Liberty on the Rocks: Bitcoins not Bombs

After a day of slaving my labor for The Man, I found myself with a refreshing drink of dark lager at the Bootlegger's Brewery. My favorite drinking club, Liberty on the Rocks, was hosting a Bitcoins not Bombs event. In spite of cooler weather, and a threat of rain, which remained fortunately unfulfilled, we amassed a numerous and eclectic crowd of folk. Plenty of newer faces showed up, at least 30 in all, each one eager to discuss the merits of bitcoin as a currency. Plenty of speculation about the future of bitcoin, including it's world-wide suitability, rate of adoption, and (of course) future price.

The event even attracted the attention of the CEO of newlibertydollar.com, Joseph VaughnPerling, who was kind enough to donate one of his new QR-encoded bitcoin silvers to the raffle. LoTR also gave away 3 other envelopes of bitcoin, each valued at about 10 U.S. Fed Reserve Notes (and rapidly appreciating in value), in an effort to promote awareness and use.

Bootlegger's serves only beverages and carries no food, so our group was greatly disappointed that the food truck cancelled their appearance. But, being so heavily anarchist, there were some among us who knew how to deal with a failure in planninng. They had kind generosity to order pizza. Joseph donated a couple pizzas, and pointed out his self-interest in the matter: "Hungry people are grumpy. I don't like talking to grumpy people." I'm sure our other benefactors felt similarly and took action not exclusively motivated by altruism.

During mingling, many things were discussed. We noticed a correlation between the excitement an individual had toward bitcoin and any resultant payoff. VaughnPerling discussed the case of Bernard von NotHaus, who had plenty of his wealth confiscated but is yet to be locked in a cage by the government for circulating coins which they considered similar enough to be threatening as counterfeit. (Exactly how gullible do these government judges think we are?)

Much of the conversations during the mingling I didn't catch. I received some good information from a suited fellow advertising his gun-training and shooting services (email me for more info), talked at length about why government sucks which everyone there already knew, and I tried to convince anyone who'd listen that anarchy would be better (that will be discussed in a secondary post).

So successful was our event, that a new Facebook group formed: The SoCal Bitcoin Syndicate #WeLiveFreeBTC.

Any and all are welcome to attend the next LoTR meetup: A celebration of Saturnalia at 7:00pm on Dec 5th at The Stave in Long Beach. Both #LiveFreeOC and #LiveFreeLA will attend!

Renting on the Black Market

Today, I'm complaining about an inconvenience caused by government. My landlady and I have a nice arrangement, I pay her for the roof over my head and a place to store my stuff. In my opinion, our business relationship requires no third parties. But the local politicians think otherwise.

My landlady, long ago, extended her house to include an upstairs. A living room rests over the garage and behind it two bedrooms and a bathroom sit above the living room and kitchen of the ground floor. I'm renting out one of the bedrooms and another tenant rents the other. The construction of an exterior stairway, placed alongside the garage allows for us to come and go through a side-gate without interrupting my landlady. Since I am still young enough to spend the occasional late night of anarchic drinking in town, I find this arrangement mutually beneficial, as my fashionably extra-late return home does not have to wake her.

Just last week she told me that she has decided to refinance her mortgage. Consequently, the bank will be sending an inspector. Under ordinary circumstances, I might not care, but this inspection complicates the relationship that I have with my landlady. Her son, who acts as a handyman, will stop by this weekend to take the stove out of the upstairs kitchenette that I share with the other tenant. He will also remove the partition that currently covers the indoor stairway between the two floors, lowering our mutual privacy.

Now why should he take away the stove and stairway cover? I did not sign on an a tenant to be so rudely interrupted. When I queried about the unnecessary disruption, I found out that she, in her sweet, elderly way, acts in a dark and shadowy market, subverting government and its accessory taxation. She rents out part of her home <cue revealing music> without a license!

Apparently, the city has declared a house with two stoves illegal. That body politic also declared the renting out of a room, activity requiring a license. I bet some hotel cartel or renters association put them up to it. Or perhaps they just think that they are keeping me "safe from exploitation". The government officiates probably think that my 80-plus yr old landlady, menacingly threatens society as she ambles around in her walker, wringing her hands over of all the rent money I voluntarily agreed to pay. Because if they ever found out she operates without a license, or that her house has a fire-hazard second stove in the upstairs kitchen, all manner of fines and levies would surely find their way into her mailbox.

Just who do these government thugs think they are? What right do they possess? They threaten an old lady, who's just trying to scrounge up some extra funds by renting out space she's no longer able to use, and expect me to thank them? I hate those guys.

Arguments found on Facebook, Government License.

I have a friend on Facebook (who shall remain anonymous) that occasionally posts articles which cast some topics that I have a fondness for in a negative light. In this case it was an article about How Ayn Rand ruined my childhood. I happen to sympathize with the authors opinion, for her father sounds like an ideological jerk who could might benefit from learning how to empathize with others. But I don't extend the blame all the way to Rand's philosophy of objectivism. The role of that philosophy as an enabler for poor behavior certainly forms an argument against its use as justification. But then, so do the crusades and inquisition form an argument about how the christian belief can be used to justify violence. These uses call into question the acceptability of these beliefs as part the fabric of social interaction, but should not be confused with the logical framework of religion or objectivism as a belief system. For that task, we need logical arguments that point out internal inconsistency in doctrine, not mere associations with the poor behavior of the followers.

Well, already I've said more about the article than I meant to. Let me refocus on the ensuing Facebook conversation which motivates this post.

As you may predict, I all too often take my friends bait. He posts an article critical of my political ideology, and I rise to defend it. His friends (many of them believers in democracy) also feel a need to be heard, or to hurl insults at my selfish, asinine, childlike, undeveloped, un-workable viewpoint. I might add that the insults are much to my amusement, and those who hurl them can be readily disarmed with simple questions:

I sense strong emotional hostility against libertarianism. Can you explain what you feel about libertarians? The insults you've hurled might be motivated by fear. Do libertarians threaten you?

In this case, I was met with yet more insults rather than answers, and that particular person got deleted from the thread. On the one hand, I'm consistently left with amazement at the level of hostility, and on the other I lament that these folk don't take the time to understand the Non-Aggression Principle,  for I would expect that we might have a common ground in our desires to have a society that abstains from institutionalizing theft, violence, or coercion.

Of course, I'm motivated to partake in these discussion, not just because I want to defend my position, but primarily because I find great amusement and entertainment in the arguments themselves. Those that believe in government (or the necessity of government) make some rather odd arguments:

It's so funny how that NAP of your never quite makes it to how you injure people indirectly with economics. Despite the fact that there is no inalienable right to business and since it is a LICENSED privilege, the Government is well within its right to regulate your business and your private slice of the economy any way they see fit. The economy belongs to EVERYONE, not just you. Despite how much more you may have than anyone else.

A similar viewpoint was made by Rousseau in The Social[ist] Contract regarding denial of the right to suicide and the state's claim to conscription:

Furthermore, the citizen is no longer the judge of the dangers to which the law-desires him to expose himself; and when the prince says to him: "It is expedient for the State that you should die," he ought to die, because it is only on that condition that he has been living in security up to the present, and because his life is no longer a mere bounty of nature, but a gift made conditionally by the State.

It remains completely obvious to me that if I own my life then I alone have the right to take it. Obvious to Rousseau, too, for he takes great pain to assemble an argument that I do not have exclusive rights over my person, the state has a partial claim. Rather than detail his argument here, I'll handily dismiss it by pointing out that, though my life as I currently lead it depends on interaction with others (the economy, friends, family), I do not owe any of that to a government.

History and logic adequately demonstrate that humans and society existed before government, so it is certainly not government to which I owe my well-being. To believe the state's claim over my person because my labor is needed to fight in the war to end all wars, would be to believe a slave-master's claim of ownership over the slave because "somebody's gotta pick the cotton!"

The slave-master and government share another similarity in their means. In order for the master to direct the labor of the slaves he necessarily meets non-cooperation with violence in the form of lashings and hot-boxes. The government also meets non-cooperation of its citizen through violence. If I don't pay my taxes, then I will be given an extended time-out in jail. Nevermind that I didn't hurt anyone by neglecting to file, I'll certainly be raped in prison.

Now, let's get back to the economic misunderstanding in the quote from debate opponent on Facebook.

It's so funny how that NAP of your never quite makes it to how you injure people indirectly with economics.

I'm really not sure, based on the definitions, how the Non-Aggression Principle could possibly cause economic injury, directly or indirectly. If any particular act did cause injury, then it would be classified as a form of violence. The initiator of such violence is guilty of aggression, and therefore in violation of the NAP. Clearly, we have some misunderstanding of terms, but that's typical in any debate.

Despite the fact that there is no inalienable right to business and since it is a LICENSED privilege, the Government is well within its right to regulate your business and your private slice of the economy any way they see fit.

Well, technically, I can't claim the right to business is inalienable, because Government has demonstrated its ability to interfere, prevent, squash, regulate, and even license business. All actions that indeed infringe on my right to do business. But, I do strongly object to the claim that business only exists as a result of government license. Everyone has traded items in the schoolyard with friends. It may only be a small barter exchange, but it happened without government approval. That's unlicensed business!

To claim that the transactions, which form the foundation of business everywhere, only happen under government license is sheer folly. It's an empty claim that flies in the face of voluntary transactions everywhere. I see no reason to believe that the wide-spread practice of people voluntarily entering into transactions with each other, exchanging goods and services, would stop if government neglected its role of issuing licenses. Indeed even authors of fiction recognize this fact. In all the post-apocalyptic fiction I've encountered, people still conducted business. They did so before government began issuing license and continue to do so when government collapses.

The economy belongs to EVERYONE, not just you. Despite how much more you may have than anyone else.

One folly in logic births another. Again, I'm met with a clear misunderstanding of the economy and property rights. Even if I accepted the false premise that the economy belonged to everyone, that isn't enough to argue that the government is the only institution qualified to issue rights of participation (a.k.a. licenses) in the economy. What right has government to claim this monopoly on the economy? Do I have to point out that there exists a global economy wholly unregulated by any one government? International trade is responsible for 1/4th of World GDP and yet no government claims ownership over that economy.

Rather than belonging to everyone, the economy doesn't belong to anyone! It's the aggregate result of individual transactions, an emergent property of social interaction. The amount of stuff I have, and my access to credit, determine the transactions I'm able to participate in. Even the largest player in the market (up to 73 billion in a lifetime) are dwarfed by the economy as a whole (up to 70 trillion dollars exchanged per year). Everyone can certainly participate in the economy as a player, but nobody and no institution singularly determines the game.