204. Police Epidemic
On June 1, 2011, In Podcast, By admin
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lewrockwell-show/2011/06/01/204-police-epidemic/
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Lew Rockwell interviews William Norman Grigg.

* A Note on Burke’s Vindication of the Natural Society by Murray N. Rothbard
* William Norman Grigg: LRC Archives
* William Norman Grigg: Pro Libertate blog
* William Norman Grigg: Pro Libertate radio program

And 18 Signs That Life In U.S. Public Schools Is Now Essentially Equivalent to Life In U.S. Prisons
End of the American Dream
http://lewrockwell.com/rep2/public-schools-like-prisons.html

The Statist will ask but how will you do this and that and this and so forth?

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How, the statist is heard to question, might common disputes find resolution without the currently preferred monopoly of the state’s courts?
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What about private monopolies that would ruthlessly jack up prices and bleed us working-class proletarians to death?
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By what means might a laissez-faire society offer protection from foreign aggressors?
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How might the personal liberties underpinning the whole system be protected if it were not for the tireless work of the state’s police and its myriad other law-enforcement agencies?

In response: “Freedom is not only as moral as governmental slavery is immoral,” the authors write, “it is as practical as government is impractical.”

The Tannehills argue persuasively, the free market provides solutions that governments would never dream of. “The big advantage of any action of the free market,” contend the Tannehills is….see link

Freedom, Naturally
Mises Daily: Thursday, May 26, 2011 by Joel Bowman
http://mises.org/daily/5305/Freedom-Naturally

The part I particularly liked was this:

Whenever there arises in conversation the mere suggestion of a totally free, laissez-faire market — the possibility that human beings might even be able to survive (much less thrive) without the safety net of state control — apologists for “benevolent government” invariably step atop their soapboxes and ask, “Yes, but who will provide education for the masses, if not the public schools?” or “Who will care for the sick and weak, if not the public hospitals?”

Indeed, these are questions that deserve thoughtful, honest answers. But these questions assume realities that are not in evidence.

They suppose that “the public” (i.e., the state) actually has money to “provide” these services, rather than, as is actually the case, first having to expropriate (steal) it from private, productive individuals. Furthermore, the fallacy of benign governmental control relies on the idea that governments can provide essential services more reliably and cost-effectively than the private sector.

In other words, the government’s obligation to provide essential services is more reliable and effective than the private sector’s opportunity to provide essential services. Admittedly, this debate does not lend itself to easy, black-and-white conclusions.

But as the Tannehills argue persuasively, the free market provides solutions that governments would never dream of. “The big advantage of any action of the free market,” contend the Tannehills,

is that errors and injustices are self-correcting. Because competition creates a need for excellence on the part of each business, a free-market institution must correct its errors in order to survive. Government, on the other hand, survives not by excellence, but by coercion; so an error or flaw in a governmental institution can (and usually will) perpetuate itself almost indefinitely, with its errors being “corrected” by further errors. Private enterprise must, therefore, always be superior to government in any field.

(It is worth mentioning here that corporations acting in collusion with the state are not private enterprises as the Tannehills define them. They are simply entities that have co-opted the government’s “gun-for-hire” to do their dirty work for them. Think Wall Street “bailout” recipients and their army of DC lobbyists. Indeed, think any institution at all that seeks unfair protection or promotion from the state.)

Freedom, Naturally
Mises Daily: Thursday, May 26, 2011 by Joel Bowman
http://mises.org/daily/5305/Freedom-Naturally

First, where is it claimed that being a druge is “a cause of slavery”? Rather, a point was being made about the necessary and sufficient conditions of slavery.

Second, your claim that “that every human being is his or her self-owner” is not nearly so self-evident as you like to suppose. Once problem is the vagueness of “self”. It so happened that when you posted your comment I was writing a comment about “self-ownership”, whatever that means, to be posted elsewhere at mises.org. A link to it will be added here once it’s been posted. One of the important points, however, is mentioned below.

Third, your claim that “[t]hat is so self-evident as to be undeniable” is figurative at best but by no means literally true. A nihilist can most certainly deny that he exists by denying that there is existence, in which case I think it a fair assumption that he would, if quizzed a bit further, deny that he owns his self. Of course, his claim that there is no existence, which he might actually be deranged enough to believe (or at least to believe that he believes it), would be nonsense. He can’t make it without first existing, but this fact doesn’t make the claim, “there is existence”, undeniable. Likewise, it is deniable that “that every human being is his or her self-owner”.

Fourth, one most certainly can perform theact of asserting “I do not own my self”. To wit:

“I do not own my self”.

You see? I told you so. Attempt successful. Whether or not I believe the claim “I do not own my self” is irrelevant, though probably there’s some leftist who would both state the denial with belief, too. Deniability is possible. Unfortunately, you let hyperbole ride roughshod over fact.

Btw, to refrain from affirming the claim “I own my self” is by no means the same as asserting “I do not own my self”. I presume you are familiar enough with the principle that although there’s nothing between affirmation and denial, there is reservation of judgement.

Fifth: “his or her”. Does a body do any owning? I think not. Is a mind or a soul something with the attribute of sex, which is biological? If so, what evidence and argument entails the conclusion? The grammatical genders masculine and feminine seem inappropriate in this context, but “its” would sidestep the problem of sex and gender.

Sixth, you would have a better argument if you asserted as a fundamental axiom that “I own my body”. The term, body, is unambiguous, even though it’s true that many of its details are yet mysterious. Unfortunately, there is a complication suggested by the work of Richard Feynman and others and, furthermore, the word “I’ is ambiguous. Does it refer to a mind only? To a soul only? To both mind and soul? To mind and body, but not soul? To soul and body, but not mind? To mind, soul and body? What’s missing is a complete, correct theory of personality, but libertarians don’t seem to be very interested in a basic problem of ontology. People who espouse “self-ownership” generally disregard ontology, or harbor childish superstitions, just as they disregard problems of how to make sense of a mind or soul as property.

Seventh, one might be a slave of the police state while outside of prison, but it doesn’t follow that being locked up in, say, a 5′ x 5′ cell is a perpetuation of enslavement. It could well be that the slavery ends when the imprisonment begins, though of course, as noted, this is not necessarily so. Suppose your body is locked up against your will in a 5′ x 5′ dungeon beneath your home. The body is imprisoned, and the will correlated with it, trapped with the body, unable to exercise dominion over material things outside the dungeon. (Ignore dreams while sleeping.) Escape is impossible, given the construction (welded steel walls, floor, ceiling, and door). There are no tools with which to attack the dungeon. You do no labor. There’s no slavery.

Eighth. “…AND would include the prison system and is NOT excluded from that system.” Definitional claim about what concept(s) the word slavery is to be assigned to.

Ninth. It’s not necessary to SHOUT (“ENFORCE”, “AND”, etc.) or to use Pretentious Capitalization (“Zero Government”). In English, emphasis in writing can be achieved with italicization.

“The prison system is mere slavery.” Don’t you think that’s a wee bit hyperbolic?

I should not allow Kunsthausmann to slip away without comment about slavery in America–let alone the system its leaders use to ENFORCE its unambiguous master slave relationships. Being a “drudge”/robot in the midst of a police AND prison state is hardly a criteria for slavery–it may be a result, or it may be a defense, or it may be stockholm syndrome but it is not a cause of slavery.

Underlying a Zero Government–as opposed to what we have–is a premise: that every human being is his or her self-owner. That is so self-evident as to be undeniable, and is therefore an axiom – for any attempt to deny it would require one to assume implicitly that it is true; the very act of asserting “I do not own my self” can not be performed, for if it were true one would have no right to assert any opinion about anything at all without one’s owner’s permission.

That fundamental axiom is however denied in practice every time ANY government does anything AND would include the prison system and is NOT excluded from that system.

This site Mises.org is replete with sources as to what a police state is and the prison state and enslavement that necessarily follows.

Don’t you think that’s a wee bit hyperbolic? Indeed, to call America’s PIC a system of corrections is ludicrous and the euphemistic stuff of tyrannies like those in Russia during the Soviet era. Nevertheless, to be a slave requires more than merely being held in bondage or, worse, to be falsely imprisoned. At minimum, one must be a drudge. But is that really true in general of the PIC? In fact, is enslavement, per se, the motive?

I think that a more reasonable assertion is that the American PIC is a system of petty vindictiveness and scapegoating, esp. for rightwing malcontents who crave victims to lash out at and to blame for their own unhappiness. It’s also a system for generating profits for businesspeople who supply prisons and for those who build them, not to mention to provide jobs for people likely to vote for the Democrats. (Is there a better explanation for the outlandish cost of operating American prisons?) I believe also that a few prisons are operated by private companies. We can also add the problem of wannabe hanging judges who lack free hands to execute as many convicts as they’d like to. They’d like to hang more, but they’re willing to take what they can get. Thus do we get many prisons jammed to the rafters.

Still, I don’t think any of this is sufficient to warrant calling it “mere slavery”, not even when it’s found that some of the prisoners are forced to perform labor. Surely, those individuals may be called slaves, but this fact hardly warrants a generalization much less trivialization of the other motives, e.g. the petty vindictiveness of Republicans and rightwing conservatives.

There are other shortcomings in Britt’s list that should be obvious to everyone who regards with contempt nanny statism, welfare statism, and statist money and banking. Other items to add to the list are:

-an intrusive, parental government with, for examples, welfare programs, health care programs, old age pension schemes, and programs to protect the government’s subjects from the consequences of their own vices.
-compulsory governmental schooling of children
-nationalized money and a banking industry cartelized by governmental intervention

It just so happens that “human rights” is leftwing code that’s used as a license for parental and nannylike government. I’ve just barely scratched the surface of Britt’s essay, but I hope that you get the point. Of course, these changes wouldn’t have been very popular among nattering, leftleaning nabobs during the hysteria-filled years of GWB’s presidency. Nor would they have been conducive to sales of “Laurence Britt’s novel, June, 2004” which “depicts a future America dominated by right-wing extremists”.

It just happens to be an embarrasing truth that fascism is not nearly so very different from communism as, say, a progressive or a Democrat likes to pretend. And communism is nothing if not militaristic. (See the 4th item of Britt’s list.) Nor is fascism right wing. Nor does fascism tend arise among right wingers, though fascists regularly seek out rightwingers for their support and attempt to drag them leftward. It worked this way for the NSDAP, and we see similar behavior from the neocons. Yet both the NSDAP and the neocons remained and do remain welfare statists, among other things. Their economic policies, like those of progressives, tend to bring about a merger of governement with business that preserves the superficial appearances of private property and private enterprise but which, if the progressive agenda were carried out to its conclusion, would have most of the reality of communism.

It should go without saying that if you want to stop fascism, neoconservatism, or national socialism and to eliminate the risks that they pose, then you need to undermine their institutional foundations such that progressivism, too, is undermined. The problem is that conservatives are always blocking correction, esp. when you dare to remind them that militarism is pernicious and that crony capitalism really is capitalism.

Imagine that it’s the evening of Tuesday, September 18th, 1787. You and I are at a pub in Philadelphia where we and a few others are reading Article VII, which was published the day before in Constitution for the United States of America.

Ok, so how can Article VII be relevant to “Establishment” if Article VII is itself not yet established? If, in the future, the Constitution were established, how thereafter could A7 be anything but superfluous? It’s a plain fact that that article has no business whatsoever being in the proposed constitution. Therefore the text of Article VII should have been omitted.

According to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, after the US invasion in 2001, Afghanistan now accounts for 93% of world’s total opium production. Production spiked 96% from 7,606 hectares in 2001, to 193,000 hectares in 2007. Helmand province in the south of Afghanistan, an area roughly about the size of West Virginia, now produces 50% of the world’s opium alone. The Taliban’s ban on farming the opium poppy before the US invasion was so effective, that Helmand province recorded no opium cultivation in the 2001. The previous year it had been the highest producing province, and currently is again. We are told that “the Taliban makes them do it” and we are also told that this drug money funds the Taliban.

Yet we protect its manufacture and give them resources to manufacture illegal drugs, that supposedly fund the same people were fighting.

Does anyone else see the obvious contradictions here?

Another point is that NATO controls all air traffic in Afghanistan, the Taliban has no airlift capability.

So, how are the Taliban moving all these drugs out of Afghanistan if the Taliban has no means to move it.

I guarantee you that 93% of the world’s opium does not make it out of Afghanistan by horseback over mountain ranges, especially when the countries borders are closely monitored for insurgent traffic by US drone aircraft.

You want answers? Look towards the CIA. Anybody remember the CIA’s proprietary airline Air America and its drug smuggling being exposed in congressional session, the Iran-Contra guns for drugs scandal and it being exposed to the public in congress?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin

So rulling axis controls $ 1 trilion industry, very primitive bussiness: extract something from plant, cook it and sell for highest possible profit, which is killing 100 000 people world wide. To keep drugs illegal in USA is giving them oportunities to spend money on war on drugs and support police state and they are putting white trash into few choices after keep them in school for fancy education: low wage job since 10 milions illegal workforce competition is kept in the country, food stamps and deperate life, join military, and those who do not fit can work in prison as slave labor Auschwitz style.
Contract Details:
Federal Prison Industries, Washington, D.C., was awarded on Dec. 17 a $10,623,220 firm-fixed-price contract. This award provides for outer tactical vests to Afghanistan. Work will be performed in Yazoo City, Miss., with an estimated completion date of June 30, 2011. One bid was solicited with one bid received. The U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., is the contracting activity (W91CRB-08-D-0045).

Total Contract Value: $10,623,220
http://www.militaryindustrialcomplex.com/contract_detail.asp?contract_id=14861

There is 600 000 drug related non violent prisoners.
Lawrence Britt, writing in Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2, summarizes fourteen common traits of a fascist society.

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause

4. Supremacy of the Military

5. Rampant Sexism

6. Controlled Mass Media

7. Obsession with National Security

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined

9. Corporate Power is Protected

10. Labor Power is Suppressed

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption

14. Fraudulent Elections

Federal government has not common law. So under what law they operate?
Prisoners are simply put on lawless status, riped off of all rights. Crime rate in prisons is so high, that even statistics do not include them. It is estimated that there are over 300,000 instances of prison rape a year. Scenario #1. A white middle-class man, let’s say a car dealer, is picked up for sale of cocaine, and is locked into a communal cell with four black inmates, all whom have done substantial amounts of time in prison. The white man is of small stature and has no street smarts. The chances of him being raped:. Damn near 100%.
http://www.loompanics.com/Articles/RapeInPrison.html

Prisoners do not even get paid minimum wage, so they can pay their claims outside like child support, court expenses etc. All profit goes to corporate frankenstein pocket.

Circle is closed.

Likewise, those voluntary associations which passed heinous rulings against individuals not seen as deserving of said punishment would loose its relevance as an agency in the service of its customers.

One thousand years of anarchy

And vices are not crimes.

Yeah.. I don’t think we’re talking about the same anarchism here. I’m talking about the system Rothbard first presented in his 1975 article “A society without a State” (see mises.org/journals/lf/1975/1975_01.pdf) and not some state of tribal warfare we had a few thousand years ago. In any case, glad you agree that anarchism would be very easy to collapse into Statism.

To repeat myself, I think we just need to go back to the Constitution, Ron Paul agrees with me.

Yes you can, thats what Ron Paul and other few congressman are trying to do. Join the fight.