Tuesday, April 15, 2014

On Confronting the Federal Government

Douglas Delgado-Landaeta emails:
I have read that you generally advise that it is not wise to confront the federal government, and on this I agree because they will use it as an excuse to oppress even more. However, why don't you suggest that any government no matter how tyrannical is relies on public support and the only way to discredit any government is by changing the people's mentality? In the end, the government is run by a few hundred maybe thousands of people. The rest of them are mainly followers. Reading Rothbard, Hoppe, Block, DiLorenzo, and even De Soto (if you speak spanish). As La Boetie   explains, how do they get that power over you if it's not because we allow it? Hoppe also explains how can 5,000,000 or so entity (the government) can slave and impoverish a society  of 300 million? Public opinion.

In my view, we, The Austro-Anarchists, need to teach people (aka the masses) that the state is wrong, and based on my own experience, it is easy to prove any person defending the state to be wrong.
It is correct that I believe that direct confrontation with the government almost never makes sense. As Ron Paul states, the government has more guns, more efficient guns and more personnel to carry out force, than an individual, or group of individuals can muster. The government will use that force whenever it believes it is necessary and where they rank using that force higher than any negative publicity that might come about from such a use of force, for example the developing attack on the Bundy ranch SEE: Sen. Reid on Cattle Battle: "It's not over".

Further, almost always in the cases where the masses have been so large in protest that a government has been overthrown, one evil ruling government has been replaced with another.

As for the notion that  tyrannical governments only exist because of public support, I have never objected to this theory. However, when you write that "In the end, the government is run by a few hundred maybe thousands of people." This may be true from a absolute number sense, but the full story is much more complex. If it was just a case of getting a few hundred, or perhaps a thousand, people together to run a country, the anarcho-capitalist/limited government advocates certainly have those numbers now, but they aren't going to run anything.

The key remains broad-based support of libertarian principle, i.e. support of the non-aggression principle. It does haven't to be a rigorous, theoretical understanding by the masses but simply a basic belief in NAP. In this sense, libertarian advancement is a marketing problem: Just how do the original thinkers in the libertarian movement, and what Hayek called the second-hand dealers in ideas, advance the libertarian perspective in a manner that it becomes an almost knee-jerk demand of the masses?

33 comments:

  1. Also you have to keep in mind that although there are only a small handful of people who *directly* work for the government, the amount of people who benefit from their theft and corruption is as large as about half of society.

    If some sort of libertarian revolution actually happened, Joe Schmo down the street who is living off of unemployment and social security will absolutely fall in line to support the government's struggle to stay in power as soon as they frame the issue in "These libertarians want to eliminate your right to health care!" terms.

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    1. "These libertarians want to eliminate your right to health care!"

      Actually, it would probably be more like, "These libertarians want you to die in the streets by eliminating your right to health care!"

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    2. "As Ron Paul states, the government has more guns, more efficient guns and more personnel to carry out force, than an individual, or group of individuals can muster."

      Excuse me?:

      The Federalist No. 46
      http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa46.htm

      "Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops."

      I realize that this was back when the United States was smaller, but there are still a LOT more of us than there are of them.

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    3. "Actually, it would probably be more like, "These libertarians want you to die in the streets by eliminating your right to health care!""

      LOL! That's because those delusional left turd idiots think only The Great God Government can provide healthcare. The sheer idiocy of this kind of thinking always cracks me up. One of their weak arguments is that, "Well, it's too important to be left to the market since it's a necessity". And of course these brainless idiots don't stop to think that maybe, just MAYBE, things like FOOD and WATER are kind of important too? It's necessary and essential.

      Who was the first country to introduce universal healthcare? Hmmm.....let's see. None other than the Soviet Union baby, that great bastion of freedom and prosperity. LOL!

      For the idiots who doubt that read this http://mises.org/daily/3650/What-Soviet-Medicine-Teaches-Us

      The Soviet Union completely failed in distributing food so why would they be any better at something as complex as healthcare?

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  2. In the mean time, don't confront the government even if they're stealing from you on your own property? What's the point touting the 2nd Amendment?

    Though have to agree people have more nonviolent options now days.

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    1. It's not that people have better options, it is that confronting the government directly could result in incarceration or getting your head blown off.

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    2. RW says:

      "It is correct that I believe that direct confrontation with the government almost never makes sense."

      The founders of this country held no such opinion.

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    3. And, not confronting theft of your livelyhood leads to theft of your livelyhood. Or, leave it up to the courts where it's nothing more than the USG mmaking a treaty with Indians in the 1800s.

      From a libertarian view, why is it the ranchers are confronting and not the government confronting the sovereign?

      If a nonprovoked agression is not reacted to, especially when it's at hand, then there's not much point the whole NAP thing. The NAP will be nothing more than advocating for the aggressor to do at will.

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    4. How do you know that? I said "almost never." You aren't going to takedown the US government with a gun battle, the American revolution was obviously different, since the reactionaries won. It is not at all clear what their views would be on attempting to shoot up the US government. But further, looking at it from a different perspective and as will be detailed in an upcoming post, it is not exactly clear that a violent revolution was necessary at the time of the American revolution.

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    5. Regarding the violence of the American revolution, there's a book titled In God We Don't Trust by David Bercot that offers an interesting take on the revolution. It's geared more for nonresistant Christians, so I suppose mileage may vary here.

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    6. The point of guerrilla war or 4GW isn't to win in a head on battle - it is to make it so ugly and difficult that the big bully quits as America did in Vietnam or Russia in Afghanistan or soon to be America in Afghanistan. And those sides didnt have access to the Internet to find out where the homes are of the Feds, ways of cutting off their supplies, ways of encircling their bases and police stations, death by a thousand cuts with snipers and IEDs, and documenting the deaths of civilians via social media the whole time.

      There is a big reason that the most power hungry fascists are always trying to disarm the America citizens. As Col Jeff Cooper, the founder of modern gun fighting tactics and technique still used today by every level of govt, said - the reason the politicians fear seeing Ak and AR rifles in the hands of the public isn't bc they care about them killing each other - it is bc they are worried that one day those guns will be used against them!

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    7. Robert take it easy. I didn't misquote you. Those were your words.

      "It is correct that I believe that direct confrontation with the government almost never makes sense."

      Q: If you are unwilling to take up arms against those who arm against you, where does that put you on the food chain?

      A: Soylent Green.

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    8. What about the citizens in Nazi Germany? Or Soviet Russia? Or Pol Pot Cambodia? Or Mao China?

      How moral is to sit by and NOT use force if the govt is taking away Jews for concentration camps?

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  3. The problem is that when you confront the government you also are confronting the millions of sheep that demand their own enslavement.


    Check out larken rose and his struggle with the IRS. Probably 95% + of citizens view "tax cheats" as low life criminals for simply trying to not be robbed. Most everyone cheers when tax cheats are jailed because they view government as being morally just in stealing money. First you need to win over public opinion, then confronting the extremely limited number if rats in government is no big deal.



    Check these out
    http://youtu.be/ngpsJKQR_ZE http://youtu.be/yhp6kzqTAHw http://youtu.be/mXiLGaiUuRM read Frederick Douglass's account of how slaves would argue and literally fight over whose owner was wealthier. When you go against the government you are just fighting their mercenaries, you're fighting the people that demand and cheer their own enslavement. Until the minds of the masses change, I would lurk in the shadows around government mercenaries.

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    1. "Check out larken rose and his struggle with the IRS. Probably 95% + of citizens view "tax cheats" as low life criminals for simply trying to not be robbed. Most everyone cheers when tax cheats are jailed because they view government as being morally just in stealing money. First you need to win over public opinion, then confronting the extremely limited number if rats in government is no big deal."

      To all the cowboy idiots advocating war read the above CAREFULLY several times. At least someone is talking sense.

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  4. Please don't mention Ron Paul or F.A. Hayek. They are not 100% AnCap so they are total sellouts and fools. They never did anything to advance freedom.

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  5. You can't get the general public to accept the NAP because it depends on the libertarian definition of property rights, and they'll refuse to accept that. Doesn't matter if they're wrong or if your argument is really good.

    There are a lot of things that people like that are violations of libertarian property rights, and it only takes a person feeling strongly in favor of one or two of them to end up dismissing the whole concept.

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    1. I agree with you Bill that property rights are key. I'm researching the definition of what "property" meant/was defined as over history with the intent of writing something for EPJ.

      I was spurred on by my debate with Rick Miller over whether reputation is property or not, but similar debates have popped up over whether IP is property(an irony, because it has 'property' in its name), etc. et al.

      Ultimately, if we could get people to accept the notion that real civilization, or that "civilized behavior" starts with the NAP, the debates over property 'is' become more important. It will at least start a discourse when there's a disagreement instead of the progression to immediate violence.

      On the face of things, it would be pretty hard for a reasonable person to deny the legitimacy of the NAP...so I think the focus should be there. Once debates over what 'property' is hits on a large scale, well, we've already won to some degree even if there are differences over that.

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    2. That's just the point. There can be no functioning NAP without first having a uniform definition of property which is needed to identify aggressive acts.

      Libertarians won't even agree upon a complete definition of property; there is no way a significant fraction of a society will be able to.

      Without all involved parties accepting the same definition of property the situation occurs where each perspective views oneself as acting defensively while the other is the aggressor. The theoretic possibility of non-aggressive violence results. There's a hoot.

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    3. "Libertarians won't even agree upon a complete definition of property; there is no way a significant fraction of a society will be able to."

      Bill, I'm going to disagree with you there. The disagreements over what constitutes 'property' are still somewhat esoteric discussions, and even among those who disagree on those edges, they are most likely in agreement with each other on a substantial amount in regard to what 'property' is...depending on how you classify the disagreements there's probably agreement well over 90% of the time.

      There is no "perfect" or utopian solution to human conflict, but with the exception of a small percentage of argument over the fringes of property classification, the NAP would provide an answer to an overwhelming percentage of people an overwhelming percentage of the time and is logically consistent when agreement on what 'property' is, is accepted by the parties concerned.

      There is nothing else close I'm aware of that would allow such a diverse set of viewpoints, people, etc. to peacefully co-exist with each other.

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    4. Disagreements between libertarian and non-libertarian concepts of property are not esoteric; they are quite relevant as everyone is forced to live on the same planet for now.

      "...and is logically consistent when agreement on what 'property' is, is accepted by the parties concerned." This assumption is false. That is the problem. Diversity in viewpoints includes different views on property rights.

      Yes, some views are clearly great and others awful, and I do like the libertarian property rights the best, but some people won't change their minds no matter how wrong they are. If they're completely stubborn and pirating your Drudge Formula then the the two possible outcomes are lay down and allow yourself to be wronged or take it to the field of violence. If you go the violence route then from their perspective you're the aggressor and 'defense' is justified.

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    5. "Disagreements between libertarian and non-libertarian concepts of property are not esoteric; they are quite relevant as everyone is forced to live on the same planet for now."

      I don't believe we are in a stage where the discussion of property definitions are of the proper importance to a significant part of society, so I do believe those discussions esoteric for now. But there is room for disagreement between us without it hurting further discussion.


      "...and is logically consistent when agreement on what 'property' is, is accepted by the parties concerned." This assumption is false. That is the problem. Diversity in viewpoints includes different views on property rights."

      I don't understand how you mean my assumption is false. I never made the assumption, for example my quote:

      "depending on how you classify the disagreements there's probably agreement well over 90% of the time."

      From a utilitarian perspective, there doesn't seem to be another option. I think you concede this with your statement "I do like the libertarian property rights the best", though I'm not sure if you are arguing that libertarians are uniform if their belief of what property 'is'(because even libertarians are not), it seems like you agree with the concept of property rights in general.

      "If they're completely stubborn and pirating your Drudge Formula then the the two possible outcomes are lay down and allow yourself to be wronged or take it to the field of violence."

      This is definitely an issue, but with no other apparent/viable philosophy and/or solution the NAP/property rights best chance we have for now to reduce conflict, hence my statement "There is no "perfect" or utopian solution to human conflict".

      If your standard is perfection, it seems impossible, because we as humans are imperfect.



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  6. I didn't become a Libertarian to hear the same 'We can't win' BS chanting I kept hearing as a Conservative. If X, Y, and Z, approaches don't work, then invent a '27th letter' strategy and pursue that. Debate the cons and cons of strategy all you want, but don't stop pursuing liberty, and don't be so darn swift to write it off.

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    1. Where did you get the idea I am "chanting" we can't win? I am saying the approach needs to be via marketing not a shootout. If you think you are going to out shoot the USG, let me know when you are going to start so I can have my popcorn ready.

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    2. If the American fed govt started a war via gun confiscation of the America public, then this former delta member made famous in the black hawk down movie completely disagrees with your take here:

      http://blog.wilsoncombat.com/paul-howe/2nd-amendment-and-the-kool-aid-drinkers-by-paul-howe/

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  7. (^ In response to above comment by Mr. Wenzel) I Didn't mean to infer you necessarily Mr. Wenzel. My comment was meant in response to some of these other commenters (oh they'll just call you this...', 'They just say your that and object...', etc.). Admittedly, I don't know how to post comments as replies to others while under 'Anonymous' designation, so I let it ride as a general comment.

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  8. Shoot-out can be a very good marketing strategy. Besides, there is no need to exterminate statists and other thieves. It is enough to make the costs of predation to exceed that of the benefits, and tbe predators will either starve or move away. What you are missing, Robert, is that any conflict involves trading personal safety for a future gain. You may consider the trade to be unfavourable, but that is merely a reflection of you high time preference. The amount of freedom people enjoy is in direct proportion to the amount of pushback they give to the predators.

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  9. How is not wanting to get shot demonstrating high time preference?

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    1. Taking on the govt directly doesn't mean being shot - governments are notoriously ineffective against guerrilla warfare. But that essentially means giving up nice and comfortable lifestyle of a tracked and tractable urbanite, and committing to the rather unpleasant guerrilla lifestyle. The actual bodily risk in even direct frontal armed attack on the government is not that large - even against unsavory regimes like the old Ukrainian one. There's a huge asymmetry in motivation of defenders of the regime (who are in it for unexceptional salary) and the attackers (who are in it for the principle), so the impressive thuggery of a state falls apart quite easily when citizens offer any serious push-back.

      That's present-orientation is actually what keeps the regime in power - people are unwilling to leave their zone of comfort even if the future gains are huge.

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  10. As we speak, there are several hundred thousand citizens in CT and around a million in New York State who are refusing to register their rifles that were the subject of state laws passed after Newtown. In New York, people are openly burning registration cards and telling the government to come try and confiscate.

    In both states, the governors are backing down quietly since most of the sheriffs and the state police in both states are refusing to enforce those laws. Do you want to know why? It has nothing to do with anything other than pure fear of being shot. That is it - not posts on the Internet or anything else, but violence used against them. As we all saw when Chris Dorner shut down and terrified the smite LAPD or two teenagers shut down the entire city of Boston, the cops don't like it very much when they are dealing with people who can shoot back. Heck, the very few instances in nazi germany where jews overpowered a guard and obtained firearms also showed how terrified the nazis became when they did not have a monopoly on force.

    http://bearingarms.com/breaking-up-to-one-million-new-yorkers-seize-opportunity-to-not-register-their-firearms-ahead-of-ny-safe-act-deadline/?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

    Sorry, but the mindset and skill level and training level of the Feds is dramatically overestimated bc most people get their knowledge of firearms and gun fighting from tv instead of first hand knowledge.

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    1. Chris Dorner still ended up dead. Whether or not he "terrified" the LAPD for a short while is beside the point. I don't see how this is supposed to make a case for violent resistance.

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    2. If you followed what actually happened, the LAPD was terrified and that is not up for debate. They shot up a random Hispanic woman's truck with dozens of shots bc they thought it was a 300 lb black male - and every shot missed, of course. They admitted they did this despite a wrong truck and wrong person bc they were scared.

      Dormer ended up dead bc he wanted to die, but in the process has the ENTIRE LAPD looking for him and shooting at random cars and pointing guns in the faces of thousands of innocent people. The point is if one fatass mediocre cop can do this, imagine what a few hundred or thousand people attacking the LAPD could do. Or in Boston, two teenagers literally shut down the entire city and the cops has to use tanks and martial law and still didnt catch the kid that was still alive - a regular citizen checking on his boat found the kid; not the doughnut eaters playing Rambo dress up. Then they all tried to shoot him at close range and all missed, putting plenty of holes in the houses surrounding them.

      I talked to a SEAL familiar with these operations and said the cops often shoot themselves or fellow cops bc they are Barney fife types who are way more of a threat to themselves or to innocent bystanders than to whoever they are chasing bc they are so awful at shooting and tactics - it would have gone very badly for them if this was some sort of intelligent attack with a counter attack set up and cops freaking out and shooting each other even more than normal.

      Again, the problem here is that it is not recognized that the same sort of people running the Obamacare website or IRS are deciding how much and what kind of triaining and what kind of people are hired to be cops, and it certainly shows. Despite what Hollywood and gun control groups say, cops are not well trained, as they prove over and over. They lack skills and gun ownership of their potential victims terrified them - just ask the CT cop who was exposed for mouthing off that he wanted to kick down the doors and confiscate firearms - he now has a full time protection service provided by his dept bc he and the rest of the dept are scared of comments made on the Internet in response.

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