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Free-Market Charity?

A realization hit me like a bolt of lightning after reading this quote by Murray Rothbard:

It is easy to be conspicuously 'compassionate' if others are being forced to pay the costs.

I thought of my own level of charity. Recently, I could only give items I no longer want and my volunteer time. If I could put a dollar figure on those things (which I really should be able to), they would be quite valuable compared to my current income.

And then I thought about my conversation with my employer today. She told me that she wished she could afford to pay me what I'm worth. Then isn't my employment - at least a portion of it - a type of charity:  a gift to a small business?

Practical Free-Market Business Resources

I hear and read a lot about resources that libertarians/anarcho-capitalists/sovereign individuals can use to avoid the government in their personal lives and finances. There is Bitcoin, search engines that mask your online ID, picking careers that don't require licenses, etc. But what can the average business owner, contractor, or run-of-the-mill employee to do?

I'm sure that Bitcoin is an option, and many other "off grid" resources and options, are viable for the average business person. But where is there practical advice for those resources? Where are they attractive for the average person?  Is this a failure of "marketing" in the libertarian community, or have I just not stumble across a resource yet?

Tribute and Petition

Does the state own everything? Are property rights dead? Do you have to petition the government for your rights to own certain things, go certain places, and do certain activities? Do you have to pay tribute for some of those same things?

When did we hand sovereignty to the state? "Consent of the governed?" Well I didn't consent to be governed, because I wasn't around when the government was formed, so I never handed over my sovereignty. So why do I pay tribute and petition for my own rights?

Class A people are philosophers. They are interested primarily in ideas, and behave in accordance with intellectually analyzed standards.

Class B people are warriors. They act primarily out of a sense of personal honor, and place it above all other considerations.

Class C people are plutonians. They are interested primarily in money. ...

Class D people are lemmings. ...

Class C people are goblins [now, zombies?] ...

- Jeff Cooper, as quoted in Combat Handguns, August 2008, from the 1992 Volume 12 "Gunsite Gargantuan Gossip"

I guess that we can say that Jeff Cooper is a Class A/B person, being labeled a mythical warrior philosopher. From my scant reading of his writings, I could fairly say that he was really more Class A than Class B, and he was a warrior philosopher - meaning that "warrior" is an adjective and Mr. Cooper was, in essence, a "philosopher" - rather than a philosopher warrior.

And in essence, it is the thinking person that rises above all others. But action should not be undersold.

Government Is The Bad Guy

"The conclusions seem inescapable that in certain circles a tendency has arisen to fear people who fear government. ... Fear of the state is in no sense subversive. It is, to the contrary, the healthiest political philosophy for a free people.”

– Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries, vol. 4, no. 16, December, 1996

 The state attempts to govern us, hence it's preferred name. To question the state's actions and motives is not alarmist, obstructionist, subversive, or treason. It is the supreme obligation of a sovereign individual.

And who is this sovereign individual? Well, you, like it or not.

Pragmatic Philosophy

The study of philosophy is pragmatic - well, can be pragmatic.

For example, with a foundation of self ownership and a process of logic, a student of philosophy would hopefully come to the conclusion that the most sustainable economic system is the free market. And not just a free market governed by a state, but a free market for everything - security, healthcare, food, housing, recreational goods, charity.

The Smallest Minority

I keep stumbling across The Smallest Minority blog. What sticks with me is this quote:

The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand

I guess that I'll finally put The Smallest Minority in My Blog List.

"Good" Government

The litmus test for "good" government action is: Does this action violate anyone's individual rights in the name of privileges or manufactured rights? Yes? Then the government has planned a crime. Conspiracy charges anyone?

One simple truth that could be endlessly reiterated, and effectively applied to nine-tenths of the statist proposals now being put forward or enacted in such profusion, is that the government has nothing to give to anybody that it doesn't first take from somebody else. In other words, all its relief and subsidy schemes are merely ways of robbing Peter to support Paul.

from Henry Hazlitt's Man vs. The Welfare State

One of the key words in that passage is "robbing." Government is literally stealing your money to finance social engineering.

And that's just government's redistribution schemes. The government has invented rights like the right to live in a state that bans prostitution, or "protects" us form unlicensed physicians. Those manufactured rights violate the rights of others to do whatever they want to do, as long as that work or behavior does not harm another person.

And control of careers leads to another form of theft. Government steals opportunities from individuals, by outright banning potential jobs or by making the cost of entry too high for many to attempt. Tack on to that the testing and interview requirements for many occupational licenses that limit additional numbers of individuals able to enter occupations beyond any manufactured "safety" standards, after individuals have already invested in government-mandated training to enter those occupations.

Your Bank is Bankrupt

I'm sorry to inform you of what you could figure out for yourself, if you put together the basic economics you were hopefully taught in high school.

There is a 99% chance that your bank is bankrupt. The same goes for any other deposit and lending institute you patronize. And if your bank existed before you were born, then it was bankrupt then, too. That is true because of the practice and policy of fractional-reserve lending.

For example, banks lend out ten-times what they have taken as deposits. So for every 1 dollar that a bank takes as a deposit, that bank lends out an additional 9 dollars. 

I'm not against fractional-reserve lending as a practice. It was done privately among Dutch (hopefully, I've got the nation right) goldsmiths, and they seemed to have done fine with the method.

A goldsmith knew the risk that depositors might show up one day with receipts for more gold than the goldsmiths had on hand. Either the goldsmith had insurance, backing from other goldsmith to cover a shortage, or an escape plan. The depositors knew that they had to trust the goldsmith. Were the depositors wise to fractional-reserve lending? Maybe, not at first, but that was the risk of putting ones commodity in another's hands.

What does bother me is this: With government backing, banks are allowed to exist in a condition that is insolvent. Banks cannot even satisfy the return of deposits to 20% of their depositors (Of course, they could get maybe that much from the Fed, which they can turnaround and lend about 8-times that amount, once they satisfy "calls" on deposits. But the Fed might balk at 30%.). The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) does "insure" each account for $100,000 (Oops, that was raised to $250,000 in 2008. Current depression - er, recession, er downturn, er collapse - fueling bank run fears?). But no private insurance company would take such risks of insuring businesses that are so close to failure.  A private insurance company would risk going bankrupt itself. 

No, only a government "corporation" with unlimited supplies of tax revenues and manufactured money could back such insolvency. And in the end, citizens of the United States - and the world - will pay, when inflation responds to all that extra money.