Cathy Reisenwitz Remains Confused

by Bretigne Shaffer

Last January I wrote a piece for EPJ on “Libertarians and Privilege” in response to an online debate between Cathy Reisenwitz and Julie Borowski on the topic of “privilege.” In it, I argued against Reisenwitz’s position that libertarians ought to not only oppose the initiation of force, but should also be concerned with  “...the cultural attitudes, ignorance and prejudices that form the basis of (the desire to preserve unearned power)” I also reiterated my rejection of the term “privilege” as she uses it, and explained my reasons for rejecting it. Yesterday, LewRockwell.com re-posted my article and Reisenwitz responded here.

Reisenwitz starts off by chiding me for focusing on this particular debate but failing to cite her contribution to another online debate - a contribution she wrote some five months after my article had appeared. She then takes me to task for

Tiananmen 25 Years Later - What Has Changed?

By Bretigne Shaffer

I wrote this five years ago, on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. I think the main point is still relevant although I would add that of course a great deal has changed for the Chinese people since 1989 – economic reforms have transformed much of the country and brought the kind of growth in prosperity that took the west over a century to achieve. And in some very real ways, people in China are more free than people in the US (they don’t have crazed drug warriors and people with badges routinely assaulting people in their homes and on the street, their prison population is far lower than ours, and in many parts of China it is easier to start and operate a business than it is here.) But economic reforms were well underway before the Tiananmen demonstrations, and I don’t believe they played a role in advancing them, nor in blowing the US’ police state into such absurd proportions that a totalitarian regime almost looks tame by comparison. Of course I would love to be proven wrong:
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So my first thoughts, a couple of weeks ago when I realized

Apple’s “Suicide Factories”

By Bretigne Shaffer

So I’m looking up more information related to a short story I’m working on and I come across this interesting fact.  It’s something you’d expect any journalist writing about the infamous “suicide factories” in China where Apple’s iPads and iPhones are made to mention, but surprisingly most do not.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, I spent some time visiting factories in China – both foreign joint ventures and local enterprises.  I also visited villages and farms and have some sense of the context within which these factories exist and just how crappy rural life in China can be.  I’ve also seen railroads teeming with people from the provinces who take a train into a city and then just sit and wait, hoping to get a job in one of these factories. So there is a very special place in my heart for western intellectuals and activists who urge others to boycott goods produced by “sweatshop labor” and do not respect the choices of people to work in places that seem horrific to somebody who comes from a wealthy, developed country.

So here’s the fact:  The Foxconn factories in China, which manufacture products for Apple, among other companies, have gotten a lot of attention because of poor (by western standards) working conditions, and because some of the workers in the factories had committed suicide and others had threatened to do the same if their demands for better conditions were not met.  Employees in these factories were asked to sign a pledge that they would not commit suicide and some of the factories installed “suicide prevention nets” to keep people from throwing themselves out of windows.

That’s the part everyone who’s heard this story already knows.  Here’s what you probably don’t know:  Out of a total of 800,000 workers (or possibly 1.2 million, but I’m going with the smaller number to make this as conservative as possible), 18 Foxconn workers attempted suicide in 2010 and 14 were successful.  That’s 14 suicides out of (again, conservatively) 800,000, or a rate of 1.75 out of 100,000.  While getting accurate figures for anything in China is always a challenge, estimates of the nationwide suicide rate for China range from 13.9 out of every 100,000 (the Chinese government’s official rate in 1999) to 30.3 per 100,000. I’ll go with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s rate of 22.23 per 100,000.

So, again using pretty conservative figures, the suicide rate at the Foxconn factories is around 1.75 out of 100,000, while nationwide it is closer to 22 out of 100,000 – more than ten times higher.  You’d think that westerners who care about working conditions in the third world would be applauding Foxconn for providing a work environment where people are far less likely to want to kill themselves than are average Chinese people.  Somehow I don’t think we’ll be hearing much about it.

Bretigne Shaffer blogs at On the Banks.

Dog-Eat-Dog Statism for Special-Needs Families: You’re Either at the Table or You’re on the Menu

By Bretigne Shaffer

I wouldn’t have expected a conference on therapy for children with autism and related disorders to have much to say about politics, but in a country where the state’s tentacles reach into pretty much every aspect of human life, I should have known better.

My daughter is developmentally disabled and I am pursuing more child-centered therapies for her than the more widely recognized ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) method, so last fall I attended

Dallas Buyers Club Nails the FDA

by Bretigne Shaffer

Libertarians are raving about Dallas Buyers Club and with good reason. One of our biggest frustrations is the near-universal tendency of human beings to form political opinions not through a rational examination of the facts and theories, but through emotional attachments. Many of these attachments are derived from stories and mythology that no amount of scholarly journal articles or sound arguments can ever successfully refute.

So it is exciting when someone comes along and

Owners of Gay Bar Support Right to Discriminate - for Themselves, Not Others

by Bretigne Shaffer

This story pretty much sums up everything that is wrong with identity politics (as contrasted, say, with political views based on things like principles):

"A popular gay bar in West Hollywood, Calif. is giving homophobic politicians a taste of their own intolerance.

"The Abbey announced Monday that it is banning, effective immediately, any legislator who supports bills to discriminate against gays and lesbians. The bar is keeping a list of politicians who voted for such bills by the door for the bouncer's reference. Meanwhile, bar staff is currently compiling dozens of headshot photos of the politicians to put up as well, a representative from the bar told The Huffington Post."

The bills they're talking about don't themselves discriminate against gays and lesbians, nor do they require anyone else to. The bills, proposed in several states including Kansas and South Dakota "...would allow businesses, religious organizations and even public servants to discriminate against gay individuals." Allowing people to engage in an activity is just a little different from engaging in that activity or even promoting it.

Of course I'm all for banning politicians. If I had a gay bar (or, in my case, a straight and married bar), I'd ban them all. The owners of The Abbey have the right to ban whomever they choose from their establishment. But so should everyone else.

This isn't the first time the owners have exercised their right to free association:

"The bar banned bachelorette parties in 2012, calling them a 'slap in the face' because marriage wasn't legal for everyone. Staff members began permitting bachelorette parties again after the U.S. Supreme Court overruled California's gay marriage ban last year."

"I’ve learned that I can’t stop crazy, ignorant or stupid but I can stop it from coming through my doors," says The Abbey's founder, David Cooley. "I want to send a message to all those people out there who conflate Christian values with discrimination: we don’t want your kind here.”

Good for him. He shouldn't be forced to serve people whose views he finds offensive. But what about people who conflate "not forcibly preventing discrimination" with advocating it? Or those who advance the idea that it's acceptable to discriminate against some groups of people but not others? Are they allowed in?

The Abbey is a fabulous gay bar, by the way. They do a wonderful brunch and have the best calamari in LA. They also have some ridiculously sweet desserts that probably should be banned. Just make sure you're not on their list of "undesirables" or you could find yourself without a table.

Bretigne Shaffer blogs at On the Banks.

RW note: The Abbey actually is a pretty cool place. I have been there once, maybe twice, with a couple of Ethiopian girls.

The Kind of Thing that Drives Me Nuts: Mandated Flame Retardant Edition

by Bretigne Shaffer

If I'm ever dragged away in a white coat, babbling and cursing incoherently, rest assured that it won't be because of some government plot to shut me up.  It will be because of people like this.

First, know that I am one of "those" moms.  I am the kind of mom who checks into all the ingredients in anything I buy for my children to eat (sometimes I ask more than once if the first person doesn't seem to know what they're talking about), I ask whether meat at a restaurant is organic and if it's not we usually don't get it (I do make exceptions), and I have spent untold hours online researching in minute detail the materials and chemical content of anything we buy that might ever come into contact with one of our kids.  I am that kind of mom.

There are lots of other moms out there who, like me, are concerned about toxins in their children's environment.  Some of them have set up some fantastic websites and blogs that pass on information about which products are relatively toxin-free and which ones are to be avoided.  I am grateful to these moms (they are usually moms) and for the work they have done that makes my life just a little bit easier.  

While looking for a non-toxic couch, I found one of these sites, Moms Clean Air Force, "...a community of hundreds of thousands of moms—and dads!—working together to combat air pollution..."  There was a very helpful article titled "Couch Detective: My Hunt for a Chemical-Free Couch", written by Lori Popkewitz Alper.  (And yes, obviously there's no such thing as a "chemical-free couch" - but I knew what she meant.) The article was about flame retardants in furniture, and how, as an informed consumer, one could become a "couch detective" and both ensure that the furniture you buy is free of toxic flame retardants, and educate those in the industry about the dangers of these chemicals and your preference not to have them. The author helpfully lists several brands that purport to make toxin-free furniture.

But then she went on to urge readers to: 

“Take action NOW.

“It’s time to take the burden away from the consumer and place it where it belongs – with the couch industry. Passage of the Safe Chemicals Act of 2013, would strengthen the way our government regulates toxic chemicals by requiring more thorough health testing of products BEFORE these chemicals end up in the bodies of our children.

“TELL YOUR SENATOR TO PROTECT FAMILIES FROM TOXIC CHEMICALS”

So here's what's crazy about that.  The reason that there are toxic flame retardants in furniture is because there are laws requiring toxic flame retardants to be put in furniture.  Both federal and state legislation have imposed fire-prevention standards on everything from mattresses to upholstered furniture and even children's sleepwear. So the idea that this is somehow the fault of the “couch industry” and that we need to run to our senators to protect our families from these bad couch people who want to put toxins in our furniture is a little hard to swallow.  

It turns out there's some good news though.  As a jubilant Rachel Sarnoff reports, "..Governor Brown just effectively banned flame retardants in California, resetting a national standard. Woot!"

It's true.  As of last month:

"...a new flame retardant standard will take effect, eliminating the need for furniture makers to inject the chemicals into upholstered chairs, sofas, and other items.

“Flame-retardants may also disappear from baby gear, such as booster seats and changing pads, which will no longer be subject to flammability standards.

“‘It’s wonderful, after years of work, to see this become a reality’ said Arlene Blum, a visiting scholar in chemistry at the University of California Berkeley and director of the Green Science Policy Institute.

“Starting in January, toxics-wary consumers can look for furniture with the “TB 117-2013″ tag, and ask whether the item has been treated with flame-retardant chemicals.

“‘I was practically screaming with happiness,’ said Blum, who’s been working on the flame retardant issue since the 1970s.

“The new law, called “TB 117-2013″ doesn’t forbid furniture manufacturers to use the chemicals. Instead, it sets a new flammability test — known as a “smolder test — that furniture makers can meet without using the flame-retardant chemicals.”

So let me get this straight.  After thirty-nine years, California Governor Jerry Brown undoes some of the damage he did when he signed into law a bill requiring toxic chemicals to be put in various consumer products.  And for this he gets a "Woot!"?  

Somehow, even when they are undeniably the ones who created the problem in the first place, politicians are seen as the heroes - even by those who are most virulently opposed to the damage these bozos initially created. It's as if there is a massive, collective blind spot when it comes to politicians and the state. There are some people - a great many people in fact - who simply cannot bring themselves to see the institution of government as part of the problem, but only as the best (and often only) route to a solution. 

So here's a thought for Rachel and Lori and Arlene, and all the others who are concerned about toxins in the environment:  Whenever you see something out in the world as crazy as toxic chemicals sprayed on things your kids are going to be sleeping on, ask yourself WHY any manufacturer would do something like that.  Consider the possibility that it's not that the manufacturer wants to poison your family, but something else.  Consider - and I know this will be tough for some of you - consider the remote possibility that those politicians you look to to make everything better and protect you from the evil people trying to sell you stuff aren't as friendly as you think they are, that they may not be there to serve your interests, and that it just might be possible that they are at the very source of the problems you seek to fix.

Bretigne Shaffer blogs at On the Banks.

Libertarians and 'Privilege'

By Bretigne Shaffer

Something’s been bugging me about the discussions I see in libertarian circles about class and “privilege.”  It’s not the fact that these things are being discussed - there’s nothing wrong with that - it’s what’s being omitted from most of the discussions.

Take the recent debate between Cathy Reisenwitz and Julie Borowski on the pages of FEE’s The Freeman.  Says Reisenwitz:

“Libertarians have a choice: They can stay silent on the topic of class and privilege, and simply support policies such as ending the drug war, extending marriage to gays, and opening up immigration from a limited government perspective. Or they can admit that in America, the State still extends privilege unevenly across lines of race, orientation, gender, and national origin, and that this privilege must be acknowledged before it can be fully understood or addressed.”

Reisenwitz never tells us why this unequal treatment needs to be addressed though.  Each of the problems she cites earlier in her essay (racially skewed enforcement of the war on drugs, attempts to “put the state between a woman and her doctor,” proposed legislation that would make it harder to hire even legal immigrants, anti-sodomy laws that are used to harass gays, etc.) is an example of rights violations by the state, and would simply go away if the state’s power to enforce these laws were removed - that is, if an actual libertarian solution were implemented.  So it is unclear to me why I need to understand or address the issue of “privilege” in order to oppose these laws that are inherently unjust.

There is of course nothing wrong with discussing or understanding issues of race, class or gender (although, as Julie Borowski points out, it can be easy to fall into the trap of seeing people only as members of these groups, of thinking of people only as one-dimensional members of a monolithic collective), but to assert - as Reisenwitz does - that libertarians “should” be more concerned about these issues is odd.

Libertarianism deals specifically with the question of when force is justified and when it is not.  It is hard to see how a discussion of “...the cultural attitudes, ignorance and prejudices that form the basis of (the desire to preserve unearned power)” is relevant here - unless of course someone is asserting that things like attitudes, ignorance and prejudices are themselves a form of force.  But nobody is asserting that, right?

Oh but hang on - someone is asserting that.  Cathy Reisenwitz is asserting that.  Here, in her article titled “Shaming Others is Unjustifiable Coercion.”  (No, the title is not tongue-in-cheek.)

So now it’s all starting to make a little more sense.  If Reisenwitz believes that things like “...criticism, ridicule, shame, and sometimes complete ostracization” constitute coercion, then perhaps she also believes that things like holding prejudices or discriminating along racial, sexual or other collectivist lines in one’s personal or business dealings are forms of coercion.  (The obvious question arises: Is it also “coercion” then, to shame those who hold prejudicial views or are discriminatory in their personal and business dealings, etc.?)

What gets left out of this discussion are the implications of declaring something to be “coercive.”  From a libertarian viewpoint, coercion implies force or the threat of force.  And force is justified as a response to force.  So when Reisenwitz asserts that “shaming” is a form of coercion, and doesn’t distinguish it from other forms of coercion (say, for example, actual coercion), then it should follow that some form of force is justified as a response to the “coercion” of shaming.  It’s funny how these things get left out.

Reisenwtz seems confused by the whole “force” distinction.  She writes:

“Lack of empathy for people with identities that differ from those that have traditionally been privileged in American society can be seen in our laws, from discriminatory marriage laws to punitive immigration policies to mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds to sodomy laws to selective enforcement of drug laws.

“But it’s only by listening to the people those laws disproportionately affect that we can fully understand why it’s so important for us to work to make it right.”

But this is complete nonsense.  It is not a “lack of empathy” that is at the root of these bad laws - it is the institution of the state itself, the fact that there is a group of people that is able to coerce others into doing what it tells them to and that it can have them thrown into prison, beaten or even killed if they don’t comply.  That is the problem.  And it is the specific problem that libertarianism addresses.  And no, I don’t need to listen to the people who have been violated by a law in order to know that the law is wrong.

And that’s the beauty of having a principled stance against coercion.  In a libertarian courtroom, it’s not the person for whom we have the most empathy who wins, it’s the one whose rights have been violated.  The non-aggression principle does not discriminate.  Not between black and white, male and female nor even between “likable empathetic person” and “absolute jerk.”  A free society tolerates absolute jerks - as long as they don’t violate anyone else’s rights.

Something else that seems to have been left out of this discussion is any meaningful examination of the word “privilege.”  Nobody seems to question how this word is being used.  But it should set off alarm bells for anyone concerned with liberty.  As I wrote two years ago:

“Certainly, those who do not experience discrimination may go through life blissfully unaware of the harm it causes others. And they did not do anything to earn their status.  It was something they were born into.  But does this constitute a “privilege”?  The word “privilege” connotes the possession not only of something one has not earned, but of something one really has no right to.  It implies a benefit that has been granted by someone else and that can and perhaps should be revoked by someone else.

“There is something insidious about this.  It is an upside-down way of looking at discrimination.  Instead of seeing behavior that ends up marginalizing groups of people as the problem, it turns our attention to those who are not marginalized.  To declare that they are thereby “privileged” is to hint that they are somehow culpable in the harm that has been done -- whether or not any specific individuals ever actually engaged in discriminatory speech or actions themselves.
“Using the word in this way is also to accept bigotry as the default.  To assert that not being harmed by discrimination is some kind of “privilege” is to assert that oppression is or should be the norm and suggests, in a manner reminiscent of (Political Correctness)’s Maoist roots, that those who do not suffer from discrimination ought to.

“To declare that non-oppression is a privilege is to lay the intellectual groundwork for bringing everyone down to the level of the oppressed.  Wouldn’t empowering everyone be a more noble goal?”
Language matters.  As George Orwell said, “...the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”  This is nowhere more evident than in the current discussion of “privileged” classes.  Quite apart from the collectivist thinking that underlies much of this discussion is the fact that it diverts attention from the real issue (for those concerned with liberty) and places blame where it does not belong.  What needs addressing from a libertarian standpoint are not the attitudes, thoughts and feelings of our culture.  What needs addressing are (at the very least) the evil laws that violate the rights of people who have committed no real crime.  Get rid of those laws and you’ve also gotten rid of their unfair application.

Bretigne Shaffer blogs at On the Banks.

VERY COOL: Here's How To Get a Character in a Libertarian Novel Named After You

Hardcore libertarian Bretigne Shaffer is launching a 12-episode graphic novel about a reluctant superhero Urban Yogini, who battles abusive police and government agents without the aid of violence. You can see the first episode here.

As part of her effort to fund the project, she will create, in the name of anyone who donates $100, one of the characters in the novel. I just signed up.

There are more details on Bretigne's project, including a video, here.

Disingenuous Reporting on Violence Against Women in Afghanistan

by Bretigne Shaffer

The plight of Afghan women is in the news again. In December, Reuters warned that “(a)larm rises for Afghan women prisoners after Western troops leave”, and Macleans published a plea from Afghan parliamentarian and women’s rights advocate Fawzia Koofi, for Western troops to remain in her country.  Earlier this month, Russia Today reported that:

“Violent crimes against women in Afghanistan reached an unprecedented level of brutality in 2013, an Afghan human rights watchdog has announced as the US-led coalition prepares to withdraw.

“Chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), Sima Samar, told Reuters that the pace and the hideousness of attacks on women intensified in 2013 with a 25 per cent surge in cases from March through September.

"’The brutality of the cases is really bad. Cutting the nose, lips and ears. Committing public rape," Samar said. "Mass rape... It's against dignity, against humanity.’

“The spokeswoman noted that as the withdrawal deadline draws near for international troops, women in tribal areas are less protected, leaving them vulnerable to violent assaults.

"’The presence of the international community and provincial reconstruction teams in most of the provinces was giving people confidence,’ Samar said. ‘There were people there trying to protect women. And that is not there anymore, unfortunately.’"

The implication here, of course, is that the "international" (read: occupying) troops in Afghanistan were somehow protecting women from the brutality being inflicted upon them, and that with their departure Afghan women will be left vulnerable to further assault.

Had the writer bothered to put the current brutality into context though, it would have been clear that the reality is something very very different.  As I wrote in 2010, the US-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan has only made things worse for the women who live there:

“Says Ann Jones, journalist and author of Kabul in Winter, ‘For most Afghan women, life [since the occupation] has stayed the same. And for a great number, life has gotten much worse.’

“Sonali Kolhatkar, co-director of the Afghan Women's Mission, says ‘the attacks against women both external and within the family have gone up. Domestic violence has increased. (The current) judiciary is imprisoning more women than ever before in Afghanistan. And they are imprisoning them for running away from their homes, for refusing to marry the man that their family picked for them, for even being a victim of rape.’

“Anand Gopal, Afghanistan correspondent for the Wall Street Journal,says ‘The situation for women in the Pashtun area is actually worse than it was during the Taliban time. …(U)nder the Taliban, women were kept in burqas and in their homes, away from education. Today, the same situation persists. They're kept in burqas, in homes, away from education, but on top of that they are also living in a war zone.’

"’Five years after the fall of the Taliban, and the liberation of women hailed by Laura Bush and Cherie Blair, thanks to the US and British invasion,’ wrote The Independent's Kim Sengupta in November of 2006, ‘such has been the alarming rise in suicide that a conference was held on the problem in the Afghan capital just a few days ago.’"

When I wrote this piece in 2010, there seemed to be a concerted campaign in the media to use the plight of Afghan women as a rallying cry against ending the US occupation at that time.  By sheer coincidence, a leaked CIA memorandum from March of 2010 (“CIA Red Cell Special Memorandum: Afghanistan: Sustaining West European Support for the NATO-led Mission-Why Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough,") had outlined “...possible PR strategies to shore up public support in Germany and France for a continued war in Afghanistan.”

According to the memo:

"The proposed PR strategies focus on pressure points that have been identified within these countries. For France it is the sympathy of the public for Afghan refugees and women… Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share their stories with French, German, and other European women could help to overcome pervasive skepticism among women in Western Europe toward the ISAF mission… Media events that feature testimonials by Afghan women would probably be most effective if broadcast on programs that have large and disproportionately female audiences."

Conditions for women in Afghanistan have badly deteriorated under the US-led occupation, and they continue to deteriorate under a foreign occupation that only strengthens local fundamentalist leadership. It defies reason to call for international troops to remain even longer as a solution to the problem they have exacerbated.

Bretigne Shaffer blogs at On the Banks.

An Open Letter to Russell Brand

Dear Russell Brand: How About a REAL Revolution?

by Bretigne Shaffer

Dear Mr. Brand,

Let me start off by saying that I’m a huge fan. I haven’t seen your live show yet, but I’ve been really impressed by every one of your video appearances. You are brilliant, super sharp and I think have real empathy for people. I say this not to shower you with flattery but so you know that everything I say here comes from a place of genuine admiration and respect.

Like you, I am a non-voter, and for much the same reasons. I’ve written about that here. You say you want a revolution. I do too. But what you describe doesn’t sound very revolutionary to me.

In your interview with Jeremy Paxman, you advocate “...a socialist egalitarian system based on the massive redistribution of wealth.”

Whether you intend it or not, each of these things requires an authoritarian state to implement. Just ask yourself: How is this egalitarianism to be enforced? Who is to do the redistributing? What happens to someone who doesn’t want their wealth “redistributed”? What if somebody wants more than their neighbor has and is willing to work for it? And what if someone else is willing to hire them to work? Who is going to step in and prevent this exchange between consenting adults? And more importantly, how?

It is no accident of history that the socialist experiments of the 20th century ended in brutal tyranny and mass starvation. Both are inherent in an ideology of enforced egalitarianism, and both were entirely predictable (in fact, the failure of socialism was predicted, by economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, in the 1920s.)

To call for “redistribution of wealth” is also to misunderstand what an economy is. An economy is not a static, unchanging quantity of resources to be divided in some manner among the people who participate in it. An economy is a living, changing, growing organism. It is not a pie to be sliced up and distributed, but is more like a bakery that makes pies. When you give someone the authority to take those pies from the people who made them, to “distribute” them to others as they believe is right or just, you take away the bakers’ incentive to produce more pies. Production stops, and people starve. This is precisely what happened in the Soviet Union, China, and other countries where people were not allowed to profit from what they produced.

You say that “... profit is a filthy word because whenever there is profit there is also deficit.” No, there is not. You have badly misunderstood how economies work. I wouldn’t be so picky about this except that this particular misunderstanding has already led to so much poverty and misery in the world.

Voluntary exchanges are mutually beneficial. People only engage in exchanges if they think they are going to benefit from them. So when one person profits, it is not at another person’s expense, but because they have provided something that the other person wanted. The only time this is not true is when someone is coerced into an exchange. This happens all the time (think taxes, eminent domain, highway robbery, etc.) but it is not the profits that cause the deficit, rather the coercion. It is only in a world characterized by coercive relationships that one person benefits at another’s expense.

This may seem like an odd thing to say if you are still thinking that an economy is a pie. It’s not a pie. Stop thinking that it’s a pie. It is a bakery that makes pies. There is not some static quantity of pies out there waiting to be distributed. There’s a whole system with lots and lots of moving pieces that all come together to make the pies that people want. And if it turns out people don’t want pies, then the system makes something else. So the question is: How do the people working in this system know what to make? The answer is that they get signals from the marketplace indicating what goods and services people value relative to other goods and services. And what are those signals? Two of the most critical are: profits and losses.

In a world of free people, making voluntary exchanges, profits are the way that producers know what people want, and therefore what they should make if they want to be successful. If a particular good or service is extremely profitable, it means that probably a lot of people want it very much. When other producers see those high profits, some of them will stop producing what they have been making and switch to producing the high-profit item. As more and more producers come into the market and compete with each other, more of the item that people wanted so badly gets made and the price (as well as the profits) comes down.

Again, this is a system, a living organism made up of countless individual players all connected to each other through this network of signals: Prices, profits, losses. Take away the signals and you destroy the organism’s ability to function. Treat an economy as if it is just a bundle of goodies to be divvied up, and you kill the organism that makes those goodies.

In fact, we already have forced redistribution of wealth. Through taxation and, even more so, through central banking and fiat money, real wealth is distributed from productive people into the hands of government elites and their corporate cronies. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here and here.

What you’re proposing is just another form of what’s already happening, but with different beneficiaries. Do you really imagine that it will turn out any differently? Do you imagine that it will not result in an entrenched group of powerful elites benefiting at the expense of everyone else? Again, you don’t have to look any farther than the past century to see that another inevitable consequence of enforced equality is always a very, very privileged elite. Why? Because someone needs to be in a position to enforce all this equality. And therefore, someone needs to have an awful lot of power over everyone else. Those who wield this power will be in a position to abuse it - and if history is any guide here, they will abuse it to a lavish (for themselves) and horrific (for their enemies) degree.

You say that you are looking for alternative political systems, alternate paradigms that might be of service to humanity. I hope you will let me offer you some ideas:

First, if you want real change, then start by questioning the institution of the state itself. Start by questioning the idea that it’s acceptable to use force in order to get other people to do what you want them to. Start by questioning the idea that peaceful, civilized society can ever be built on a foundation of coercion and violence.

There are many people who are already doing this. Real revolutionaries, with solid ideas that they’ve articulated pretty well: My dad is one. You might want to check out two of his books: “Calculated Chaos”, and “Boundaries of Order.” The Mises Institute does a fantastic job of publishing and educating on the topic of markets and the state. There is an entire body of very solid work on how stateless societies can and do function.

These critics of statism argue not for the redistribution of material wealth, but for the redistribution of authority - from centralized, top-down hierarchies of people ruling over others, to each person having authority over their own lives. They advocate peaceful, non-violent revolution in the most radical form imaginable: Simply rejecting the coercive institution that is the monopoly state.

You are absolutely right that democracy serves only an elite few, and you are right that our governments are working on behalf of the large corporations that prop them up. What I hope you will rethink is the idea that a more authoritarian system is going to make things better. And what you are calling for is more authoritarianism. By necessity. A more centralized state, with some people wielding even more power over the rest of us than they do today. There is nothing revolutionary about that. It is what dictators and rulers have always sought to do. And when they have succeeded it has been with tragic consequences for the people living under them.

You want a revolution? I do too. But your idea of revolution doesn’t go far enough. Rather than buy into the (intentionally) divisive rhetoric of class warfare, I urge you to look deeper. It is not “the rich” who are the problem, not capitalism that needs to be called into question, but the institution of the state itself: The toxic idea that one group of people has the right to rule over others. You are absolutely right to call for revolution. But make it a real revolution. Don’t urge people to seek solutions from the state - urge them to abandon it altogether.

Bretigne Shaffer blogs at On the Banks.