisione dell’America di attaccare l’Iraq come un esempio di ipocrisia dell’occidente. Ora, è vero che la guerra d’Iraq fu soggetta ad un forte dibattito non solo in tutto il mondo, ma anche negli Stati Uniti. Io partecipai a quel dibattito e mi opposi all’intervento militare. Ma anche in quel caso, l’America ha cercato di agire all’interno del sistema internazionale.

Il cosiddetto “sistema internazionale” a cui Obama idealisticamente si riferisce fu creato dagli Stati Uniti dopo la seconda guerra mondiale, con Gran Bretagna e Francia che fungevano da soci minoritari, e fu progettato soprattutto per consentire agli Stati Uniti di mantenere il ruolo di “potenza egemonica nell’ordine mondiale”. Nota: questa frase non viene da Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn o vari altri accademici di sinistra, ma da Samuel Huntington, partecipe attivo e sostenitore entusiasta di quel cosiddetto “ordine mondiale”.

La struttura messa su a Bretton Woods (banca mondiale e fondo monetario), assieme al consiglio di sicurezza dell’Onu e le forze armate americane che fungono da esecutori ultimi, fu concepita con l’obiettivo di far sì che i tentativi regionali di secessione economica, come la Fortezza Europa tedesca e la Sfera di Co-Prosperità della Grande Asia Orientale del Giappone, non minacciassero di strappare una grossa porzione delle risorse naturali o dei mercati dal controllo delle corporazioni globali. La funzione principale dell’attività strategica statunitense degli ultimi settanta anni è stata di fare in modo che il sud del mondo si sviluppasse entro i parametri di questo ordine mondiale; se necessario, arrivando a servirsi di colpi di stato militari e squadroni della morte come risposta alle minacce locali al sistema.

Noi non abbiamo preteso per noi, né abbiamo annesso, il territorio iracheno. Non abbiamo preso le sue risorse per il nostro uso.

Verissimo. Gli Stati Uniti non hanno annesso territorio iracheno né hanno preso le sue risorse direttamente. Semplicemente hanno aiutato un sacco di imprese a livello mondiale a saccheggiare l’economia di un Iraq in ginocchio sotto il controllo delle autorità militari americane. L’Autorità Provvisoria della Coalizione, sotto Paul Bremer, ha messo all’asta tutto il settore statale iracheno con l’aiuto degli stessi zelanti neoliberali, di Heritage e AEI, che hanno diretto l’attività di saccheggio del Cile e della Russia quando c’erano Pinochet e Yeltsin. Ha invaso con la forza, derubato e poi soppresso le sedi della federazione sindacale irachena. E ha approvato senza obiezioni l’adesione dell’Iraq ai trattati sulla “proprietà intellettuale” globale, dando alle industrie cinematografiche e discografiche, oltre che a Microsoft, Merck, Pfizer e Monsanto, il diritto di estrarre rendita dal sudore e dal sangue degli iracheni.

Invece, abbiamo messo fine alla guerra e abbiamo lasciato l’Iraq al suo popolo, con uno stato sovrano in grado di decidere sul futuro.

Indubbiamente. Gli Stati Uniti hanno lasciato l’Iraq con una costituzione scritta da Paul Bremer & Co. e approvata senza obiezioni, con il risultato che il precedente saccheggio da parte delle grandi imprese è diventato legge fondante permanente, che può essere emendata solo se si raggiunge la maggioranza in un numero così alto di province da rendere l’emendamento praticamente impossibile. Dunque è vero: il governo americano ha rinunciato all’annessione diretta di territori (Hawaii, Porto Rico e simili) tanto tempo fa. È stato abbastanza furbo da capire che costa meno esternalizzare il compito di far rispettare gli interessi corporativi a finte democrazie nominalmente indipendenti, riservando l’uso della forza a quei casi in cui le finte democrazie non stanno in riga.

La politica “idealistica” di sinistra alla Kennedy, come l’arte di fare le salsicce, non ha bisogno di analisi. In realtà, dietro alle discussioni riguardo gli “ideali dell’illuminismo”, la “comunità globale” e i “diritti umani”, lo stato non nasconde che un compito solo: Servire gli interessi della classe economica dominante da cui è controllato.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

C4SS Media presents Christiaan Elderhorst‘s “Bitcoin Must Self-Regulate — The State Can Only Destroy” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford.

“Currently there is no system by which Bitcoin marketplaces can be held accountable. Resorting to government legal systems might indeed be the only way by which Mt.Gox customers can receive the restitution they deserve. What does have to be kept in mind is that this option is far from optimal. Further talk of government regulation of crytocurrencies will not be a surprising result. In fact it seems inevitable. In the future the digital counter-economy will have to find ways to regulate itself. The ingenious online methods that are bound to come up might lead to insights by which we can regulate our own “analog” communities as well. One day government regulation of the marketplace will be a thing of the past as the self-regulating counter-economy replaces it entirely.”

I continue to be confused by “libertarian” support for the Keystone XL pipeline.

As I noted last month, my objection to Keystone is simple: It can’t be built without having the government steal land to build it on, from people who don’t care to sell.

For anyone operating under the label “libertarian,” that should be the end of the matter.

But I keep seeing “libertarian” calls for Keystone to be built.

Two things strike me as odd about these “libertarian” calls for Keystone:

1. They usually don’t address the libertarian objection — eminent domain — at all; and
2. The arguments they make are not only not libertarian arguments, but are in some cases just completely nonsensical.

The U. S. lacks pawns to be a leader in the foreign policy chess game — insufficient oil and natural gas production. Years of neglect in pushing fossil fuel production left the country unable to assist allies in times of emergency.

Russia provides substantial natural gas, oil, and coal to Europe that gives it leverage in the Ukraine Crises due to Europe’s fear of energy supply cutoff. The European Union has assisted in its servitude by resisting natural gas production by fracking and shutting down and curtailing future use of nuclear power plants.

The Ukraine Crises is an example of future events until the United States develops fossil fuel energy production superiority.

So the argument for Keystone is that it’s necessary to have it so the US government can dictate the affairs and relationships of other nations. That’s not a “libertarian” argument — libertarians are non-interventionists.

But even setting that aside, which we most manifestly should not, there are two major problems with the argument:

1. The US already has “fossil fuel energy production superiority.” In 2013, the US produced 12.5 million barrels of oil per day versus Russia’s 10.5 million barrels per day. In fact, the US is now the world’s leading energy producer and a net energy exporter (it achieved both those distinctions during the “anti-energy” Obama administration, by the way).
2. Keystone has nothing whatsoever to do with US energy production. It is a pipeline to trans-ship CANADIAN oil across the US to Gulf Coast refineries for CANADIAN export. It will increase neither US oil production nor US energy export by so much as a single calorie.

Over the years, I’ve been skeptical of lefty claims that prominent “libertarian” think tanks just shill for whatever corporations are willing to write checks for favorable “analysis.” But this kind of thing makes me wonder.

[cross-posted from KN@PPSTER — this piece is in the public domain]

The analogy in the headline “Thor 2 is a Cinematic McDonald’s Cheeseburger” (Eileen Jones, Jacobin) is apt. There is indeed a strong parallel between the predominance in comics-to-film adaptations and diner-food restaurants: A few homogenous, formulaic products aimed at broad mass-market appeal. But far from Jones’s “perfect example of how market competition does not actually provide us with the highest quality product,” both are textbook illustrations of Benjamin Tucker’s 1899 observation that “the trusts, instead of growing out of competition, as is so generally supposed, have been made possible only by the absence of competition, only by the difficulty of competition, only by the obstacles placed in the way of competition — only, in short, by those arbitrary limitations of competition which we find in those law created privileges and monopolies.”

When asked by Equal Time for Freethought if the fact that “we have McDonald’s, we have Burger King, we have Arby’s; we’ve got a number of entities out there competing with our business” means the current market economy is fundamentally different than the overt chartered monopolies of the mercantilist age, Douglas Rushkoff replied that “McDonald’s and Burger King are essentially the same thing; in the long run the same class of speculators, of shareholders, who are running these companies. The problem is that it’s impossible for smaller, local entities — for people who actually do things, who create value in sustainable ways — to compete against them. And the worse the policies of these companies get, the harder it is actually for us to compete against them, because they get regulations put in place by government that actually cements their place in.”

Intellectual property law is similarly written to benefit big established players, concentrating monopoly rights to the backlog of ideas. A sequel to an adaptation of a character based on mythology owned by a corporation whose bread-and-butter is drawing on folklore exemplifies the funnel effect. It’s even explicitly noted in Jacobin that Marvel is “focused to an alarming degree on denying ownership rights to its content creators.”

Rushkoff notes that contrary to the view that due to economies of scale, “mass production and industry is somehow more efficient than local commerce, local creation of goods and services” in fact “[i]t’s only more efficient when you write laws that make it more efficient. So while big industry is certainly more efficient for, maybe, making microchips, or making things that you need big companies and thousands of people to do, it’s not more efficient to make oats that way, or corn that way; or any of the things that we can make and store locally for one another.” One of which is engaging sequential-art stories on paper. The small teams of writers and illustrators that produce individual comics stories issue-by-issue resemble the independent mom-and-pop diners that predominated before the subsidized rise of fast food chains. Rather than taking centralized production as given and reining in its worst aspects, removing the chokehold of distribution gatekeepers would allow a multitude of small-scale producers to connect directly with their audience.

Only in an industry with grotesquely overextended operating costs could a film like Hulk take significant creative risks, gross a quarter-billion dollars, and still be regarded as box office poison. Even in an economy stacked against their audience awareness, comics properties like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Walking Dead have achieved multimedia success while remaining independently owned. Steadily decreasing capital costs for multimedia production could allow this to become the rule rather than the exception.

In the early twentieth century, competition between local newspapers for readership produced comics masterpieces like Little Nemo in Slumberland and Krazy Kat. A Tuckerite competitive market would unleash that ferment on — to borrow an idea invented in those funny pages — Popeye’s spinach.

Existem muitas ferramentas que permitem que você se comunique de forma privada com diferentes níveis de segurança. O PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), em específico o padrão OpenPGP, é um método testado e comprovado de criptografia de emails e mensagens antes da transmissão, garantindo que a única pessoa que possa lê-los seja o destinatário. Não é necessário reiterar a importância da privacidade, especialmente para indivíduos de diferentes regiões do mundo, inclusive dos EUA, onde a espionagem doméstica pode ser e já foi utilizada em diversas tentativas de repressão de grupos ativistas. PGP é um padrão confiável e foi utilizado por Edward Snowden em suas trocas de mensagens com Gleen Greenwald.

O PGP utiliza “criptografia de chave pública” para cifrar e decifrar mensagens. Anteriormente, para enviar mensagens criptografadas para um destinatário, era necessário combinar o uso de uma chave ou método compartilhado com antecedência. Isso requeria o encontro com o destinatário em pessoa para estipular qual seria a “chave” sem medo de interceptação. Afinal, a probabilidade de uma carta ser interceptada é a mesma de seu algoritmo de decifragem ser interceptado. Essa situação era pouco prática, dado o estado das comunicações de massa atuais no mundo.

A criptografia de chave pública, também chamada de criptografia de chave assimétrica, é uma das soluções para esse problema. Primeiro, ambas as partes que desejem ter uma conversa criptografada precisam gerar pares de chaves. Cada participante gerará uma chave pública e uma privada utilizando seu software de PGP (algo que só precisa ser feito uma vez por cada pessoa). A chave pública é a cifra. É a chave usada para criptografar uma mensagem. A chave, que é matematicamente ligada à chave pública, é usada para decifrar a mensagem. Na realidade, uma chave de sessão simétrica é gerada para criptografar cada mensagem. A própria chave é, então, criptografada com a chave pública e enviada dentro da mensagem.

O funcionamento prático se dá da seguinte maneira:

• A pessoa A compartilha sua chave pública com a pessoa B;
• A pessoa B usa essa chave para criptografar uma mensagem e enviá-la de volta para a pessoa A;
• A pessoa A então usa sua própria chave privada para decodificar a mensagem;
• A chave pública da pessoa B pode ser incluída na mensagem de retorno ou publicada.

A eficácia da criptografia moderna se baseia no fato de que alguns problemas matemáticos são extremamente difíceis de se resolver. Problemas usados envolvem a decomposição em fatores primos e a relação entre curvas elípticas. Saber disso não é necessário para utilizar a criptografia, mas vale a pena mencionar para aqueles que se interessam.

Uma boa analogia seria a pessoa A enviar à pessoa B uma caixa com um cadeado, mas sem chave física. A pessoa B então coloca a mensagem dentro da caixa e a tranca. A partir desse ponto, a pessoa A é a única capaz de destrancar a caixa com a chave que ela possui. Usando esse método, não faz diferença se qualquer tiver acesso a sua chave pública, porque ela só permite a criptografia de mensagens para aquela pessoa. Apenas pela violação da chave privada de alguém ou da não-autenticação da pessoa com quem se está comunicando, a privacidade e segurança da troca de mensagens pode ser quebrada.

Agora que já apresentamos o funcionamento básico do PGP, nós utilizaremos um método simples para implementá-lo em comunicações por email. Lembre-se de que o PGP protegerá a privacidade da comunicação, mas não a anonimidade. Um interceptador ainda será capaz de saber que você, pessoa A, se comunicou com a pessoa B. Ele apenas não saberá do conteúdo da conversa.

Um dos métodos mais fáceis de usar o PGP é com um plugin para o navegador chamado Mailvelope, que eu cobrirei no resto deste artigo. Faço essa sugestão porque ele não requer a instalação de qualquer programa no computador, já que ele funciona no próprio navegador. O fato de que o uso dos clientes de email para PC está em declínio também é um dos motivos pelos quais eu considero o Mailvelope uma opção interessante. Também colocarei um link para minha chave pública e email no final do artigo, para aqueles que desejarem praticar o envio e o recebimento de mensagens criptografadas.

O Mailvelope está disponível atualmente só para o Google Chrome. Pode ser baixado como extensão aqui.

Quando você adicionar o Mailvelope a seu navegador, um ícone de um cadeado aparecerá no topo da tela, próximo ao botão de configurações do Chrome.

Clique com o botão esquerdo e escolha “Options”. A partir daí, você precisará gerar duas chaves, uma pública e uma privada. Esta opção estará no menu da esquerda.

Coloque seus dados nos campos (nome e email). Certifique-se de que a senha (“Passphrase”) que você utilizar seja longa e que você seja capaz de lembrar. Se você esquecer essa senha, você não poderá mais codificar e decodificar mensagens usando esse par de chaves em particular. Na seção “Advanced >>”, escolha um tamanho de chave maior que 1024 bit, para que ela seja utilizável por muito tempo. Quando tiver preenchido os formulários, clique em “Submit”.

Quando tiver completado esses passos, clique na opção “Display Keys” no menu. A partir daí, você pode “exportar” (Export) sua chave pública. Você pode escolher enviá-la a outro usuário de PGP por email ou pode exportá-la como bloco de texto e compartilhá-la por outros meios. Não compartilhe jamais sua chave privada. Sua chave pública é totalmente pública e pode ser compartilhada com quaisquer outras pessoas ou publicada em qualquer lugar sem problemas. Tudo o que a chave pública permite é que alguém envie uma mensagem para você.

Para enviar uma mensagem criptografada para os outros, você deve importar sua chave pública. Você pode fazer isso com a importação de um arquivo “.asc” ou com a cópia de seu bloco de chave pública. Quando for obter uma chave pública, certifique-se, da melhor forma possível, de que a pessoa com quem você pensa estar falando seja realmente aquela pessoa.

Agora que você já gerou suas chaves e importou a chave pública de outra pessoa, você precisa saber como enviar um email.

Abra seu cliente de email. O Mailvelope tem suporte já configurado para o Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo Mail e GMX. Nesta demonstração, usarei o Gmail:

Clique no botão para escrever um email. Você perceberá imediatamente um botão “lápis e papel” dentro da caixa. Primeiro entre com o destinatário e o assunto e, assim que chegar ao corpo do email, clique naquele botão.

Escreva o email na caixa que acabou de abrir – isso evita que o texto salvo na caixa normal do cliente seja salvo como rascunho pelo provedor e potencialmente comprometa a privacidade de sua mensagem.

Assim que a tiver escrito, clique no botão do cadeado, escolha a chave do destinatário do menu que abrir, clique em “Add” e “Ok”. Você então deverá pressionar o botão “Transfer” para mover o texto criptografado de volta para a caixa do Gmail. Perceba que, dado que o PGP criptografa sua mensagem com uma chave gerada para a sessão e criptografa a chave da sessão com a chave pública do destinatário, é possível criptografar uma mensagem para múltiplos destinatários.

Um bloco de texto criptografado parecerá com o seguinte:

—–BEGIN PGP MESSAGE—–
Version: OpenPGP.js v.1.20130820
Comment: http://openpgpjs.org
wcBMAxLijeXaycuCAQgAl8n4g5ilhHXKoAqawIxn/bT3i8cZ4HP6JxtCZWWM
rzjX75QFffr3U6OSByqpU+DRBmhd2zG0akzkImUqrkVmQbbZv4vqEpQMMwzh
heX+MuZeUCXKAWTCGfcIMbeXKjpuqbuL0F8NkHeAkqFJ8hcMY8aYX3VtaRbQ
oVdL5aPzMbS5kPxjtr1OY93dwy1jV7JvrYgpyuk4wpynfS1AfKpn2lDyCQGH
sTxu6yqrJUDnnYrs0TkgLvkPXueggA8+yw7zDd3iQ5P2VeMWHH7EAUa+gFj7
x/M3DtHsGvfdssiPP35PZrglHCsJGCTZScO+Re1M2IxZtnZNHfDU0V9lhX4i
Q9JQAQlHtm8etEXlyvovsXDfIE2SdKgcj1bgx359V+zZsvPNyOtqfYEuyszM
7i65cEqz9GdLGFusSYSFpespUCHC71zFmaHEGcmUpglLIvvX2W4=
=g9Kk
—–END PGP MESSAGE—–

Você agora pode enviar sua mensagem sabendo que, se interceptada, estará ilegível.

Quando você recebe um email criptografado, o Mailvelope o detecta e coloca um símbolo com cadeado e envelope sobre ele. Ao clicar nele, você terá que entrar com sua senha. Ao inseri-la, você poderá ler a mensagem normalmente em texto convencional.

Agora você deve ser totalmente capaz de usar o PGP para codificar e decodificar seus emails enviados e recebidos.

Se desejar testar o Mailvelope e não conhece ninguém que já utilize PGP, eu mesmo fiz uma conta de email para receber mensagens criptografadas. O email é williamsheppard101@gmail.com.

Minha chave pública pode ser encontrada neste servidor do MIT.

Eu responderei a todos os emails criptografados que eu receber. Certifique-se de incluir sua chave pública no email.

Abaixo há outras ferramentas que podem ser interessantes se o Mailvelope não servir para você.

EnigMail para o cliente de emails Thunderbird
Uma extensão bem leve e versátil para quem ainda utiliza clientes de email locais. Após instalado, é ainda mais fácil de usar que o Mailvelope.

GPG4win
Vem com vários recursos, incluindo o gerenciador de certificados Kleopatra, que permite que você importe e exporte mensagens criptografadas para enviar cópias por outras plataformas.

GNU Privacy Guard
Para usuários do Linux, o GPG pode ser baixado do repositório da sua distro ou um pacote pode ser pego no site.

GPG Tools
Uma ferramenta GPG para usuários de Mac.

Traduzido do inglês para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

“Are you interested in individualist anarchism, or at least so frightened by it that you want to keep an eye on its progress? Are you frustrated by capitalism’s love for central planning and communism’s conservative view of human potential? Do you suspect that abolishing the institution responsible for war, police brutality, and mass incarceration might not be so dangerous after all?

Then The New Leveller is for you!”

The first issue of the Students for a Stateless Society‘s brand-new newsletter, The New Leveller is now online.

For a link to a PDF of the entire issue (recommended!), click here.
For links to an HTML version of each individual article, along with the official announcement on the S4SS page, click here.

In this issue:
“For a New Levelling” explains the mission of The New Leveller, connecting the mission of the original levellers to that of contemporary individualist anarchism.
“The Cult of the Constitution” by Cory Massimino laments the love many libertarians have for the document that holds them in bondage.
“Markets in Law” by Jeff Ricketson reminds us that anarchy is order, and argues that our rights would be better protected in a world without police.
“No Dialogue with War Criminals” by Grayson English discusses our recent protest at the University of Oklahoma (with various other student groups) against international murderer John Brennan.
“Toward an Anarchy of Production, Pt. I” by Jason Lee Byas (hey, that’s me!) is the first part in a series of arguments for why anti-capitalists, leftists, and anarchists ought to support markets. This installment explores the ways in which markets can create institutional arrangements that work against various kinds of social oppression.
“Consumer Protection in a Free Society” by Gregory Boyle examines what black market sites like Silk Road can tell us about how consumer protection might be achieved in a free society.

I continue to have trouble believing that the libertarian philosophy is concerned only with the proper and improper uses of force. According to this view, the philosophy sets out a prohibition on the initiation of force and otherwise has nothing to say about anything else. (Fraud is conceived as an indirect form of force because, say, a deceptive seller obtains money from a buyer on terms other than those to which the buyer agreed.)

How can libertarianism be concerned with nothing but force? This view has been dubbed “thin libertarianism” by Charles W. Johnson, and it strikes me as very thin indeed. (Jeffrey Tucker calls it “libertarian brutalism”; his article explains this perhaps startling term.)

As I see it, the libertarian view is necessarily associated with certain underlying values, and this association seems entirely natural. I can kick a rock, but not a person. What is it about persons that makes it improper for me to kick them (unless it’s in self-defense)? Frankly, I don’t see how to answer that question without reference to some fundamental ideas. Different libertarians will have different answers, but each will appeal to some underlying value.

Let’s get specific. Are there distinctly libertarian grounds for disapproving of racist conduct that does not involve the use of force? Some libertarians say no. They might hasten to add that while libertarians, as human beings, ought to disapprove of racism, they cannot do so as libertarians, because their political philosophy only speaks to the proper and improper uses of force.

On the other hand, libertarians often quote Ayn Rand on the issue, even if they wouldn’t quote her on much else:

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage — the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

The freedom philosophy is intimately related to ethical, political, and methodological individualism. Therefore, the philosophy should be expected to detest any kind of collectivism — and particularly its “lowest, most crudely primitive form” — even in its nonviolent manifestations.

To put it more concretely, if a libertarian observed a growing propensity to embrace (nonviolent) racism, that person, qua libertarian, ought to be concerned. Why? Because that attitude and resulting conduct can be expected to eat away at the values conducive to libertarianism. It’s the same sort of reason that a libertarian would be concerned by, say, a growing acceptance of Keynesian ideas, even though merely holding and advocating those ideas does not require the use of force.

It is true that carrying out Keynesian ideas requires the use of force (taxation, monopoly central banking, and state “socialization of investment”), while one can imagine a racist society in which no force is used. But although a society of racist pacifists is not a logical impossibility, it strikes me as highly unlikely. In its denial of dignity to individuals merely by virtue of their membership in a racial group, there is a potential for violence implicit in racism that is too strong for libertarians to ignore. As I’ve written elsewhere,

A libertarian who holds his or her philosophy out of a conviction that all men and women are (or should be) equal in authority and thus none may subordinate another against his or her will (the most common justification) — that libertarian would naturally object to even nonviolent forms of subordination. Racism is just such a form (though not the only one), since existentially it entails at least an obligatory humiliating deference by members of one racial group to members of the dominant racial group. (The obligatory deference need not always be enforced by physical coercion.)

Seeing fellow human beings locked into a servile role — even if that role is not explicitly maintained by force — properly, reflexively summons in libertarians an urge to object. (I’m reminded of what H. L. Mencken said when asked what he thought of slavery: “I don’t like slavery because I don’t like slaves.”)

But it doesn’t end there. I can think of another reason for libertarians to be concerned about racism, namely,

it all too easily metamorphoses from subtle intimidation into outright violence. Even in a culture where racial “places” have long been established by custom and require no coercive enforcement, members of a rising generation will sooner or later defiantly reject their assigned place and demand equality of authority. What happens then? It takes little imagination to envision members of the dominant race — even if they have professed a “thin” libertarianism to that point — turning to physical force to protect their “way of life.”

So I’m puzzled by the pushback whenever someone explicitly associates the libertarian philosophy with values like tolerance and inclusion. We don’t care only about force and its improper uses. We care about individual persons. So we properly have concerns about any preferences that tend to erode the principle that initiating force is wrong.

As one who embraces the principle of charity, I believe the pushback is motivated by an understandable fear that “thick,” or “humanitarian,” libertarianism might have the effect of watering down libertarian ideas about individual rights and property. To be sure, progressives mistakenly believe that the wrongness of racism in itself justifies government edicts against nonviolent forms of racism, such as invidious discrimination in hiring and accommodations. But we should be wary of the principle “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Libertarians should have no trouble condemning racism in terms of their political philosophy while emphasizing that nonviolent racism can and, under appropriate circumstances, should be met only by nonviolent — and specifically, nonstate — countermeasures.

En marzo logramos un gran total de cuatro reproducciones de nuestros artículos de opinión, lo cual no es nada como para tirar la casa por la ventana, pero hay que tener en cuenta que mi lista de contactos mediáticos todavía es muy corta–72 direcciones de correo electrónico en total.

Esto se debe a que estoy siguiendo una estrategia de priorizar la calidad sobre la cantidad para construir la lista. Así que a pesar de que no obtuvimos muchas reproducciones, este mes recibí respuestas entusiastas de varios medios prominentes que expresaron su interés en publicar varios de nuestros artículos durante las próximas semanas:

• El editor ejecutivo de la edición colombiana de la revista Vice me dijo que iban a reproducir “Bitcoin Debe Autorregularse, el Estado Solo Puede Destruirlo”, de Christiaan Elderhorst.
• El editor de Pijama Surf, un blog mexicano de noticias alternativas sumamente popular, dijo que iba a reproducir “Brasil Arderá de Nuevo” de Erick Vasconcelos.
• El subdirector de medios digitales de América Economía, una revista argentina de negocios muy establecida que es leída a lo largo y ancho de América Latina, me escribió diciendo que le gustaba nuestro material y que quiere publicar nuestros artículos de opinión regularmente.

En marzo también empecé por fin a trabajar en la traducción de The Iron Fist Behnid the Invisible Hand de Kevin Carson, por lo que espero poder terminarla durante las próximas dos semanas.

Así que se seguimos bajando duro para dar a conocer al centro en el mundo de habla hispana. Aunque España y México se encuentran entre los veinte países que más tráfico generan a nuestro sitio web, el potencial de crecimiento es enorme.

Por último, aunque no menos importante, por favor considera hacer una donación dentro de tus posibilidades. Hay millones de hispanohablantes en el mundo que están hambrientos de contenido como el nuestro, y dándonos una propina todos los meses puedes contribuir enormemente a nuestra capacidad de llegar a ellos.

¡Salud y libertad!

Spanish Media Coordinator Update, March 2014

In March we achieved a grand total of four Spanish-lang pickups, which is nothing to go crazy about, but bear in mind my media contacts list is still very short–72 email addresses only.

I am following a strategy of quality over quantity to build the list, so despite the few pickups, this month I received enthusiastic responses of several prominent media expressing their interest in publishing several of our articles within the next couple of weeks:

• The Managing Editor of the Colombian edition of Vice magazine, told me they were going to publish the translation of Christiaan Elderhorst’s “Bitcoin Must Self-Regulate — The State Can Only Destroy“.
• The publisher of Pijama Surf, a quite big alternative news Mexican blog, said he was going to run the translation of Erick Vasconcelos’ “Brasil is Going to Burn, Again.”
• The Sub-Director for Digital Media of América Economía, a very well established Argentinean business magazine that is read across Latin America, wrote me an email saying he liked our material and would like to publish our op-eds regularly.

In March I also started working on the translation of Kevin Carson’s “The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand,” so hopefully I’ll have it ready within the next two weeks.

So we are working hard to make C4SS well known in the Spanish speaking world. Although Spain and Mexico are among the top 20 traffic-generating countries for our site, the potential for growth is still enormous.

Last but not least, please consider making a donation within your posibilities. There are millions of Spanish speakers out there in the world hungry for our content, and throwing a few bucks at us every month makes a huge difference in terms of boosting our capacity to reach them!.

¡Salud y libertad!

Back in 2010 Newt Gingrich explained that US president Barack Obama lies “outside our comprehension” unless we use his “Kenyan, anti-colonial” ideological orientation as a reference point for understanding his bizarre actions. Obama has been amazingly successful at concealing his deep-seated hatred of colonialism — to the point of praising Europe, in a speech last week, for giving the world human rights and democracy:

… it was here in Europe, through centuries of struggle … that a particular set of ideals began to emerge: The belief that through conscience and free will, each of us has the right to live as we choose. The belief that power is derived from the consent of the governed …

David Graeber, an anthropologist and anarchist thinker closely associated with Occupy Wall Street since its earliest days, has a lot to say about the idea that self-governance is such an advanced abstraction that the human race suffered in ignorance waiting for some smart guys in Athens, Paris or Philadelphia to think it up for them.

Self-governance, Graeber argues in “Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology,” is something practised virtually everywhere by face-to-face groups of ordinary people because, when nobody has cops or an army to beat everyone else into submission, listening to what other people have to say and establishing a consensus on the best way of going about things is just the common sense thing to do. That kind of consensus decision-making has been practiced by village councils throughout the world and throughout history, as well as by the popular institutions for governing common pool resources that Elinor Ostrom has studied. And such popular institutions for local self-governance persisted long after the state was superimposed on society — in village institutions like the Russian Mir, and working class friendly societies and mutuals, for example. As for the idea that people should have an equal say in things that affect them, that’s pretty much intuitive to everyone.

But Western scholars of the history of political thought don’t normally view things like “a Sulawezi or Tallensi village council” as “quite on the same level as Pericles.” Maybe, Graeber says, majority decisions and voting “are not really such incredibly sophisticated ideas that they never would have occurred to anyone until some ancient genius ‘invented’ them …” Maybe the Western model of majoritarian democracy wasn’t widely used in egalitarian societies because, without concentrated coercive machinery to force majority decisions on an unwilling minority, it was more sensible to make decisions by consensus and avoid polarizing the community into factions.

Majoritarian democracy has emerged only when two conditions were present: 1) Most people feel it’s right that they have a say in decisions that affect them, and 2) there is “a coercive apparatus capable of enforcing those decisions.” It’s actually unusual to have both at the same time, because in societies with widespread egalitarian values the existence of systematic coercion itself is also considered wrong. And wherever it has existed, systematic coercion had its origins with people who were deliberately using force to pursue their own interests at the expense of those affected by their decisions. The state originally came about as a means for enforcing privilege on behalf of the classes that controlled it, and extracting rents from the majority of people ruled by it.

Democracy, as a modern ideology, arose in societies already ruled by coercive states enforcing the interests of a ruling class. And democratic, egalitarian sentiments have generally been coopted by dissident factions within ruling classes, or by would-be ruling classes, to enlist the help of the lower classes in displacing the existing regime — after which the new ruling class proclaims a sham “democracy” with itself as guardian and begins ruling the majority in its own interests.

It’s just this kind of “democracy” that Obama lionizes. Noam Chomsky calls it “spectator democracy”: Choosing between candidates representing contending wings of the same ruling class, chosen by that class from among its own numbers, and sitting down and shutting up after the election is over and the newly elected leadership proceeds to take orders from the World Bank and IMF and sign the latest “Free Trade” treaty drafted by transnational corporations (just like the previous elected leadership did). If by some disaster a country’s government does reflect some degree of genuine democracy, threatening the economic interests of transnational capital, Washington declares it a “terror state” or “failed state” and sends in functionaries from the CIA, National Endowment for Democracy and Soros Foundation to undermine it, or encourages military officers with American ties to overthrow it.

Real democracy existed long before states ever arose, since human beings first existed in communities. And it will exist long after government is gone.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Com “quenianos anti-colonialistas” assim, quem precisa de imperialistas?
• Italian, Con “Anti-Colonialisti Keniani” Come Lui, Chi Ha Bisogno di Imperialisti?
• Spanish, Con “kenianos anti-colonialistas” como estos, ¿quién necesita a los imperialistas?

Na última sexta (28/03), Rodrigo Constantino, em seu blog no site da revista Veja, teceu um estranho comentário: “Não tenho dúvidas de que ‘garotas direitas’ correm menos risco de abuso sexual.”

A frase repercutiu e indignou muitos nas redes sociais, especialmente por ter se seguido à pesquisa do IPEA, em que 58,5% dos entrevistados concordaram com a frase “Se as mulheres soubessem se comportar haveria menos estupros”.

É verdade que Constantino considerou que o resultado da entrevista era um atraso civilizatório e que a cultura machista ainda é forte no Brasil. Contudo, não percebe que sua mensagem acabou por ser cúmplice dessa cultura nociva. A citação, em contexto, é a seguinte:

Enquanto a cultura do machismo não desaparece, e a punição exemplar não vem, seria recomendável, sim, que as moças apresentassem um pouco mais de cautela, mostrassem-se um tiquinho só mais recatadas, e preservassem ligeiramente mais as partes íntimas de seus corpos siliconados. Não tenho dúvidas de que “garotas direitas” correm menos risco de abuso sexual.

Constantino comete a falácia de moralizar a explicação para o estupro. Façamos uma comparação: digamos que trabalhadoras do sexo têm maior chance de serem estupradas do que a média das mulheres. Essa é apenas uma questão empírica, de apontar se a prestação de serviços sexuais pode ser um fator de risco, tendo em vista as circunstâncias em que o serviço é prestado.

Agora imagine que falemos o seguinte: “As trabalhadoras do sexo, por estarem agindo imoralmente, têm maior chance de serem estupradas, enquanto as ‘mulheres direitas’, por estarem agindo moralmente, tem menor chance de serem estupradas”. Acrescentar que seja imoral o comportamento da mulher não agrega nada à explicação e, pior, parece tornar o “ter menos chances de ser estuprada” algo meritório, moralizado. Trata-se de uma instância sutil de slut-shaming.

Sarah Skwire observa corretamente que um dos elementos da “cultura do estupro” são argumentos como “a vítima não deveria estar naquele lugar/beber/usar essa roupa/ir a essa festa”.

Como Charles Johnson destaca, nisso se vê a “lei não escrita do patriarcado”: a cultura coloca a mulher em posição de dependência pela interação entre a violência perpetrada por alguns homens e a tentativa de proteção e controle por outros. Os dois comportamentos se combinam para impor regras sobre a vida pessoal das mulheres, limitando sua liberdade. Moralizar a explicação do estupro faz parte desse círculo vicioso.

Constantino poderia dizer: “Mulheres que não saem de casa têm menos chance de serem estupradas”. Depende. Se for estupro por familiares ou conhecidos, essa frase se torna falsa. Ele poderia dizer: “Mulheres que não bebem têm menos chances de serem estupradas”. Ok, mas só se ele estiver falando do estupro cometido contra uma mulher embriagada. Não há como generalizar.

Estamos num mundo onde mulheres são enganadas com propostas falsas de emprego em outro país e forçadas à prostituição; onde uma mulher pode ser estuprada, apenas porque estava voltando do trabalho tarde da noite; onde uma mulher pode ser estuprada porque sua casa foi assaltada; onde há prostituição infantil e assédio sexual; onde uma menina pode ser colocada em uma cadeia com vários homens pelos agentes do estado; onde um conselho comunitário pode condenar uma menina a um estupro coletivo corretivo; onde uma mulher pode estar no meio da guerra e não ter para onde fugir; onde uma mulher pega uma van com o namorado para se deslocar sem saber quem está dentro dela; onde há familiares, conhecidos e parceiros sexuais mal intencionados.

Em um mundo onde mulheres podem ser estupradas apenas por serem mulheres, Constantino deveria, pelo menos, se retratar de sua moralização inócua.

Last week’s blog excerpted a piece from Ann Friedman over at the Columbia Journalism Review that mentioned the term, “horizontal loyalty.” Coined by Radiolab host and longtime public radio producer Robert Krulwich during a commencement speech he gave to UC Berkeley grads in 2011, Friedman used the term as a way to challenge perceptions on networking:

Think of your network as a community—a group of professional collaborators with whom you share skills and ideas, contacts and advice—that you invest in whether or not you’re looking for a new job.

I mentioned that I thought this concept seemed almost stigmergic in nature, and it turned out that I wasn’t too far off.

From Krulwich’s speech:

So for this age, for your time, I want you to just think about this: Think about NOT waiting your turn.

Instead, think about getting together with friends that you admire, or envy.  Think about entrepeneuring. Think about NOT waiting for a company to call you up. Think about not giving your heart to a bunch of adults you don’t know. Think about horizontal loyalty. Think about turning to people you already know, who are your friends, or friends of their friends and making something that makes sense to you together, that is as beautiful or as true as you can make it.

And when it comes to security, to protection, your friends may take better care of you than CBS took care of Charles Kuralt in the end. In every career, your job is to make and tell stories, of course. You will build a body of work, but you will also build a body of affection, with the people you’ve helped who’ve helped you back.

And maybe that’s your way into Troy.

I think, for a long time, we’ve been trying to look for new ways to talk about concepts like mutual aid and solidarity; horizontal loyalty, at least as Krulwich describes it (and as Friedman uses it), serves exactly this kind of function. Instead of waiting for power to grant us seats at the table, we create our own tables and work to help each other out. Insofar as journalism is concerned, this is especially crucial – as my latest op-ed shows, the journalism cartel has no intention or desire to embrace independent media. They are offering us no quarter, so we should take the point and set up lodgings elsewhere. Or better, build those lodgings ourselves.

Consumerism is often derided by leftists. It’s viewed as an outgrowth of capitalism and markets more generally. There is truth in the notion that commercialism is a product of markets, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. As Ellen Willis stated:

First of all, there is nothing inherently wrong with consumption. Shopping and consuming are enjoyable human activities and the marketplace has been a center of social life for thousands of years.

There is much enjoyment to be found in consuming the products of human beings and nature. My personal favorites include books, food, and computer games.

The alternative to consumerism is often considered to be a gift economy. What difference does it make whether you consume what you receive as a gift or what you purchase with money? No discernible one. What is really at work in opposition to consumerism is objection to commerce per se. People who can’t stand markets tend not to be able to handle commerce at all.

We have to consume to survive in this world. A human being who never ate or drank would quickly die off. Life would also be exceedingly boring without the products of human productivity to consume and otherwise make use of. Where would we be without the consumption of entertaining television programs, movies, and books? Not in a very happy place.

One has to consume pretty continuously to remain functional. There is a constant need for food and water. Not to mention the nourishment of the mind through intellectual activities. There can be no happy human existence without the above. Those who denigrate consumption are essentially attacking human life. The veneration of human life requires respect for what it requires to last.

In the final analysis; consumption is an essential part of markets. Market freedom includes both the liberty to produce as one pleases and freedom to consume as one wishes. There can be no justifiable constraints coercively imposed upon this. Both are important for the liberty of individuals. Economic freedom is an important part of the larger conception of liberty to which we left-libertarians subscribe.

Let us work towards a world of economic abundance where unabashed materialism can exist alongside mutual aid or social support. It would be the best of both worlds. The untrammeled pursuit of material welfare coupled with the empathy of social support. A humane and rational alternative to egotism or self-abnegation. Liberty requires we realize this vision.

Editor’s Note: Individualist anarchism has often been described as a kind of “free market anti-capitalism.” Individualist anarchism supports a “free market” in the sense that it supports private property, money, commerce, contracts, entrepreneurship, and the profit motive. Not only do we oppose any violent repression of those things, but we welcome their presence as crucial to a free society. Individualist anarchism is “anti-capitalist” in the sense that it supports mutual aid, worker autonomy, and wildcat unionism. Any society marked by the domination of labor by capital is one that we oppose. Therefore, it’s important for individualists to show why libertarians and free marketers should oppose capitalism, and why leftists, anarchists, and anti-capitalists should support freed markets. This piece is the first in a series on specific arguments for the latter. This installment focuses on the cultural importance of the market process.

Any society worth calling “anarchist” is going to be one that can continually adapt to the needs and desires of the individuals within that society. This adaptation must also be to the interests of the entire community, not toward the limited aims of a specific class of people. There must be ceaseless social experimentation, and there must be incentives toward developing institutions that benefit everyone and weeding out those that don’t.

This requires markets, which are uniquely able to account for variation in ways that other, more deliberately constructed social arrangements cannot. That information-gathering function of the market process is typically just praised for its efficiency, but this overlooks its potential as an engine of social change.

To better understand this point, we can consider what an attempt at anarchist society without markets would look like. In such a community, all important resources[1] are either seen as being owned by the community at large, or not really “owned” by any one person in particular. Decisions about resource allocation are made through gift or democratic planning. Explicit trades, especially when mediated by some other good functioning as money, are either absent or extremely rare. (The world I’m considering is one that we might describe as anarcho-communist.)

Even assuming away efficiency issues, how can we expect this society to adapt to changing social conditions? Not well. When your source of food is either owned jointly by everyone or by no one in particular, difficult decisions must be made on its use. To prevent shortages, not everyone can always have as much as they want, and there must be a mechanism in place to keep enough for everyone. Given that social problems and oppressions can’t just be reduced to either the state or capitalism, such an arrangement is problematic.

In no small way, a communist society ties one’s ability to live – and one’s ability to live the kind of life they want – to their ability to maintain good social standing.

This might not seem too awful when we’re talking about restricting away from some activity that we ourselves find repugnant. For example, refusing to allow a white supremacist to use the community-owned printing press in order to distribute his newsletter. Unfortunately, though, a society without the state and capitalism is not necessarily one of perfect people who understand and actively reject all kinds of oppression.[2] For instance, it seems likely that many communities will refuse to distribute medical resources toward providing sex reassignment surgery. Similarly, on a smaller-scale, one’s readiness or hesitancy to provide for another purely by gift is subject to those same forces.

An anarcho-communist might respond by emphasizing the “democratic” nature of the planning they favor, but this mistakes the nature of the problem. While face-to-face deliberation is likely to render more equitable arrangements than some Leninist model of overt command and control, it is also exactly the situation in which the more subtle aspects of privilege and oppression are most at play. Whatever more limited social evolution occurs will be tampered by the implicit biases that influence us in more direct forms of communication.

Those who are skeptical of this claim should think back on all the meetings and face-to-face deliberations of which they’ve ever been a part. At an individual level, people with more charismatic personalities are likely to have their views taken much more seriously. This is especially true when the person in question is white, male, cis-gender, heterosexual, able-bodied, and has received more formal schooling than others in the group. That these deliberations might have the official designation of “consensus” does not mean they were not subject to domination.

By contrast, two of the most important features of markets are radically decentralized decision-making based on distributed knowledge, and the availability of alternatives. In market transactions, one does not have to convince the community at large of the goodness behind one’s use of a given resource in order to use it, they just have to provide value for value.

Sometimes socially conservative circles will attack the depravity of “crass commercialism,” frightened by the way markets threaten the existing order’s values. There’s a good reason for that. When your acquisition, use, and trade of resources cannot be regulated, the effects of one’s less-favored social status are likely to not be nearly as awful. Within a market, people can act more directly on what they believe is genuinely best for them, even when the reasons for that are difficult to communicate to those in more privileged positions.

By creating new profit opportunities geared toward those preferences of the oppressed, the seemingly impersonal market process becomes a never-ending social critique, always backed up by immediate direct action. Adverse social pressures like bare intimidation are not absent in markets, to be sure, but they are much less powerful. While this is obviously an empirical claim beyond the scope of the present article, it seems plausible that much more progress has been made by defending the property rights of queer establishments and providing that space for autonomy than any explicit campaign against homophobia.

None of this is to say that mutual aid, joint-property, gift-economic activity, or social persuasion are bad things, nor that everything should be reduced to explicit contractual exchanges based in money prices. Any society worth living in will foster healthy networks of mutual aid that interact with one another through commerce, and often collective action is necessary for the most efficient kinds of market activity.[3] In a free society, I expect the lines between “market” and “gift-economic” arrangements to get blurrier and blurrier. The point here is just that that blurring can’t be a reduction to one or the other. Profit-seeking and solidarity both have to survive.

Communism has been called “the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.” Yet that description is better reserved for the market process. By constantly approaching equilibrium yet never reaching it, unchained economic activity is exactly the kind of social dynamic that radicals desire: permanent revolution. A market society is a society built on continuous self-creation, whose institutions are always kept in check by the looming threat of creative destruction. In so far as anarchism is the abolition of hierarchy, the production of anarchy requires the anarchy of production.

FOOTNOTES
[1.] By “important resources,” I mean the sorts of things that non-market anarchists would consider “private property” rather than “personal property.”
[2.] The problem is even worse when we remember that people who consciously reject systems of domination are also not perfect people, and are just as subject to having their own behavior infected by those same systems of domination that they reject.
[3.] I have in mind here something like radical labor struggle.

Now is very different from then. Over the last two hundred or so years, the most dramatic shift in human history since the adoption of agriculture has swept the world, as chemical energy released from coal and oil supplanted human and animal muscle as the primary source of productive power. For the first time since the onset of farming, large numbers of human beings- the vast majority in many countries- have never worked on a farm and never will. In these same countries, most babies born will live to old age and the common scourges of childhood- measles, mumps, typhoid, pox, polio- have been banished.

The causes of this revolution have been endlessly analyzed, and in the process an orthodoxy has been established- whatever advances the Industrial Revolution brought, the price paid was terrible. The process of transforming peasants into proletarians was brutal and dehumanizing and all too often fatal. Children were robbed of their parents, who left to work long hours in the factories, and were often robbed of even their childhoods when they went to join Mom and Dad at work.

But what did the workers themselves think? And how did they feel about the changes sweeping their world? In an attempt to answer these questions and to better understand the nature of the Industrial Revolution, Emma Griffin, a senior lecturer in history at the University of East Anglia, has written Liberty’s Dawn: A People’s History of the Industrial Revolution, in which she musters some compelling evidence- the personal narratives of workers who themselves lived through the Industrial Revolution, including many who were born into the traditional, agrarian peasantry and then joined the urban proletariat.

As the title indicates, Dr. Griffin does not find the orthodox interpretation of the Industrial Revolution supported by the evidence she examines. The workers who wrote the autobiographical narratives Dr. Griffin examines are broadly satisfied with the changes the Industrial Revolution wrought. These men and women found that the Industrial Revolution offered an enormous array of opportunities, so broad that one of Dr. Griffin’s informants, Edward Barlow, actually dares to leave an apprenticeship to a “whitester,” a bleacher of yarn, simply because he did not like it. His family and his neighbors were displeased with his choice, “asking why I could not stay in my place… [and] hitting me in the teeth.” Mr. Barlow’s choice to leave his place with the whitester may have been an augury of a new age, but his neighbors’ decision to smack him in the mouth shows that the old world of the rural village was still very much alive.

As much skillful yeoman’s work Dr. Griffin has done in gathering and analyzing these worker’s narratives, it is her analysis of that old world and how it impacted the new that falls short. Her work argues persuasively that the Industrial Revolution did work a net improvement in the lives of the ordinary folk of England, loosening restrictive sexual mores, opening more opportunities for cultural and political expression, and significantly improved the material prospects of life, but she does not analyze except most superficially why these were in such a dire state to begin with, nor does she ask if things could perhaps have improved more than they did without the strife and suffering of the early Industrial Revolution.

Dr. Griffin states that the fundamental problem in the feudal economic was not the existence of an entirely parasitic class of nobles and priests subsisting entirely on the labor of the peasantry, but rather that “there simply was not enough work to go around.” The produce of feudal England was enough to support the king, the nobility, the gentry, the Church, the servants of the nobles, and all the various craftsmen- tanners, smiths, weavers and so forth- as well as the peasantry. The reason the peasants lived in such misery wasn’t an insufficiency of work, it was a superfluity of useless eaters- ruthless exploiters who absconded with the difference between a peasant’s comfort and his bare survival.

In England the nature of the feudal beast is particularly clear, as the Norman Conquest brought with it the imposition of a foreign dynasty and foreign nobility. The English peasant was a conquered and exploited subject, with all his surplus (and indeed, considering mortality rates, some of his necessaries) stolen by the ruling class to sustain them in their comfortable lifestyles. In a fundamental sense, the Industrial Revolution changed nothing about this relationship.

Consider the life of a male peasant in pre-Industrial England. His year is broken up by numerous feast days and his heroic efforts at spring planting and fall harvest are counterbalanced by largely idle summers and winters. With his wife and children contributing in traditional ways, this labor is usually enough to feed himself and his family, although the lord will generally let him starve rather than reduce lordly impositions on the product of his labor.

Come the Industrial Revolution, this man is now expected to work from sunrise to sunset (or later) six days a week year round. Further, his labor power is hugely amplified by the enormously productive machinery developed in this era; the dramatic increase in the wealth of Great Britain over this period reflects the dramatically increased productivity of labor. And yet, despite this, his leisure is drastically curtailed. His wife must join him in his toil, and his children must descend into the mines. Why? Where is all of this wealth going? His father’s generation worked intermittently and survived, albeit in occasional misery. Now he works constantly, his wife and children work constantly, and while his lot is improved somewhat, as reflected in the narratives Dr. Griffin cites, the improvement in his material circumstances is dwarfed by the increase of his toil.

Dr. Griffin deals with this question in passing, noting that “the lion’s share was greedily gobbled up by the middle classes,” but nowhere does she attempt to account for this vast disparity between work and reward, nor does she grapple much with the disappearance of leisure. She does do much to puncture idealizations of rural life, recounting the stories of numerous informants who found life in the new factory towns preferable to life in their native villages and detailing the accompanying increases in social and sexual freedom- the repressive nature of village life is often ignored by those who lionize it- but why did the Industrial Revolution, which was at root a revolutionary increase in the productivity of labor, require so drastically more labor than the old way? And why did the workers not reap the full benefit of this increase?

Because, as Kevin Carson thoroughly documents in The Iron Fist behind the Invisible Hand and as Karl Polanyi detailed in The Great Transformation, the system was rigged against them. A thicket of laws and police surrounded the peasantry as the productive forces of the Industrial Revolution were unleashed, carefully ensuring that any attempts to replace the old order were swiftly quashed. Further, many of the “improvements” of the Industrial Revolution Dr. Griffin documents were designed to buttress and supplement the exploitative order. The proliferation of churches did indeed give working men a taste of leadership and a way to practice their organizational acumen, but the message of these churches remained as reactionary as ever- “those who pray” continued to pray mainly for the continued rule of “those who fight,” while those who did the bulk of the working, fighting, and praying were to remain quiescent. The Sunday School movement channeled the working class’s thirst for learning into pursuits acceptable to the capitalists, guiding them to religious rather than social or political disputation. The endless splintering of the Nonconforming churches into smaller and smaller sects might have shocked the consciences of some clergymen, but better that the working men of England bicker over the interpretation of scripture than strive for a bigger share of the product of their labor.

The history of the self-improvement societies as discussed by Dr. Griffin further clarifies the capitalist class’s efforts to keep the workers docile and obedient. The first such society, founded by Thomas Hardy, a London cobbler, was London Corresponding Society, established in January of 1792. This society advocated expanded political rights, including the franchise, for the working men of Great Britain. After growing “into a national movement with several thousand members organized into dozens of branches in London and beyond,” as Dr. Griffin describes it, the British government acted, first with laws against political meetings and then, in 1799, outlawing the society by name. But the workers did not stop trying. Despite the best efforts of their bourgeois “benefactors” to keep politics out of the Sunday Schools, night schools, Mechanics Institutes and so forth, the workers would not stop noticing how short their end of the stick was, and kept agitating for more.

That history is largely beyond the scope of Dr. Griffin’s book, although she does do an admirable job detailing how the intellectual tools provided to make better workers were often then used by the workers to radicalize themselves and each other. Her book overall is a valuable service to history, bringing to light fascinating documentary evidence from a important and controversial period of history, and quibbles with her interpretation of that evidence and with her analysis of the period do not detract from that. In this reader’s estimation, Dr. Griffin’s work is most valuable for its attack on the mythologization of pre-industrial life and its description of how socially liberating many of her subjects found the opportunities afforded by industrial wage labor. Dr. Griffin’s subjects uniformly despise the village and saw factory work as a ticket to financial, social, and sexual liberation. Ellen Johnston, raised in 1830s Glasgow, is an excellent example. Ellen sought work in a cotton factory and sought sexual pleasure like many of her peers. In this era before effective contraception, she eventually found herself pregnant, but unlike women of previous generations, was not forced by social pressures into married life and the concomitant abandonment of her dreams. Instead, her wages supported her, her child, and her mother, who took care of the child while Ellen worked. Instead of domestic drudgery, Ms. Johnston led an independent life thanks to her employment and even became a published poet. While her life was hardly something to envy- she died penurious after a lifetime of hard work- she clearly preferred what the Industrial Revolution offered her to the crabbed life of her village.

Emma Griffin’s Liberty’s Dawn is a flawed but important work. By giving voice to the workers themselves, she permits us a glimpse into the heart of the Industrial Revolution and allows the people most affected to speak to us. While Dr. Griffin’s analysis of their predicament may be lacking, the voices she lets us her are vital.

Liberty’s Dawn: A People’s History of the Industrial Revolution by Emma Griffin, published by Yale University Press. $35