A fascinating report by Jeff Porten in TidBITS on the 16th Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference. An amusing bit comes with his description of a speech given by Stewart Baker, Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security:
He opened his speech by asking how many audience members considered themselves to be libertarians; he then asked how many people had personally stored 72 hours’ worth of food, water, and battery power to maintain themselves in case of emergency. He continued, “Who are you counting on to save you? We all don’t like the government until we need them.” Later, he said he should have amended this list to include a personal firearm.
He stated that it’s not usually the government who saves you in a catastrophe, and spoke highly of residents of Houston, Texas who self-evacuated after having seen what happened to the people who stayed behind in New Orleans. The role of the government was to rescue the people who couldn’t do so themselves, and Baker personally advocated the use of individual solutions and non-governmental organizations.
Coming as this was from someone with a major leadership role in homeland security, his message was poorly received by much of the crowd. Post-speech discussion debated whether Baker had seen the news reports of Houston evacuees stranded on the roads leaving town, and if he expected individuals and nonprofits to build their own infrastructure. The overall impression his speech gave is that in the event of a disaster, we should expect to be on our own for a while; I don’t think that this is the general impression that DHS attempts to convey.
What I find so amusing by this account, besides someone from the DHS frankly saying you shouldn’t count on the government, is the way the “libertarian” audience seemed quite shocked by the idea that they should take care of themselves in a crisis. The rest of the piece shows similar confusion from these so-called libertarians. The author of the piece may have given away the game here: “The question comes down to how each of us defines the parameters for important yet vague notions like ‘freedom’ and ‘privacy.’”
Libertarians should not find “freedom” and “privacy” such vague notions. At this conference with many advocates for civil liberties I’m afraid we have the common case of folks with libertarian instincts sailing without a rudder. The rudder they need is property. Ludwig von Mises wrote that “The program of liberalism, therefore, if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production”. With a relentless focus on private property these well-meaning advocates of freedom and privacy might find that much confusion about privacy in relation to corporations vs. governments and how technology can be a liberating force rather than an Orwellian one would clear up. And better strategies for achieving their goals would also present themselves.
In the same passage, Mises goes on to say that “All the other demands of liberalism result from this fundamental demand [for private property].” Those who focus on some of these other demands without a firm grounding in the fundamental demand are doomed to intellectual and strategic confusion.
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Maybe someone in the audience should have explained that they might be better prepared if the government did not steal billions upon billions for these tasks that private individuals and organizations could do themselves.
Statists always revert back to look what is seen and what I am doing. They never address the fact that they stole the resources that the individual would have used to help him/her self in the first place.
He thinks everyone should have a personal firearm? I heard the National Guard was confiscating firearms from individuals in New Orleans.
It’s bad enough that the state steals resources individuals would need to establish more robust preparedness measures. What’s far worse is their use of force to monopolize the emergency services individuals would otherwise create – police, emergency response, insurance, roads, levees, even education.
Libertarians should not expect to take care of themselves in a crisis. With the division of labor, we should expect a broad range of private security and emergency services to choose from at market prices. The only reason we should be storing supplies is that the only firm that is not prohibited by the state from providing these services – the state itself – has set its price at zero, creating predictable shortages of emergency services for all of us.
He thinks everyone should have a personal firearm?
Most rank-and-file law enforcement guys think it’s a good idea. They know perfectly well that they cannot protect victims of a crime, but can only come later and try to catch the criminal. It is surprising to hear that from a higher-up, though.
I heard the National Guard was confiscating firearms from individuals in New Orleans.
Did they go around with a printout from the gun sales registration database? If no, anyone could simply lie to them regarding the posession of a firearm. Better yet, own more than one, and keep some firearms well-hidden, so if they take what they see, you’re still protected.
As usual, he missed the entire point. Of course people look to the government to help them out – that’s what you’ve promised to do in exchange for over 30% of their income! Of course, they have no choice about the price they’re paying, but that’s a different story.
What he failed to address is that the government puts people in a position to be at risk in the first place. Subsidized flood insurance, interstates, etc. all encourage people to live in places that are risky for economic or physical reasons. In the absence of state subsidies, people would live in safer areas or build more robust systems for dealing with the environment in riskier areas – they would know that they are responsible for themselves. Instead, we have the government promising to always be the white knight who can solve any and every problem in order to justify ever higher expenditures. And now they complain that people want to hold them to their promises? That’s rich…
Just for the record, the conference was not specifically libertarian and I don’t self-identify as such, although it’s likely that the initial show of hands was far greater than you’d see in a random sampling of the population.
The part about guns being confiscated was brought up in the Q&A, and it summarized the criticism of the speech: for DHS to say “you’re on your own”, when it is very clear that post-catastophe conditions do not allow for stockpiling of weapons and food, seemed to us to be an abdication of responsibility. But of course I’m not speaking for the entire audience.
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