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By Scott Lazarowitz, February 28, 2010 10:19 am

Stephan Kinsella posted this article, Legislation and Law in a Free Society, last week at the Mises Institute. In the article, he discusses the idea of the need for decentralizing law and judges, which would correct the errors inherent in our system of legislated law.

….there is much more certainty in a decentralized legal system than in a centralized, legislation-based system. When the legislature has the ability to change the law from day to day, we can never be sure what rules will apply tomorrow….

And Kinsella discusses the idea of time preferences:

….. When time preferences are lower, individuals are more willing to forgo immediate benefits such as consumption, and invest their time and capital in more indirect (i.e., more roundabout, lengthier) production processes, which yield more or better goods for consumption or for further production. Any artificial raising of the general time-preference rate thus tends to impoverish society by pushing us away from production and long-term investments……

And the problems inherent in central planning:

…The widely dispersed, decentralized character of knowledge and information in society simply makes it too difficult for centralized legislators to rationally plan the laws of society….

Because legislators cannot possibly know all the information throughout all of society that comes from each and every individual in society, they are “more likely to be influenced by lobbyists and special interest groups.” Hence the need for decentralizing law systems.

Because of so many centralized, legislated, “artificial” laws upon laws upon laws that no one could possibly keep track of, it is impossible for anyone to avoid breaking one law or another. And this is a situation that can cause lawlessness and chaos, and, most of all, a decrease in liberty and independence.

….. when legislation is thought of as the primary source of law, citizens become more accustomed to following orders, and thus become more docile, servile, and less independent…

Kinsella calls for legal codes to be privately, rather than legislatively, written, and “focus primarily on common-law developments.” In privately written law, judges can “ignore the lapses in the codifier’s reasoning,” and Kinsella calls for a “judge-found law” rather than a legislated legal system.

In a related, archived article from 2006, The Idea of a Private Law Society, Hans-Hermann Hoppe notes the inherent flaws in a democratic system of laws and government’s monopoly of territorial protection and judicial decision-making, and gives the idea of “Private Law.”

….First, every person is the proper owner of his own physical body….

….Secondly, every person is the proper owner of all nature-given goods that he has perceived as scarce and put to use by means of his body, before any other person….

….In the third place, every person who, with the help of his body and his originally appropriated goods, produces new products thereby becomes the proper owner of these products, provided only that in the process of production he does not physically damage the goods owned by another person…..

….Finally, once a good has been first appropriated or produced, ownership in it can be acquired only by means of a voluntary, contractual transfer of its property title from a previous to a later owner….

…Only private property makes it possible for all otherwise unavoidable conflicts to be avoided; and only the principle of property acquisition by acts of original appropriation performed by specific individuals at a specific time and location makes it possible for conflicts to be avoided from the beginning of mankind on…..

….. In order to maintain law and order, it is necessary that the members of society be prepared and equipped to pressure anyone who does not respect the life and property of others to acquiesce to the rules of society. How and by whom is this enforcement of law and order accomplished?…..

Hoppe notes that the common answer, unfortunately, is to turn to the state to resolve that.

….the state is an agency that exercises a territorial monopoly of ultimate decision-making. That is, it is the ultimate arbiter in every case of conflict, including conflicts involving itself, and it allows no appeal above and beyond itself. Furthermore, the state is an agency that exercises a territorial monopoly of taxation. That is, it is an agency that unilaterally fixes the price private citizens must pay for its provision of law and order….

Hoppe notes that when government has a monopoly in ultimate judicial decision-making, “justice will be perverted in the favor of government.”

….Predictably, the definition of property and protection will be altered continually and the range of jurisdiction expanded to the government’s advantage. The idea of eternal and immutable law that must be discovered will disappear and be replaced by the idea of law as legislation – as flexible state-made law…..

And with government’s power to expropriate private wealth and property, “As a tax-funded life-and-property protection agency, then, the very institution of government is nothing less than a contradiction in terms.”

And Hoppe has written elsewhere, it should be noted, that “the U.S. Constitution is itself unconstitutional,” in that many of the directions and functions the Founders gave to the various governmental apparatus in their Constitution directly violate the natural, inalienable, God-given rights that individuals have as human beings, as recognized in the Founders’ Declaration of Independence.

Economically, as Hoppe notes, given an institutionalized, legally protected and compulsory monopoly of territorial protection, the agents of government will maximize their income (via compulsory taxation) and minimize their production of protection.

In sum, the incentive structure inherent in the institution of government is not a recipe for the protection of life and property, but instead a recipe for maltreatment, oppression, and exploitation. This is what the history of states illustrates.

However, in a democracy such as ours,

….democratic equality before the law is something entirely different from and incompatible with the idea of one universal law, equally applicable to everyone, everywhere, and at all times….

We have now, not natural laws that are absolute (i.e. “don’t kill,” “don’t steal,” “don’t covet your neighbors’ stuff,” etc.), but legislated laws, as mentioned above in the Kinsella article, in which exploitation of others is instilled into everyday life. And the short-term, immediate gratification desires of special interests supersede long-term, economic calculations which can only be possible in a free market society.

These are ideas and solutions that Dick Cheney, who spent his entire adult life feeding at the public trough, and John McCain (same), or Hairy Reed and Nancy Smelgrosi, would never understand.

Just step back and take a look all around our society, and see how the legislative process and government’s monopoly of protection and jurisdiction has been used by the ruling class to subjugate and enslave the rest of society. The ruling, government class has merged itself with the criminal class (i.e. robbers, rapists, extortionists, embezzlers, trespassers, coveters, treasonists, traitors, counterfeiters, mobsters, etc.).

There is this attitude, especially this year, of, “if we could only get the right guy in there, then things will change…” (Yeah, like the ghastly Scott Brown, yech!) However, history has shown that with each election, such as with Reagan in 1980, the 1994 Republican Revolution, etc., it has only been a rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic.

And Hoppe’s solution to this problem?

….The solution lies in a private law society – a society where every individual and institution is subject to one and the same set of laws! No public law granting privileges to specific persons of functions (and no public property) exists in this society. There is only private law (and private property), equally applicable to each and everyone. No one is permitted to acquire property by any other means than through original appropriation, production, or voluntary exchange; and no one possesses the privilege to tax and expropriate. Moreover, no one in a private law society is permitted to prohibit anyone else from using his property in order to enter any line of production and compete against whomever he pleases.

More specifically, in order to be just and efficient, the production and maintenance of law will have to be undertaken by freely financed and competing individuals and agencies….

And Hoppe explains in the aforementioned article how that would be achieved.

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By Scott Lazarowitz, February 27, 2010 2:22 pm

This morning, NPR’s Scott Simon interviewed some dude with the U.S. Geological Survey on the Chile earthquake. I think the dude has a case of Ronald Reaganitis, because he keeps answering every question with, “Well,…” (Am I the only one who remembers that about Ronald Reagan? Was it that long ago?)

Let’s listen:

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By Scott Lazarowitz, February 27, 2010 7:11 am

William Norman  Grigg: Sheep-Shearing Season on the Revenue Ranch

First, government – unlike private entities that offer goods or services in exchange for revenue – engages in pure consumption. As a result, all sources of government revenue involve destruction of wealth, rather than mutually beneficial commerce that enhances both parties.

Second, everything government does to obtain revenue contains an implicit death threat. Anyone who resists or refuses the demand for revenue with sufficient tenacity will find himself on the receiving end of an explicit threat made by an armed stranger in a government-issued costume….

….To put the matter bluntly, police – the self-described “Sheepdogs” – aren’t here to protect the flock, but rather to make sure that we’re securely penned in when it’s sheep-shearing season….

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By Scott Lazarowitz, February 25, 2010 1:21 pm

I listened to the radio talk shows just a little today, and they’re already getting me going. Michael Graham was discussing the killer whale who killed a Sea World worker. Apparently, this particular whale already killed another person in 1999! If that’s the case, then the family of the whale’s victim definitely has a law suit there. I hope the family soaks Sea World for every last penny that place has. Perhaps criminal charges are in order. If you own an animal, and it kills someone, bye-bye killer animal right there! And while Graham was right about the “animal kooks,” he’s not right when he says animals don’t have “feelings,” or emotions. Of course they do. Have you seen a dog tied to a post outside a store while the owner is inside? Some of those dogs are calm, cool and collected, while others are so miserable and anguished and literally crying like a child! How can any rational person actually say that those dogs aren’t “feeling emotions”? I’m sure that Graham’s fellow WTKK talk host Jay Severin, who has about ten or twenty dogs now, doesn’t treat his dogs that way. But I agree that animals don’t have “rights.” Only humans have rights, which are individual rights, among them the rights to life, liberty and property, etc. Animals are the property of the people who own them. If other (i.e. “lower”) animals had “rights,” then you’d have to arrest Frank Purdue, or Jim Purdue, and Roger Berkowitz.

"I got hungry whilst waiting outside the store."

And on Laura Ingraham’s show, Dr. Ingraham was interviewing Dr. Robi Ludwig, a psychologist, and they were discussing “technology addiction.” Some people are literally addicted to their cell phones and iPods and other things, and it’s breaking up marriages and causing other troubles. I agree that it’s important that families reserve time such as the dinner hour for “quality time” together. It’s important that parents talk to their kids about what the kids learned in school, if anything, and where they were and what they did after school. Kids really need to know that their parents are interested in what’s going on with them. And parents need to have some backbone and lay down the law about turning the cell phones and TV off at dinnertime! And Dr. Ingraham was absolutely right when she challenged Dr. Ludwig who mentioned something about her kids with iPods at age 7 and 10: kids that young should not have iPods, nor cell phones and a lot of that other stuff. Teenagers shouldn’t have cell phones either! Unless they have a part-time job. Kids and teens have too many distractions and waste so much time on the cell phone and texting. No wonder the college freshman dropout rate is so high now. Kids enter college knowing nothing about English and Math, but they do know a lot about TV shows and (c)rap music. That’s a shame.

If or when the government gets its grubby paws on the Internet, that will turn the Internet into a piece of crap, just as government turns everything it touches to crap.

I’m glad the Boston area is going to get another talk radio station soon—it’s good to have alternatives to listen to, because I’ve been listening to NPR a lot more in the mornings ever since WTKK reduced Don Imus’s hours. (No offense to Jim and Margery; they’re very nice people.) Apparently, WXKS AM-1200 begins in April and will add Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck to the Boston area. Hannity is a big risk, given that WTKK and WRKO both had him on but with no luck in the ratings. I don’t think Glenn Beck has been on in Boston except on WRKO Saturday evenings. It’s possible the new station might grab Rush Limbaugh away from WRKO—if that’s the case then WXKS should do okay. Gone are the good old days of genuine quality talk radio, with Jerry Williams, Gene Burns and David Brudnoy, when WRKO was #1 in the ratings for years throughout the 1980s.

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By Scott Lazarowitz, February 23, 2010 1:29 pm

Last night on his radio show, Michael Savage referred to newly elected (and won’t be reelected) U.S. Senator Scott Brown as “Benedict Brown,” because Brown voted with Democrats to end the Republican filibuster on the so-called “jobs bill.” I will not say, “I told you so,” however. We’ll let Tammy Bruce do that for me. Here’s what Scott Brown (a.k.a. “Mr. Handsome Movie Actor Face Guy”) said about the so-called “jobs bill”:

….This Senate jobs bill is not perfect. I wish the tax cuts were deeper and broader, but I voted for it because it contains measures that will help put people back to work….

Sorry, Senator Brown, it will NOT put people back to work. And if it does, it won’t be permanent. This is a measure that will give companies TEMPORARY tax breaks for hiring unemployed people, tax cuts that will EXPIRE at the end of this year! If I’m a company, and the government says I get a break from payroll taxes if I hire new people, and that tax break expires at the end of the year, then that means the tax resumes next year.  So, if I’m not hiring people now because I can’t afford it (because of everything government is doing to me), I will probably not be able to afford it next year, at which time I’ll lay off the hypothetical new people when I see that I can’t afford the reinstated payroll taxes, or I’ll see that ahead of time, and just not take advantage of it now, knowing that I won’t be able to afford the new employee(s) down the road.  (Stop the world, I’m getting off!) This may get companies to hire people now—that is, people who don’t have a good ability to do long-range planning—but eventually you’ll see people losing jobs again next year. Even worse than that next year is when the capital gains taxes go back up to their pre-Bush-tax-cuts level!

I don’t think Scott Brown has a grasp on economics, or long-range planning, like most immediate-gratification-oriented politicians. Brown is a product of Massachusetts, hometown of the dreaded Amy Bishop, the one who shot and killed her brother in 1986 and got away with it, and now has murdered 3 of her/its fellow professors in Alabama. Then-Norfolk DA and now-Congressman Bill Delahunt is now suspected by pundits and observers that he played a role in getting the Braintree, Mass police to let Bishop go at the time, and not even be charged with anything.

And now, Boston talk show host Michael Graham has been threatened by then-assistant DA John Kivlan for merely noting how incompetent and corrupt Kivlan’s and Delahunt’s office was in 1986 for their handling of the Amy Bishop case. Can you believe these HACKS? I think that talk show hosts—well, Americans, EVERYBODY!!—have a right to point out how corrupt and stupid public officials are (like Scott Brown).

The reason we have this situation is because Massachusetts has been Dukakisized. Thanks to Michael Stanley Dukakis, one of the most corrupt public office holders ever in this state, the Dukakisization of Massachusetts has allowed a murderer to get away with murder and go on to murder three other people. Michael Dukakis vetoed a bill that prevented convicted first-degree murderers from enjoying the “prison furlough” program, that later resulted in the Willie Horton fiasco, the fiasco that George H.W. Bush used to help him defeat Dukakis for president in 1988. Amy Bishop is our newest “Willie Horton,” thanks to Bill Delahunt. (Am I allowed to say that?)

And Scott Brown is a product of Dukakichusetts.

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By Scott Lazarowitz, February 22, 2010 9:42 am

Here is Karen de Coster in a post at the Lew Rockwell blog yesterday, on the Big Pharma-Big Government Complex:

….the pharmaceutical companies, once upon a time, had a semi-honorable quest to cure diseases and improve the quality of life for the very ill. That all went away with the proliferation of the almighty state and the growth of profit-seeking special interests that wished to manipulate political channels to curry favors and serve their own profitability.The revolving doors between Big Government and Big Pharma were built upon a corrupt foundation. Along came the modern Patent State and a ginormous web of governmental health agencies whose purpose was to empower their compadres in the quasi-governmental pharmaceutical industry and make personal health a public-collective issue, with the rules being set by so-called established experts and “trusted” advisors in the medical-pharmaceutical community.The powerful propaganda machine created by the government-Big Pharma alliance has the job of lying to the citizenry, and making them dependent on their products and services by creating and selling sickness. This grows the governmental public health sector and empowers the public-private sector alliance. The result is political power, profits, and job creation. This consortium of health tyrants re-define the parameters of sickness so that, eventually, we are all a high risk for some potentially disastrous health debacle, and thus we become lifelong patients.

Remember about thirty years ago, when Merck’s CEO Henry Gadsden told Fortune magazine that it was a shame that the company’s products could only be limited to “sick people.” As cited in the book Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients, by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels:

Suggesting he’d rather Merck to be more like chewing gum maker Wrigley’s, Gadsden said it had long been his dream to make drugs for healthy people. Because then, Merck would be able to “sell to everyone.”

Karen had a similar post in September and informed us of the activities of pharmaceutical giant Merck and its HPV vaccine Gardasil, that several states want to make mandatory for teenage girls to receive against their will and against the will of their parents. One major controversy in that issue was the lobbying that Merck did with Texas Republican governor Rick Perry, as mentioned in Karen’s post.

….at the time, Perry had a former chief-of-staff, Mike Toomey, who was a lobbyist for Merck. And Perry’s then chief-of-staff’s mother-in-law, who was a state legislator, was the state director of an organization called Women in Government, which was bankrolled by Merck….

This week’s primary in Texas ends on March 2nd. Sen. Kay Bailout Hutchison and private citizen, non-professional politician Debra Medina are challenging Perry for the Republican nomination for governor. Medina is the true conservative, who opposes the government’s forcing people to have a vaccine against their will, and who is the true “Tea Parties” candidate. Unfortunately, she was recently smeared by talk host Glenn Beck, who has ties to Rick Perry, in addition to Beck’s radio boss’s status as a big Perry campaign contributor. I found this great anti-Perry campaign ad. It’s unfortunate that it is paid for by the Hutchison campaign, but I’m posting it anyway, because it says it all about Rick “Merck” Perry:

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By Scott Lazarowitz, February 22, 2010 7:57 am

I have discovered that Willard Romney is now promoting a new book. (I wonder who wrote it for him.) Several people have speculated that it’s more of a campaign outline than an autobiography or something actually worth reading. His book tour schedule is much like that of being on the campaign trail. It is of no surprise to me, given what a self-centered, extra-huge narcissistic political hack this former private sector businessman has become. If he didn’t get the message in 2008 that the voters just don’t want him to be president, then perhaps he’s the one Rahm Emanuel was referring to a few weeks back, if you know what I mean. After blowing $40 million of his own personal wealth on a losing campaign, he ought to start a company in the private sector whose goal is to genuinely help people in some way. Instead, Willard Romney wants to have a lot of power over a lot of people and be the object of adoration by the masses, as Obama has been.

There is a big difference between this new book by Willard Romney and Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rogue. One is the insignificant scribblings of an old hasbeen-and-shouldn’t-be political hack, and the other is a genuine autobiographical tome by a genuine citizen-turned-government reformer-turned-citizen with probably no further political ambitions.

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By Scott Lazarowitz, February 21, 2010 9:21 am

The previous post linked to Will Grigg’s piece this weekend at LewRockwell.com, regarding Interposition and nullification. The endeavor that needs to be achieved is the nullification (and repeal) of all gun control laws, by people who believe in the sanctity of the individual’s God-given right to bear arms and right of self-defense.

The story of Obama-worshipping academic nutso Amy Bishop, who shot and killed three of her fellow professors, is a case in point. Had just one of the other people in the room been armed, he or she could have immediately blown Bishop’s brains to bits as soon as Bishop began shooting, thus saving the remaining prospective victims. This is why we need to repeal

Hillary

or at least nullify the gun laws, whether Rachel Madcow or Maureen Dowg like it or not.

The leftists fantasize that taking guns away from people will protect people from guns, just as the neocons fantasize that the US government’s expansionist-imperialist policies abroad and liberty-violating policies at home will protect Americans from terrorism. The neocons want Americans to be dependent on the Leviathan state to protect us, just as the leftists want a policeman available for each citizen to protect them from criminals.

When the conservatives see the secessionists and nullificationists as “treasonous” and “anti-American,” it is they who are treasonous and anti-American as they continue to support policies of aggression that contradict the ideals

Alan Greenspan (without the drool)

that the Founding Fathers envisioned. Politicians in charge of protecting our borders but instead concentrate on other countries abroad, with the pretense of protecting us from terrorism, while neglecting our own borders are treasonous. And politicians who dodge the draft in their younger years and later send young Americans overseas to die are worse than treasonous!

Why do Americans continue to support these statists, the lickers of the Leviathan lollypop, such as Willard Romney, Hermione Gingrich and the dreaded Scott Brown? James Bovard thinks they may have “Battered Citizen Syndrome.” I think he’s right. But when given the choice whether to watch the CPAC convention, which featured mostly pro-statist frothing and political opportunists, or Tiger Woods’s confessions broadcast live, most Americans probably watched As the World Turns.

Like the moral relativism of the abortionists, the gun confiscators and the criminal-coddlers of the left, we have the moral relativism of the neocons who have been supporting the destruction of other societies (as well as our own) and following

"I would be a rotten one-term president. Please, Don't Vote For Me!"

the state-issued propaganda blindly. What will have been most responsible for the destruction of America will be the US federal government that the people on the left and the right love so much.

Repeal or nullify the gun laws.

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By Scott Lazarowitz, February 21, 2010 7:08 am

Will Grigg: Who’s Afraid of ‘Interposition’?

…..In terms of both morality and the law, Boggett’s refusal to sell or surrender his horse ended the matter. The violence that ensued was an entirely credible dramatization of what happens when agents of the state’s killing apparatus refuse to take “no” as the final answer to a demand for the legal property of a law-abiding man.

By using the term “law” we are not referring to the positivist enactments through which governments plunder the productive on behalf of the parasitical, and inflict criminal violence on anyone who objects; rather, we are referring to what Frédéric Bastiat described as “the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.”

While providing for that common defense is supposedly the purpose of government, it is government that most consistently threatens individual rights and property. Interposition could be considered a form of “citizen’s arrest”…..

…..If so much as a particle of honesty resided within Neiwert he would acknowledge that many of George W. Bush’s left-leaning critics, to their credit, re-discovered the merits of the “states’ rights” perspective during his reign. Some of them eagerly practiced nullification and interposition à la carte, particularly with respect to the so-called USA PATRIOT act….

….Many of yesterday’s most strident “peace” activists are either deferentially silent, or dutifully supportive, as their president slays thousands of innocent foreigners via remote control…..

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By Scott Lazarowitz, February 19, 2010 1:55 pm

The article, Revisionism and the Historical Blackout by Harry Elmer Barnes appeared this week on the Mises Institute website. The article is excerpted from Barnes’s book, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, written in 1953. Barnes discusses how historical revisionism was required to bring forth the actual facts of the causes leading to World War I, to correct the myths surrounding the war, and how much more difficult it was to do that regarding the myths involving the causes of World War II.

….Revisionism, when applied to the First World War, showed that the actual causes and merits of that conflict were very close to the reverse of the picture presented in the political propaganda and historical writings of the war decade. Revisionism would also produce similar results with respect to the Second World War if it were allowed to develop unimpeded. But a determined effort is being made to stifle or silence revelations which would establish the truth with regard to the causes and issues of the late world conflict…..

….About as frequent as either of these ways of settling war responsibility for 1939 or 1941 is the vague but highly dogmatic statement that “we had to fight.”…. But some who are pressed for an explanation will allege that we had to fight to save the world from domination by Hitler, forgetting General George C. Marshall’s report that Hitler, far from having any plan for world domination, did not even have any well-worked-out plan for collaborating with his Axis allies in limited wars, to say nothing of the gigantic task of conquering Russia….

….the gullibility of many “educated” Americans has been as notable as the mendacity of the “educators.” In Communist Russia and Nazi Germany, as well as in Fascist Italy, and in China, the tyrannical rulers found it necessary to suppress all opposition thought in order to induce the majority of the people to accept the material fed them by official propaganda. But, in the United States, with almost complete freedom of the press, speech, and information down to the end of 1941, great numbers of Americans followed the official propaganda line with no compulsion whatever.

In many essential features, the United States has moved along into the Nineteen Eighty-Four pattern of intellectual life. But there is one important and depressing difference. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Orwell shows that historians in that regime have to be hired by the government and forced to falsify facts. In this country today, and it is also true of most other nations, many professional historians gladly falsify history quite voluntarily.

The last time the Mises Institute had an article by Barnes, I checked out who he was, and Wikipedia, among other sources, claimed that he was a   “Holocaust denier.” However, my final conclusion on that was that he was smeared by the media, by other historians, and by the criminal, I mean, political class at the time. Even in these times now, there is a lot of smearing by the political and media elites against those who question the status quo, question the Establishment, and “question authority.”