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Posts Tagged ‘Self-Determination’

A Short History of the Right to Self-Determination

Posted by M. C. on February 5, 2024

What is not in dispute, however, is that a right to self-determination via secession exists and that the current borders of the world’s sovereign states are neither sacrosanct nor perpetual. The more radical liberals like Jefferson and Mises have historically interpreted the right of self-determination far more expansively than modern mainstream social democratic theorists.

https://mises.org/wire/short-history-right-self-determination

In his 1927 book Liberalism, the radical classical liberal and economist Ludwig von Mises took a strict and expansive view in favor of secession. Specifically, he noted that respect for the right of self-determination required extant states to allow the separation of new polities seeking secession. He writes:

The right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied with.

Where does Mises get this idea of self-determination? He did not invent the idea, of course, but at the time was likely drawing upon currents of thought alive and well in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Origins in the American Revolution

The concept of self-determination—albeit not the phrase—was already well-known as the driving force behind the American revolutionaries when the colonies seceded from the British Empire in the 1770s. Historian David Armitage describes the United States’ war for independence as essentially the practical and political starting point for modern ideas of self-determination. While the philosophical roots of self-determination are often attributed to Immanuel Kant, the prototype for a real-life secession movement was found primarily in the American war for independence. Armitage writes: “The notion that “one People” might find it “necessary” to dissolve its links with a larger polity—that is, that it might legitimately attempt to secede . . . was almost entirely unprecedented and barely accepted at the time of the American Revolution.”

The success of the United States in asserting a right of self-determination provoked similar movements in Europe and Latin America in the decades following American independence. For instance, Armitage notes that “language for self-determination” found in the Declaration of Independence would show up repeatedly Latin American, European, and Asian movements seeking political independence.

The Idea Spreads to Europe

In Europe, the concept was well worn by Mises’s time. For example, self-determination was a central theme in Poland’s fight in 1794 to fully separate from the Prussian, Austrian, and Russian states. Poland’s leading separatist was Tadeusz Kościuszko, who had been an officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolution and who was quite familiar with the Declaration of Independence. As Victor Kattan notes, Kościuszko was pushing for self-determination well before the concept entered the common lexicon in Europe and “was inadvertently prescribing and prefiguring national self-determination as it would come to be known over a century later.”1

Mises, who was well-versed in Polish history, was likely aware of this. Mises would have been even more familiar with the battles over self-determination that raged across Habsburg lands a generation before his birth. Chief among these was Hungary’s attempt to secede from the Austrian empire in 1848. The Austrian crown ultimately defeated the Hungarian separatists (and instituted a military dictatorship until 1867), but calls for self-determination in pockets across Europe hardly disappeared.

By the 1870s, the phrase “self-determination” appears to have been increasingly common—especially in the German language.

See the rest here

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Biden Wants To Seize Control of Local Land-Use Regulations | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on June 20, 2021

In our case, it is certainly true that government regulations have increased costs and limited the supply of housing. That’s not the issue. The issue is that faraway governments will predictably be even less responsive to local demands in different neighborhoods. Incidentally, it would be remiss not to mention that most who would involve the state and federal governments in local zoning are conspicuously silent on monetary policy. Yet, an inflationary monetary policy is one of the major obstacles to affordable housing.

The real problem here is progressives want to dictate how you live. Those using climate as the excuse to control they want to keep you out of the suburbs and countryside and in high density urban caves. Small farms, especially methane producing dairy and cattle farms will also be out.

It is all about (population) control. As I have said before, Isaac Asimov’s “Caves of Steel” will give you a preview of life may well be like for your children and grand children.

https://mises.org/wire/biden-wants-seize-control-local-land-use-regulations

Matt Ray

In recent years, there’s been a push to move zoning decisions further from the local level. In 2019, Oregon passed House Bill 2001, making it the first statewide law to abolish single-family zoning in many areas. By expanding the state government’s jurisdiction to include zoning decisions previously handled by local agencies, the law entails an alarming centralization of state power. This was quickly followed by the introduction of similar bills in Virginia, Washington, Minnesota, and North Carolina. Now President Biden is attempting to increase federal influence over local zoning.

Included in Biden’s American Jobs Plan is a proposal that would award grants to jurisdictions that move to eliminate single-family zoning and other land-use policies the administration deems harmful. Biden’s plan has been widely opposed by conservatives and libertarians alike, but some libertarians view this zoning proposal as the plan’s silver lining. These libertarians hope federal incentives will remove government obstacles to affordable housing. To be sure, government regulations at every level increase costs and violate property rights. However, political centralization will not reduce government. To the contrary, centralization must be understood as an expansion and concentration of state power. Instead of furthering property rights, centralization will promote a one-size-fits-all approach regardless of homeowner preferences.

At this point, some may object that unlike the laws introduced at the state level, Biden’s proposal could be resisted by simply refusing the grants. Indeed, a White House Official describes Biden’s approach to zoning as “purely carrot, no stick.” However, this offers little reassurance. Experience has shown that governments cannot be relied upon to refuse funding, and as Murray Rothbard points out, “[G]overnment subsidy inevitably brings government control.” Once the public becomes accustomed to the federal standards and local governments become dependent on the federal money, there’s little to stop them from accepting those same standards as laws. We need only look at education to see where federal subsidies can lead.

The zoning issue is instructive, because it demonstrates both how the federal government can seize control of local functions through the back door, and how a move from the local to state level can lead to further centralization. Given that centralization moves decisions further from individual property owners and ultimately in the direction of supranational government, federal control of zoning is the logical next step. Decentralization, by contrast, would be a step toward self-determination.

One of the more common arguments against local control holds that zoning cannot be left to localities because local zoning is often exclusionary. But this position is completely untenable. If a property owner finds his control over his own property limited by zoning ordinances, then his opposition is justified, because the ordinances violate his property rights. However, opposition to zoning cannot be justified simply because it’s exclusionary. After all, private property is inherently exclusionary. Hence, if zoning is opposed on the grounds that it’s exclusionary, then the concept of private property can be opposed on the same grounds. Moreover, if all neighborhoods were completely private, we could expect some neighborhoods to be more exclusive than is presently the case. Rothbard explains,

With every locale and neighborhood owned by private firms, corporations, or contractual communities, true diversity would reign, in accordance with the preferences of each community. Some neighborhoods would be ethnically or economically diverse, while others would be ethnically or economically homogeneous. Some localities would permit pornography or prostitution or drugs or abortions, others would prohibit any or all of them. The prohibitions would not be state imposed, but would simply be requirements for residence or use of some person’s or community’s land area. While statists who have the itch to impose their values on everyone else would be disappointed, every group or interest would at least have the satisfaction of living in neighborhoods of people who share its values and preferences. While neighborhood ownership would not provide Utopia or a panacea for all conflict, it would at least provide a “second-best” solution that most people might be willing to live with.

As we have seen, neighborhoods would be as exclusive or inclusive as property owners wish them to be if all neighborhoods were privately owned. Some would only allow single-family homes while others would permit duplexes and multifamily homes. It should therefore be clear that a uniform zoning code cannot represent the wishes of property owners in different locales.

In distinct contrast, one of the benefits of localism is that the wishes of property owners tend to be better represented at the local level. Astonishingly, the ostensibly libertarian Reason magazine uses this same point to argue in favor of moving zoning decisions to the state level. They approvingly quote Emily Hamilton of the Mercatus Center arguing that local policymakers are too beholden to local property owners.

Yet, localism is the better strategy here, because local regulations are more easily avoided than state regulations. If a local government’s regulations prove too onerous, it risks the loss of its most productive citizens to the next city or town. However, as a state expands the territory under its control, it becomes more difficult for citizens to escape its jurisdiction. Thus, there’s less reason for a large, centralized state to refrain from imposing such regulations.

Opposition to any and all centralization is particularly important when the centralizing measure sounds superficially appealing. This could be a supposed deregulation measure, or to use Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s examples,

It would be anti-libertarian, for instance, to appeal to the United Nations to order the breakup of a taxi-monopoly in Houston, or to the US government to order Utah to abolish its state-certification requirement for teachers, because in doing so one would have illegitimately granted these state agencies jurisdiction over property that they plainly do not own (but others do): not only Houston or Utah, but every city in the world and every state in the United States.

In our case, it is certainly true that government regulations have increased costs and limited the supply of housing. That’s not the issue. The issue is that faraway governments will predictably be even less responsive to local demands in different neighborhoods. Incidentally, it would be remiss not to mention that most who would involve the state and federal governments in local zoning are conspicuously silent on monetary policy. Yet, an inflationary monetary policy is one of the major obstacles to affordable housing.

Make no mistake: the power libertarian centralists would grant the federal government in the name of deregulation would be used in service of the broader egalitarian project. Indeed, under Biden, HUD (the Department of Housing and Urban Development) has already moved to restore an Obama-era rule which previous housing secretary Ben Carson warned would essentially turn HUD into a national zoning board. Not surprisingly, this is being sold as an attempt to reduce “racial segregation.”

Empowering state legislatures—or worse, the federal government—to abolish local regulations would be a grave mistake. Rather than limiting government, centralization under any pretext will only add new layers of government. We must therefore resist all assaults on local self-government by more distant governments and combat government regulations at the location they occur. Otherwise, distant administrators will continue to seize power and local control will become increasingly trivial. Author:

Matt Ray

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Mises on Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Right of Self-Determination | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on May 27, 2021

As a classical liberal, Mises is careful to specify that the right of self-determination is not a collective right but an individual right: “It is not the right of self determination of a delimited national unit, but rather the right of the inhabitants of every territory to decide on the state to which they wish to belong.” Mises makes it crystal clear that self-determination is an individual right that would have to be granted to “every individual person . . . if it were in any way possible.” It should also be noted in this respect that Mises rarely speaks of the “right of secession,” perhaps because of its historical connotation of the right of a government of a subordinate political unit to withdraw from a superior one. 

https://mises.org/wire/mises-nationalism-colonialism-and-right-self-determination

Joseph T. Salerno

For Mises, liberalism first emerged and expressed itself in the nineteenth century as a political movement in the form of “peaceful nationalism.” Its two fundamental principles were freedom or, more concretely, “the right of self-determination of peoples” and national unity or the “nationality principle.” The two principles were indissolubly linked. The primary goal of the liberal nationalist movements (Italian, Polish, Greek, German, Serbian, etc.) was the liberation of their peoples from the despotic rule of kings and princes. Liberal revolution against despotism necessarily took on a nationalist character for two reasons. First, many of the royal despots were foreign, for example, the Austrian Hapsburgs and French Bourbons who ruled the Italians, and the Prussian king and Russian Czar who subjugated the Poles. Second, and more important, political realism dictated “the necessity of setting the alliance of the oppressed against the alliance of the oppressors in order to achieve freedom at all, but also the necessity of holding together in order to find in unity the strength to preserve freedom”. This alliance of the oppressed was founded on national unity based on a common language, culture, and modes of thinking and acting. 

Even though forged in wars of liberation, liberal nationalism was for Mises both peaceful and cosmopolitan. Not only did the separate national liberation movements view each other as brothers in their common struggle against royal despotism, but they embraced the principles of economic liberalism, “which proclaims the solidarity of interests among all peoples.” Mises stresses the compatibility of nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and peace:

[T]he nationality principle includes only the rejection of every overlordship; it demands self-determination, autonomy. Then, however, its content expands; not only freedom but also unity is the watchword. But the desire for national unity, too, is above all thoroughly peaceful. . . . [N]ationalism does not clash with cosmopolitanism, for the unified nation does not want discord with neighboring peoples, but peace and friendship.1

As a classical liberal, Mises is careful to specify that the right of self-determination is not a collective right but an individual right: “It is not the right of self determination of a delimited national unit, but rather the right of the inhabitants of every territory to decide on the state to which they wish to belong.” Mises makes it crystal clear that self-determination is an individual right that would have to be granted to “every individual person . . . if it were in any way possible.” It should also be noted in this respect that Mises rarely speaks of the “right of secession,” perhaps because of its historical connotation of the right of a government of a subordinate political unit to withdraw from a superior one. 

While championing of self-determination as an individual right, Mises argues that the nation has a fundamental and relatively permanent being independent of the transient state (or states) which may govern it at any given time. Thus he refers to the nation as “an organic entity [which] can be neither increased nor reduced by changes in states.” Accordingly, Mises characterizes a man’s “compatriots” as “those of his fellow men with whom he shares a common land and language and with whom he often forms an ethnic and spiritual community as well.” In the same vein, Mises cites the German author J. Grimm, who refers to the “natural law . . . that not rivers and not mountains form the boundary lines of peoples and that for a people that has moved over mountains and rivers, its own language alone can set the boundary.” The nationality principle therefore implies that liberal nation-states may comprise a monoglot people inhabiting geographically non-contiguous regions, provinces and even villages. Mises contends that nationalism is thus a natural outcome of and in complete harmony with individual rights: “The formation of [liberal democratic] states comprising all the members of a national group was the result of the exercise of the right of self determination, not its purpose.”2

It should be noted here that, in contrast to many modern libertarians who view individuals as atomistic beings who lack emotional affinities and spiritual bonds with selected fellow humans, Mises affirms the reality of the nation as “an organic entity.” For Mises the nation comprises humans who perceive and act toward one another in a way that separates them from other groups of people based on the meaning and significance the compatriots attach to objective factors such as shared language, traditions, ancestry and so on. Membership in a nation, no less than in a family, involves concrete acts of volition based on subjective perceptions and preferences with respect to a complex of objective historical circumstances. According to Murray Rothbard, who shares Mises’s view of the reality of the nation separate from the state apparatus:

Contemporary libertarians often assume, mistakenly, that individuals are bound to each other only by the nexus of market exchange. They forget that everyone is necessarily born into a family, a language, and a culture. Every person is born into one of several overlapping communities, usually including an ethnic group, with specific values, cultures, religious beliefs, and traditions. . . . The ‘nation’ cannot be precisely defined; it is a complex and varying constellation of different forms of communities, languages, ethnic groups or religions. . . . The question of nationality is made more complex by the interplay of objectively existing reality and subjective perceptions.

Colonialism as the Denial of the Right of Self-Determination

Unlike many late 19th- and early 20th-century liberals, Mises was a passionate anti-colonialist. As a radical liberal, he recognized the universality of the right of self determination and the nationality principle for all peoples and races. He wrote powerful and scathing indictments against the European subjugation and mistreatment of African and Asian peoples and demanded a quick and complete dismantling of colonial regimes. It is worthwhile quoting Mises on this at length:

The basic idea of colonial policy was to take advantage of the military superiority of the white race over the members of other races. The Europeans set out, equipped with all the weapons and contrivances that their civilization placed at their disposal, to subjugate weaker peoples, to rob them of their property, and to enslave them. Attempts have been made to extenuate and gloss over the true motive of colonial policy with the excuse that its sole object was to make it possible for primitive peoples to share in the blessings of European civilization. . . . Could there be a more doleful proof of the sterility of European civilization than that it can be spread by no other means than fire and sword?

No chapter of history is steeped further in blood than the history of colonialism. Blood was shed uselessly and senselessly. Flourishing lands were laid waste; whole peoples destroyed and exterminated. All this can in no way be extenuated or justified. The dominion of Europeans in Africa and in important parts of Asia is absolute. It stands in the sharpest contrast to all the principles of liberalism and democracy, and there can be no doubt that we must strive for its abolition. . . . European conquerors . . . have brought arms and engines of destruction of all kinds to the colonies; they have sent out their worst and most brutal individuals as officials and officers; at the point of the sword they have set up a colonial rule that in its sanguinary cruelty rivals the despotic system of the Bolsheviks. Europeans must not be surprised if the bad example that they themselves have set in their colonies now bears evil fruit. In any case, they have no right to complain pharisaically about the low state of public morals among the natives. Nor would they be justified in maintaining that the natives are not yet mature enough for freedom and that they still need at least several years of further education under the lash of foreign rulers before they are capable of being, left on their own.

In those areas where native peoples were strong enough to mount armed resistance to colonial despotism, Mises enthusiastically supported and cheered on these national liberation movements: “In Abyssinia, in Mexico, in the Caucasus, in Persia, in China—everywhere we see the imperialist aggressors in retreat, or at least already in great difficulties.” 

To completely phase out colonialism, Mises proposed the establishment of a temporary protectorate under the aegis of the League of Nations. But he made it clear that such an arrangement was “to be viewed only as a transitional stage” and that the ultimate goal must be “the complete liberation of the colonies from the despotic rule under which they live.” Mises based his demand for the recognition of the right of self-determination and respect for the nationality principle among colonized peoples on the bedrock of individual rights:

No one has a right to thrust himself into the affairs of others in order to further their interest, and no one ought, when he has his own interests in view, to pretend that he is acting selflessly only in the interest of others.

The Breakdown of Liberal Nationalism: Majority Rule and Nationality Conflicts

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Author:

Contact Joseph T. Salerno

Joseph Salerno is academic vice president of the Mises Institute, professor emeritus of economics at Pace University, and editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.

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Bodily integrity

Posted by M. C. on May 14, 2021

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodily_integrity

Bodily integrity is the inviolability of the physical body and emphasizes the importance of personal autonomy, self-ownership, and self-determination of human beings over their own bodies. In the field of human rights, violation of the bodily integrity of another is regarded as an unethical infringement, intrusive, and possibly criminal.

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Decentralization Is a Step toward Self-Determination | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on March 27, 2021

This is the logic behind the EU: the national governments are imposing tariffs, so we need the European Commission to ensure “free trade.” Indeed, the EU has long been sold as a profreedom institution, because it supposedly lowered trade barriers erected by more local government units. Of course, we can see where that led. The net effect of the EU has been the exact opposite of the expansion of freedom. Instead, the EU has given the world a giant bureaucracy that limits trade with the non-EU world and imposes countless regulations of its own.

https://mises.org/wire/decentralization-step-toward-self-determination

Ryan McMaken

For decades now, advocates for freedom and free markets have disagreed over whether or not political decentralization and local self-governance are important principles in themselves.

Most recently, this debate flared up here at mises.org over the issue of state-level preemptions of local government. Specifically, Connor Mortell objected to the State of Florida’s prohibition of local policymaking autonomy on the issue of covid lockdowns and mandates.

In response, a number of readers both in social media and in the comment section here at mises.org insisted that centralization of political power is fine so long as it’s the good guys who are doing the centralization.

We’ve certainly been here before. Indeed, this debate is essentially identical to the one over whether or not the US Supreme Court’s 2005 Kelo decision was a good thing. In that case, both sides were in agreement that eminent domain powers—practiced by any level of government—are a bad thing.

The disagreement was over whether or not states and the federal government ought to be able to prohibit local governments from exercising local eminent domain powers.

Lew Rockwell, building on Murray Rothbard’s decentralist views, took the position that eminent domain is bad (of course), but faraway governments ought not be in the business of meddling in local affairs to prevent it.

In an article titled “What We Mean by Decentralization” Rockwell writes:

The Kelo decision, in which the Supreme Court refused to intervene in the case of a local government taking of private property, touched off a huge debate among libertarians on the question of decentralization. The most common perspective was that the decision was a disaster because it gave permission to local governments to steal land. Libertarians are against stealing land, and so therefore must oppose the court decision.

And yet stealing isn’t the only thing libertarians are against. We are also opposed to top-down political control over wide geographic regions, even when they are instituted in the name of liberty.

Hence it would be no victory for your liberty if, for example, the Chinese government assumed jurisdiction over your downtown streets in order to liberate them from zoning ordinances. Zoning violates property rights, but imperialism violates the right of a people to govern themselves. The Chinese government lacks both jurisdiction and moral standing to intervene. What goes for the Chinese government goes for any distant government that presumes control over government closer to home.

Rockwell doesn’t mention it, but he’s likely taking a page from Ludwig von Mises here on the matter of “self determination.” For Mises, self-determination was a key element in limiting the power of political regimes and opposing the “princely principle” of political centralization and maximization of a state’s area of control.

Mises and “Self-Determination”

As Mises put it in Nation, State, and Economy, the “doctrine of freedom” offers an alternative—“the principle of the right of self-determination of peoples, which follows necessarily from the principle of the rights of man.”

Mises goes on to clarify that this type of self-determination is also about local control:

To call this right of self-determination the “right of self-determination of nations” is to misunderstand it. It is not the right of self-determination of a delimited national unit, but the right of the inhabitants of every territory to decide on the state to which they wish to belong.

What does this mean in practice? Mises insists on the right of inhabitants to choose their own state. By this he means that localized groups of people with similar cultural and political interests—even down the level of a village—must have the freedom to function independently of the impediments of a larger centralized state. 

Murray Rothbard, not surprisingly, was in agreement with this, and noted the implications of Mises’s position: that self-determination at the local level is a key step in securing self determination not only for small groups, but for individuals themselves.

The reasons for this are numerous, and they’re why most libertarians (i.e., the liberals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Constant) preferred local government to government by larger, less local regimes. Like his liberal predecessors, Mises understood that larger “national” regimes tend toward abuses committed by large majorities on smaller linguistic, cultural, ideological, and ethnic groups.1

These problems tend to be made less bad by more localization. 

Decentralization of this sort is also important, because it allows individuals greater ability to exercise their freedoms by more easily changing the regime under which they live. Rothbard explains that decentralization

means greater competition between governments of different geographical areas, enabling people of one State to zip across the border to relatively greater freedom more easily; and it exalts the mighty libertarian principle of secession, which we hope to extend on down from the region to the city to the block to the individual.

Rothbard speaks of state boundaries—here meaning the American political units called “states” and not to be confused with the Weberian sovereign state—but of course he also applied the same principle down to local governments:

Pending total privatization, it is clear that our model could be approached, and conflicts minimized, by permitting secessions and local control, down to the micro-neighborhood level, and by developing contractual access rights for enclaves and exclaves. In the U.S., it becomes important, in moving toward such radical decentralization, for libertarians and classical liberals—indeed, for many other minority or dissident groups—to begin to lay the greatest stress on the forgotten Tenth Amendment and to try to decompose the role and power of the centralizing Supreme Court. Rather than trying to get people of one’s own ideological persuasion on the Supreme Court, its power should be rolled back and minimized as far as possible, and its power decomposed into state, or even local, judicial bodies.

“Uniformity” Is No Virtue

Nonetheless, one recent commenter at mises.org argues local autonomy is unacceptable because travelers ought not have to deal with a patchwork of different legal regimes:

[In Wisconsin] I drive 40 miles to work and 40 back. I pass through at least 8 different towns on the way. If every town had different gun laws, my freedom to protect myself [with legal concealed weapons] would be compromised or curtailed altogether.

The conclusion we are presumably supposed to draw is that some centralized political authority must intervene to ensure uniformity among laws, presumably in a way that protects the rights of residents. Of course, this sort of reasoning takes the naïve view that the central government is likely to implement laws that favor the legality of concealed weapons. Experience suggests this is a rather fanciful notion, and we can see the benefits of local control if we consider the case of a state that takes an unfavorable view toward firearms.

Consider New York State, for example, where the state government heavily restricts the use and ownership of firearms. It is likely that many towns and cities in the northern and western part of the state, however, would prefer to allow more freedom in firearms usage in their jurisdictions. If these local communities were allowed local control,  at least the residents in those communities would have greater freedom with firearms. But as it is, the presence of a strong centralized state government ensures these freedoms are heavily curtailed everywhere within the state. Thus, the overall amount of freedom is greater in a scenario with decentralized political power.

The argument that laws ought to be uniform is equally suspect when dealing with passing across state borders. For example, consider a commuter who must drive from southern Maine to the northern end of the Boston metro area. This is a trip of only about eighty miles, but requires the commuter to travel through three states. Two of these states tend to be permissive on guns—Maine and New Hampshire—but Massachusetts tends to heavily restrict firearms usage and ownership.

If uniformity in law is important, then we must therefore insist that the federal government intervene to ensure that we aren’t inconvenienced by the fact gun laws change every time we cross state lines. 

But, of course, we know how well that would work out. Inviting federal lawmakers to “protect rights” or make gun laws “uniform” would almost certainly result in far more restriction than is currently the state in many states. Unfortunately, uniformity across state lines tends to favor the areas with the most restrictive mandates.

The Problem with Asking Higher Levels of Government to Protect Our Rights

Another objection is that a profreedom position requires support of any regime that lowers government regulations or mandates, regardless of how immense or distant that regime is:

Government at any level, other than at the individual level, is illegitimate … it makes more sense to support any individual action that comes closer to enforcing the NAP [i.e., the nonaggression principle] whether it is the president, governor, or mayor.

This is the logic behind the EU: the national governments are imposing tariffs, so we need the European Commission to ensure “free trade.” Indeed, the EU has long been sold as a profreedom institution, because it supposedly lowered trade barriers erected by more local government units. Of course, we can see where that led. The net effect of the EU has been the exact opposite of the expansion of freedom. Instead, the EU has given the world a giant bureaucracy that limits trade with the non-EU world and imposes countless regulations of its own.

The same logic could also be employed to call in the World Trade Organization to force down Trump’s tariffs. After all, if the US is raising taxes on trade, we need somebody to “enforce the NAP.” Why not strengthen the WTO so it can dictate tax rates to member states? The problem with this should be obvious: calling in some international body like the WTO to better “protect rights” is just asking for trouble. Americans would soon find themselves in a position similar to that of the British under the EU. Would surrendering more local prerogatives to an international group of politicians be a solution to high tariffs? This could potentially work in the short run, but experience has taught us that the potential for lost freedom in the longer term is enormous. 

  • 1. On this, Benjamin Constant writes: “It is clear that different portions of the same people, placed in circumstances, brought up in customs, living in places, which are all dissimilar, cannot be led to absolutely the same manners, usages, practices, and laws, without a coercion which would cost them more than it is worth.”

Author:

Contact Ryan McMaken

Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and Power&Market, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado and was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

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bionic mosquito: Reflections

Posted by M. C. on July 13, 2020

I suggest we start by reducing the number of laws on the books – eliminate all laws against non-violent offenses. Second, demilitarize; almost every department has SWAT teams and the like that are supplied like military invaders of Afghanistan.

After that, we can talk about defunding the police.

https://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2020/07/reflections.html

A few items rattling their way through my brain. Time to get rid of these.

History

We have seen statues come down, statues not only of slaveholders (which would require the removal of most statues around the world of anyone born before around 1830 and a few born since), but statues of those who worked to free slaves and those who were slaves. The point isn’t slavery; the point is history.

As many have noted, and I have recently written about, a nation without a story is not a nation. This is the endgame of removing all statues – more accurately, removing the symbols that reflect the history of the nation. Who does this benefit? If we can judge by the people who are tearing down the statues, it doesn’t benefit what might be described as civil society.

I have done my own share of tearing down statues, so to speak. Call it revisionist history. My contribution is meager compared to many who have done the same. I wonder: what is different about what I have done compared to what is done when statues are torn down?

I guess I would say: my work was with the aim of exposing false narratives in our history, of giving some evidence in history that would alter the narrative. It strikes me that such work can only help strengthen the nation by placing its history on firmer footing; it can strengthen the nation by properly reflecting on and recognizing its past sins.

But is this just rationalization on my part? Is this not what today’s (physical) revisionists would say?

This got me to thinking: a nation whose official historical narrative is compiled of many lies might inherently be headed down the road of its statues being torn down. Building a narrative of lie upon lie merely opens the door for those who wish to question the foundation – and rightly so, it seems to me.

We read in Proverbs 19: 5 “A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall not escape.” Perhaps tearing down statues is America’s comeuppance for building one false narrative on top of the other.

Anyway, returning to my question: what’s the difference of the work I have done vs. the tearing down of the statues today? I guess I can say my work was in search of truth – open to someone revising what I described; the physical revisionists are only able to tear down, regardless of narrative: slaveowner, slave trader, abolitionist, or slave. It is a task solely of destruction, with no attempt at leaving truth in its wake.

Such as these are not facing history honestly. I guess, ultimately, this is the difference of my work and theirs. Whether I am furthering truth or not is the task of the next revisionist to decide. But approaching it honestly? I believe so.

Secession

Why didn’t I cheer on CHAZ or CHOP or whatever name they wanted to use? Three years or so ago, Catalunya was voting on secession. I wrote then, and have written since: cheer on every opportunity for secession; if those in the seceding group do not wish to secede, then support their secession from this group.

So, why not cheer on CHAZ? What’s different? I guess I can answer it with a quote from Jeff Deist, writing at the time of the vote in Spain:

For libertarians, self-determination is the highest political end. In political terms, self-determination is liberty. In an ideal world, self-determination extends all the way to the individual, who enjoys complete political sovereignty over his or her life. The often misused term for this degree of complete self-determination is anarchy.

So, first there is the question of self-determination.

In an imperfect world, however, libertarians should support smaller and more decentralized governments as a pragmatic step toward greater liberty. Our goal should be to devolve political power whenever possible, making states less powerful and easier to avoid. Barcelona is less ominous than Madrid. The Legislature in a US state is less fearsome than Congress in Washington DC.

It seems correct to me – ever-smaller levels of government bring governmental leaders closer to the community, and give those in the community more opportunities to find a situation better suited to their preferences. But this only works to advance liberty if the higher governmental institution does not continue usurping life and property from those who have now seceded. So this is a second consideration.

But then we have this line:

Street gangs are bad, but they can be avoided in ways Uncle Sam cannot.

So, why did I not cheer on the street gang in Seattle as I did the secessionists in Catalunya? I guess for a few reasons – and I suspect Deist would concur: first, it is not clear that there was any “self-determination” by those who lived and worked and owned businesses in the district on this matter; from what I can understand, it was kind of the opposite. Maybe I am wrong one this.

Second, the higher levels of government didn’t leave those inside alone: still obligated for taxes, still obligated to the laws (well, not the armed thugs, but those whose homes and businesses were destroyed). The only way that these people were left alone was in the only function the higher entity owed them: defense of life and property.

Which brings me to the third reason: until we come to a stateless society, should we not expect those in government and authority to do their jobs? By “jobs,” I don’t mean spying and flying drones over wedding parties and the like. I mean protect life and property – the only proper role of a government if there is to be a government. This clearly didn’t happen in Seattle. In fact, it was the opposite.

Those looting and destroying were left free by the government that was supposed to protect from such thuggery. Imagine what would happen if a private citizen-victim of these looters did the government’s job in the stead of those who had the obligation. This defender of his property would have been the one sent to the gallows.

So, I guess my point is this: this event in Seattle was no secession. It was a militarized invasion, with those responsible for defense abandoning their duty while leaving illegal the possibility of defense by those whose property and lives were jeopardized. Which brings me to…

Pulling the Plug

Would libertarians be happy with pulling the plug on the existing state structures, confident that freedom would then ring – that eventually things would work out? Working through this question in the past is one of the reasons I concluded that a proper cultural foundation is necessary before one can consider anything like liberty – or consider anything like pulling the plug.

If I was a resident in the CHAZ district of Seattle, I suspect I would feel even more confident of this view than I did before.

And, Finally…

In the absence of my free ability to properly defend my property (as all legal risk and all laws are against those who will do so), and in the absence of my ability to secure the services of a private and competing defense agency (which would be cost prohibitive for many reasons and would also open me up to the liabilities of a criminal), what are we to do with today’s police? Defund them? Spit on them?

I suggest we start by reducing the number of laws on the books – eliminate all laws against non-violent offenses. Second, demilitarize; almost every department has SWAT teams and the like that are supplied like military invaders of Afghanistan.

After that, we can talk about defunding the police.

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Mises on Secession | Mises Institute

Posted by M. C. on July 8, 2020

https://mises.org/library/mises-secession?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=9afce7e2be-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-9afce7e2be-228343965

[Editor’s Note: Contrary to some attempts to portray Ludwig von Mises as a theorist who rejected radical solutions, we find in his works that Mises supported radical decentralization and widespread secession. Hans-Hermann Hoppe discusses Mises’s views below.]

“A nation, therefore, has no right to say to a province: You belong to me, I want to take you. A province consists of its inhabitants. If anybody has a right to be heard in this case it is these inhabitants. Boundary disputes should be settled by plebiscite.” (Omnipotent Government, p. 90)

“No people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want.” (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 34)

“Liberalism knows no conquests, no annexations; just as it is indifferent towards the state itself, so the problem of the size of the state is unimportant to it. It forces no one against his will into the structure of the state. Whoever wants to emigrate is not held back. When a part of the people of the state wants to drop out of the union, liberalism does not hinder it from doing so. Colonies that want to become independent need only do so. The nation as an organic entity can be neither increased nor reduced by changes in states; the world as a whole can neither win nor lose from them.” (Nation, State, and Economy, pp. 39–40)

“The size of a state’s territory therefore does not matter.” (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 82)

“The right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied with. This is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil and international wars.” (Liberalism, p. 109)

“If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, it would have to be done.” (Liberalism, pp. 109–10)

“The situation of having to belong to a state to which one does not wish to belong is no less onerous if it is the result of an election than if one must endure it as the consequence of a military conquest.” (Liberalism, p. 119)

“It makes no difference where the frontiers of a country are drawn. Nobody has a special material interest in enlarging the territory of the state in which he lives; nobody suffers loss if a part of this area is separated from the state. It is also immaterial whether all parts of the state’s territory are in direct geographical connection, or whether they are separated by a piece of land belonging to another state. It is of no economic importance whether the country has a frontage on the ocean or not. In such a world the people of every village or district could decide by plebiscite to which state they wanted to belong.” (Omnipotent Government, p. 92)

From an interview with Hans-Hermann Hoppe in the Austrian Economics Newsletter (AEN):

AEN: Was Mises better than the classical liberals on the question of the state?

HOPPE: Mises thought it was necessary to have an institution that suppresses those people who cannot behave appropriately in society, people who are a danger because they steal and murder. He calls this institution government.

But he has a unique idea of how government should work. To check its power, every group and every individual, if possible, must have the right to secede from the territory of the state. He called this the right of self-determination, not of nations as the League of Nations said, but of villages, districts, and groups of any size. In Liberalism and Nation, State, and Economy, he elevates secession to a central principle of classical liberalism. If it were possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, he says, it would have to be done. Thus the democratic state becomes, for Mises, a voluntary organization.

AEN: Yet you have been a strong critic of democracy.

HOPPE: Yes, as that term is usually understood. But under Mises’s unique definition of democracy, the term means self-rule or self-government in its most literal sense. All organizations in society, including government, should be the result of voluntary interactions.

In a sense you can say that Mises was a near anarchist. If he stopped short of affirming the right of individual secession, it was only because of what he regarded as technical grounds. In modern democracy, we exalt the method of majority rule as the means of electing the rulers of a compulsory monopoly of taxation.

Mises frequently made an analogy between voting and the marketplace. But he was quite aware that voting in the marketplace means voting with your own property. The weight of your vote is in accord with your value productivity. In the political arena, you do not vote with your property; you vote concerning the property of everyone, including your own. People do not have votes according to their value productivity.

AEN: Yet Mises attacks anarchism in no uncertain terms.

HOPPE: His targets here are left-utopians. He attacks their theory that man is good enough not to need an organized defense against the enemies of civilization. But this is not what the private-property anarchist believes. Of course murderers and thieves exist. There needs to be an institution that keeps these people at bay. Mises calls this institution government, while people who want no state at all point out that all essential defensive services can be better performed by firms in the market. We can call these firms government if we want to.

Authors:

Ludwig von Mises

Ludwig von Mises was the acknowledged leader of the Austrian school of economic thought, a prodigious originator in economic theory, and a prolific author. Mises’s writings and lectures encompassed economic theory, history, epistemology, government, and political philosophy. His contributions to economic theory include important clarifications on the quantity theory of money, the theory of the trade cycle, the integration of monetary theory with economic theory in general, and a demonstration that socialism must fail because it cannot solve the problem of economic calculation. Mises was the first scholar to recognize that economics is part of a larger science in human action, a science that he called praxeology.

Contact Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Hans-Hermann Hoppe is an Austrian school economist and libertarian/anarcho-capitalist philosopher. He is the founder and president of The Property and Freedom Society.

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Secession and the State – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on July 29, 2019

Liberalism here is classical liberalism. Before the fall.

Some might call it Paleoconservative.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/07/ludwig-von-mises/mises-on-secession/

Mises on Secession

By and

A nation, therefore, has no right to say to a province: You belong to me, I want to take you. A province consists of its inhabitants. If anybody has a right to be heard in this case it is these inhabitants. Boundary disputes should be settled by plebiscite. (Omnipotent Government, p. 90)

No people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 34)

Liberalism knows no conquests, no annexations; just as it is indifferent towards the state itself, so the problem of the size of the state is unimportant to it. It forces no one against his will into the structure of the state. Whoever wants to emigrate is not held back. When a part of the people of the state wants to drop out of the union, liberalism does not hinder it from doing so. Colonies that want to become independent need only do so. The nation as an organic entity can be neither increased nor reduced by changes in states; the world as a whole can neither win nor lose from them. (Nation, State, and Economy, pp. 39–40).

The size of a states territory therefore does not matter. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 82)

The right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied with. This is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil and international wars. (Liberalism, p. 109)

If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, it would have to be done. (Liberalism, pp. 109–10)

The situation of having to belong to a state to which one does not wish to belong is no less onerous if it is the result of an election than if one must endure it as the consequence of a military conquest. (Liberalism, p. 119)

It makes no difference where the frontiers of a country are drawn. Nobody has a special material interest in enlarging the territory of the state in which he lives; nobody suffers loss if a part of this area is separated from the state. It is also immaterial whether all parts of the states territory are in direct geographical connection, or whether they are separated by a piece of land belonging to another state. It is of no economic importance whether the country has a frontage on the ocean or not. In such a world the people of every village or district could decide by plebiscite to which state they wanted to belong. (Omnipotent Government, p. 92)

From an interview with Hans-Hermann Hoppe in the Austrian Economics Newsletter:

AEN: Was Mises better than the classical liberals on the question of the state?

HOPPE: Mises thought it was necessary to have an institution that suppresses those people who cannot behave appropriately in society, people who are a danger because they steal and murder. He calls this institution government.

But he has a unique idea of how government should work. To check its power, every group and every individual, if possible, must have the right to secede from the territory of the state. He called this the right of self-determination, not of nations as the League of Nations said, but of villages, districts, and groups of any size. In Liberalism and Nation, State, and Economy, he elevates secession to a central principle of classical liberalism. If it were possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, he says, it would have to be done. Thus the democratic state becomes, for Mises, a voluntary organization.

AEN: Yet you have been a strong critic of democracy.

HOPPE: Yes, as that term is usually understood. But under Mises’s unique definition of democracy, the term means self-rule or self-government in its most literal sense. All organizations in society, including government, should be the result of voluntary interactions.

In a sense you can say that Mises was a near anarchist. If he stopped short of affirming the right of individual secession, it was only because of what he regarded as technical grounds. In modern democracy, we exalt the method of majority rule as the means of electing the rulers of a compulsory monopoly of taxation.

Mises frequently made an analogy between voting and the marketplace. But he was quite aware that voting in the marketplace means voting with your own property. The weight of your vote is in accord with your value productivity. In the political arena, you do not vote with your property; you vote concerning the property of everyone, including your own. People do not have votes according to their value productivity.

AEN: Yet Mises attacks anarchism in no uncertain terms.

HOPPE: His targets here are left-utopians. He attacks their theory that man is good enough not to need an organized defense against the enemies of civilization. But this is not what the private-property anarchist believes. Of course, murderers and thieves exist. There needs to be an institution that keeps these people at bay. Mises calls this institution government, while people who want no state at all point out that all essential defensive services can be better performed by firms in the market. We can call these firms government if we want to.

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Why Liechtenstein Works: Self-Determination and Market Governance | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on December 30, 2018

https://mises.org/wire/why-liechtenstein-works-self-determination-and-market-governance

Before we jump in, let’s have a show of hands. How many of you have ever been told that your conception of liberty sounds good in theory, on paper, but could never work in practice? How many of you have ever been called utopians? Good, I see this is most of you.

Well I am here to dispel this notion and to show all of you that you are nothing if not realists. After all the word utopia comes from the Greek words Ou and Topos. Ou means Not and Topos means Place. Utopia therefore literally means, “not a place.” In other words, those who call us utopians believe that our ideas have not been and cannot be implemented in any physical space in the real world.

I am about to tell you about a place where fundamental libertarian pillars of self-ownership and private property are never violated, a place of almost absolute, maximum individual liberty. A place where state coercion is nonexistent, or actually, as I will later argue, a place where there might be no state at all… Read the rest of this entry »

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