Atanamis archive at Zeal For Truth

Author Archive for Atanamis

Health Care Is Already Socialized. The Real Question: Should It Be Expanded?

Published by Atanamis February 24, 2010 in Current Events. 28 Comments

The argument over the health care reform package being pushed by Democrats has been over whether it would make health care in the US socialized, and whether US government control over health care would reduce costs, increase coverage, and increase quality of care. The most fundamental flaw in the logic is that the government already pays 46% of all health care spending in the United States. The question really doesn’t seem to be whether we should have socialized health care, but if we should expand it. (And yes, I would agree we have socialized national defense and law enforcement, and personally don’t think there is inherently anything wrong with government run programs that really are better than privately run programs.)

One commonly mentioned observation about health care in the United States is that we pay a large amount for the care we receive compared to what is paid in other nations. While people for other countries will come here for the best surgeons and specialized care available, the average person in the United States does indeed pay FAR more for health care than in other developed countries. In fact, some estimates suggest that $1.2 trillion of the $2.2 trillion we spend on health care is unnecessary spending. The primary causes of overspending listed are up to $210 billion on unnecessary testing and $210 billion on claim processing. Add in ignoring doctor’s orders and inefficient technology for another $188 billion combined, and we have a lot of inefficiencies that should be easy to address by a unified health care provider like the United States government (allowing them to provide more efficient health care).

In fact, assuming the savings are equal between government programs and private programs, you could double the benefit of government health care purely by addressing inefficiencies. Throw in fraud and other problems with the government program, and we should be able to greatly reduce national health care costs with no changes to existing law. I wouldn’t even think you’d need to make a law to spread these initiatives into the private sector. A first step here would be working with insurance companies to derive a generic, simple, and efficient claims processing standard that provides the information needed by each company to process claims. If the major companies were in agreement, doctors would simply drop any insurer who didn’t adopt the standard. Developing clear guidelines for testing would also seem like something that could be achieved cooperatively. Cash for testing should, of course, always be available as a safeguard.

To summarize: we already have socialized health care, and inefficient socialized health care at that. If the government wants to convince me that they should become a single payer, they need to start by getting their own house in order. Once Medicare is so good people want to buy in and so efficient we can afford to let them, we can talk about making a public option available to everyone.

SEC blames victims for being abused

Published by Atanamis February 4, 2010 in Politics. 0 Comments

Bank of America executives not being held liable for their fraud

In late 2008, Bank of America executives decided that they wanted to acquire Merill Lynch. To approve the large buyout though, they needed the approval of the shareholders (the people who actually own Bank of America). At the time, they were aware that Merill would be losing significantly more money than the market expected exacerbated by huge bonuses being paid to “essential staff” (many of whom left the company soon after anyway). Whether the buyout was desirable or now is definitely debatable, and the executives at Bank of America still claim to have done the right things in buying out Merill.

Investigations conducted by the SEC make is clear that this information was deliberately and illegally withheld from shareholders to distort the vote. Only time will tell if buying Merill was a good decision, but the act of fraud committed is not really up for debate. In early 2009, these same executives threatened the US government late in the process that they would back out if not given subsidies to protect Bank of America from the risks of the buyout. Clearly if that were such a significant concern that it required blackmailing the US government, it should have been presented to the shareholders before the vote.

Nobody really seems to contest the above facts of the case. Where there is more doubt is what should happen as a result. Last September, the FTC proposed that due to the fraud Bank of America should pay $33 million in fines with no acknowledgment of wrongdoing. This agreement between the SEC and Bank of America executives was rejected by a federal judge:

The judge accused Bank of America and the S.E.C. of concocting the settlement to effectively absolve themselves of further responsibility.

“The S.E.C. gets to claim that it is exposing wrongdoing on the part of the Bank of America in a high-profile merger,” he wrote, and “the Bank’s management gets to claim that they have been coerced into an onerous settlement by overzealous regulators.”

The ruling echoes a long-standing criticism that the S.E.C. has largely failed to prosecute cases against corporate executives, opting for quick settlements in which companies themselves are penalized instead of their leaders.

The criticism is that base on fraud committed by executives against the owners of the company for which they work (the stockholders), the company (and therefore the shareholders who own it) was being punished while the executives avoided any admission of wrongdoing. One would hope that the SEC would learn their lesson, and do things better. Unfortunately, they seem to have completely and entirely missed the point altogether. Their new settlement agreement is to just penalize the victims of this fraud MORE, by fining the company more money:

As Mr. Cuomo was announcing his lawsuit, the S.E.C. released details of a settlement with Bank of America on two separate cases. The bank agreed to pay a $150 million fine and strengthen its corporate governance rules

At least now the company is agreeing to strengthen its rules, right? That must mean that they are admitting they did something wrong? Nope:

“The evidence demonstrates that Bank of America and its executives, including Ken Lewis and Joe Price, at all times acted in good faith and consistent with their legal and fiduciary obligations,” Mr. Stickler said in an e-mail message.

This email message was in regard to a lawsuit on behalf of shareholders being filed by attorney general Andrew Cuomo of New York, stating:

“They understated the problems, the losses to the shareholders, they overstated their ability to terminate the arrangement to the federal government to secure $20 billion in TARP money, and that is just a fraud,” Mr. Cuomo said. “The Bank of America and its officials defrauded the government and taxpayers at a very precarious time.”

Again, the facts of what happen don’t really seem to be in question. The only reason Cuomo even needs to be involved here is that the SEC is unwilling to even pursue terms that a federal judge will approve. The SEC isn’t acting as a regulatory agency, but as an advocate for Bank of America trying to get the federal judge to agree to blame a victim for their abuse and penalize that victim for the crime committed against them. The Bank of America executives are demonstrating complete lack of willingness to honestly manage the company on the behalf of its owners, and should all be fired by those owners. A company manager who provides false information to the owner and then seeks to penalize the owner for that fraud should not be trusted to run a company.

TARP Bailout and Government Productivity

Published by Atanamis December 9, 2009 in General. 28 Comments

People complaining about government spending will often make the statement that government doesn’t grow the economy, it only consumes resources. The question that this has brought to my mind is why that would be the case. The common answer is that government doesn’t have to run things effectively because it is a non-profit funded by taxes. However, the fact that an organization has a non-profit based revenue stream does not mean it can’t still be effective. In fact, stock selling is a way that most companies raise capital without selling a product. In exchange for a partial ownership in the company, people contribute money for no actual product. The only reason any company has to be effective is because its owners require it to be effective. In this analogy, government is obviously owned by the taxpayers (who in a democracy also do so in exchange for a vote in how the company is run) and therefore if it is not effective in its goals the cause isn’t any level of inherent inability but rather a lack of expectation of effectiveness by the owners (voters/taxpayers).

The TARP bailout is an interesting example of government ineffectiveness. A year ago banks were in serious trouble due to poor lending policies having caused them to become overextended. Worse, because large banks were failing nobody wanted to lend money to allow them time to unwind their mistakes. This was potentially a huge opportunity for anyone with access to vast amounts of debt. Warren Buffett at the time claimed that someone with access to hundreds of billions at a low interest rate could make massive profits by assisting banks in extracting themselves from the mess. There are two things that a large stable government can do better than most private sector institutions. One is apply physical force to a situation, and the other is borrow large sums of money at lower than normal interest rates. The TARP bailout should have been an opportunity for the government to not only avert economic turmoil, but to do so in a way that presented a longer term profit rather than a loss.

So why are we now hearing that the profits from the loans aren’t even expected to exceed the losses? The answer is because we as owners of the government haven’t expected or demanded it, and the board of directors we hired are stable in their jobs even if they lose us money. The majority of banks are doing much better now, and are repaying their emergency loans. Those that are not doing well are going under, and the government is going unpaid. Why is this? Because the money paid out in emergency funding was often in the form of stock purchases or low priority debt in a bankruptcy. This seems the exact opposite of what one would do when loaning emergency funding to a troubled company. The ONLY form of funding that should be provided to a troubled company would be the kind that gets first priority in a bankruptcy, and all loans should have been at interest rates that more than covered the cost of the program.

People from a more “progressive” standpoint will tend to suggest that government spending should not be intended to be profitable, but that it is charitable spending that we should expect to never see a monetary return for. The problem with this approach is that it leaves no way to determine the effectiveness of the actions taken. Looking at the TARP loans, we have no way of knowing today whether the money was well spent or wasted, because its direct economic return was negative. Had it been profitable, it would have demonstrated that the money loaned out was multiplied by the borrower to create more wealth that was used to make the loan. When the borrow doesn’t pay back as much as was loaned, there is no way to know if what was done was positive.

I’d like to see this pattern of lending used in more cases as well. Someone needing health care might not be able to afford it out of pocket, but they are more likely to be at least a little more responsible in their spending if they know they will be expected to at least try to repay the costs at some later point. Obviously it doesn’t make sense to crush someone struggling financially under monthly payments, but once we help them back up doesn’t it make sense to prove we’ve actually made a difference by expecting repayment? The same is true of unemployment benefits and other welfare. Only expecting repayment on an “as able” basis is charitable, but not requiring any kind of repayment encourages abuse.

To summarize, I really don’t see any good reason why government CAN’T be effective, other than the fact that we don’t require it to be so. Using a more “corporate” governance policy for government charitable spending seems like it would be a good way to start.

How Do We Determine If Soldiers Are Worthy Of Honor?

Published by Atanamis November 16, 2009 in Politics and Philosophy. 17 Comments

When considering how to view soldiers, it is important to look at both why they join, what they do, and what their nation asks of them. A soldier who joins in expectation that he is putting his life on the line for protection of others should be given credit for that willingness to sacrifice, even if the nation for which he serves uses him for unsavory purposes. A soldier who knowingly commits acts of atrocity should be scorned even if he did so for supposedly noble purposes or at the orders of a superior. In no case should a soldier be “worshiped” or considered to be above reproach, but neither should they be condemned purely because you disagree with policy decisions by their nation.

It is often hard to determine why someone joins the military. Someone who is forced to join to escape prison though clearly isn’t doing so out of an interest in serving others by putting their life on the line. Many people who join militaries do so though in the belief that doing so will protect the safety or liberty of their family, friends, or neighbors. Even if one believes this motivation is naive, the sacrifice it implies is significant. The Bible indicates that there is no greater love than to lay one’s life down for another. Someone who joins purely out of a desire to inflict harm on others though is not worthy of respect for their joining a military. Most who would call for soldiers to be honored likely would NOT call for them to be honored if it was known that they had done so purely out of a blood lust.

A soldier potentially takes that risk in joining a military. Of course, the above quality could potentially also apply to people we might consider terrorists, to those who commit war crimes, or to those who otherwise engage in acts that are unsupportable. No soldier who engages in improper conduct should be honored. The question of what consitutes “improper” is probably the biggest concern for those who oppose honoring troops. Is engaging in an unjust war improper? What about torturing an enemy who has critical information? Some might argue that there are no rules in love or war, and that any action that helps one achieve their goals is acceptable. This is generally the idea behind the view that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. In fact though, each man is responsible for his own actions and cannot beg off on having been given orders to engage in wrongful behavior.

The specifics of what is considered wrongful behavior are likely to be an area of contention, but I would not hold a soldier responsible for actions outside their direct control. This would include decisions like where their military is fighting and with what operational goals. An individual soldier cannot necessarily be expected to be familiar with the larger details of a conflict they are engaged in, or to refuse to be deployed to a given conflict. (That said, a military ought to strive to keep soldiers informed and to allow them to opt out of conflict if they feel strongly that it is unjust.) They do have control over their direct actions, and should not deliberately target civilians or engage in deliberate torture of enemies (regardless of legal combatant status). Targetting soldiers (who have not surrendered) in the case of a war for legitimate reasons is acceptable, since those soldiers have specifically identified themselves as targets.

The final condition to be considered is the cause of the nation for which a soldier fights. It is illegitimate for a soldier to intentionally join a military which they know exists for immoral purposes. If I know my nation is engaging in a genocide, I should not join its military. This raises the question of what constitutes “legitimate” use of a military. The only legitimate use of a military is to remove physical threats to oneself or others. It is always morally legitimate to respond with lethal force if someone is threatening your life or that of a non-aggressor party, regardless of whether one is in a police or military force. If someone points a gun at my wife, I’ll kill them. I can also do this if someone is threatening my neighbor with lethal force. Nations (as gatherings of people) have the right to do the same thing.

A Moderate Proposal for Health Care Reform

Published by Atanamis October 13, 2009 in General. 0 Comments

The health care debate has been one of extremism on both sides, with nobody really seeking to find a middle ground. This article will attempt to do exactly that.

Emergency Health Care
One thing many people opposed to universal health care fail to recognize is that we actually already have it. Any person can walk into any emergency room at any time and cannot be refused service for lack of ability to pay. This law has directly resulted in many emergency rooms going out of business since they have been forced to provide health care to patients with no ability to pay. We really do have to examine this area first to determine whether we view health care as a “right” or a “privilege”. Those who truly view it as a privilege ought to oppose this existing requirement, and can accurately point out that it is greatly increasing the cost of emergency services for everyone. Since I haven’t heard much complaint about it though even from those strongly opposed to current reforms, I would assume that most Americans are in favor of mandatory emergency care.

That said, there is still the problem of who pays for it. Under current laws, hospitals are required to simply eat the cost of emergency health care. This appears to be a fundamentally unfair requirement. If the federal government is going to require hospitals to provide emergency care, the very least they can do is to ensure that compensation of expenses is provided. For this reason, I would be willing to support a “mandatory emergency insurance” program enforced on all citizens, legal residents, and legal visitors. People from all three groups will be granted access to our emergency services if needed, and should be able to guarantee payment. This insurance program doesn’t necessarily have to mean that the insurance company covers all expenses, but rather that the insurance company guarantees that the hospital gets paid. Individual contracts between patient and insurer would determine whether the insurer pays out of pocket, with a “health savings loan” to be repaid by the patient, or from a “health savings account” owned by the patient. Obviously, the premium cost of the first would be the highest and that of the last would be lowest. Even in the last case though, the insurer would have an obligation to work out with the patient how any costs in excess of the account balance.

Health Care for Minors
The next area of likely agreement is with regard to children. In the US, we consider those under 18 years old to be legally unable to make their own decisions, delegating these decisions to the parent with some supervision from the state. Most children have little to no choice whether they have medical insurance, and again most Americans would argue that children should not be refused medical treatment by hospitals. Statistics show that around 8 million children are uninsured. One assumes that most people would support programs to insure these children, and in fact “Nearly three quarters of uninsured children are eligible for health insurance coverage under Medicaid or SCHIP. The remaining uninsured children are not eligible primarily because their family incomes exceed program eligibility levels (Figure 3).” This leaves only 2 million kids in non-poor families uninsured.

This gives us another low hanging fruit that is being intentionally ignored in the current debate. Rather than arguing about universal health care for adults, why don’t we first enroll the 6 million uninsured children who are eligible for government care? This can be done through a combination of health care drives where we pull together all the people needed to enroll these children and explain the benefits to their parents and by simplifying the enrollment process. No major legislation or national debate needed. For the remaining 2 million children, I would be willing to support either mandating that they be insured or extending government programs to cover them.

Insurance for the Rest
Getting clearly specified preventative care should be a pre-requisite for all insurance. A great deal of the expense in insuring people results from not catching problems early, and insurance companies have a (moral) right to try to reduce their expenses in this way. The easiest way is to just tack the cost of a yearly visit onto all policies, and provide the patient with a mandatory appointment if they fail to make their own by a pre-determined date. Insurance companies would be allowed to set their own rules about this though, since their interest is in reducing total cost. If a company decides yearly visits are unnecessary, they wouldn’t have to pay for them. In fact, a more piece-meal approach to insurance is desireable all around. Insurance as a concept is really only useful for unlikely disasters, since it is only in those cases that the average person can ever expect to get more out than they put in. That being the case, other than mandatory checkups as described above most insurance should probably be high deductible insurance.

Insurance that kicks in at 5 or 10 thousand dollars has always been cheaper, and allows people to have help when they really need it without paying inflated premiums when they don’t. Current estimates of the uninsured are around 48 million. Subtract the 8 million kids we already discussed above, the 6 million people who aren’t here legally to begin with (but will still get ER care), 9 million making more than $75k, and another 6 million non-minors who also qualify for existing benefits to get 21 million (note that these groups may have a little overlap). What would it cost for this group to get a high deductible plan? Maybe those worried about their status would be better off creating a medical relief charity to buy them coverage than trying to use tax dollard to do so?

All such insurance should be owned by the individual, though it can be purchased through collaborative negotiating groups if desired. Tax benefits that favor employer based coverage should be ended or shifted to cover all insurance plans whether through an employer or not. By having the plan owned by the individual, one wouldn’t experience changes in insurance due to job changes. (That said, an employer might still offer negotiated rates from insurers, though those rates would not change due to a future employment change.)

Health Savings and Health Loan Accounts
The final piece needed is coverage for the expenses between the mandatory office visits and the point where the high deductible insurance kicks in. The best place for this is in health savings accounts, which could remain tax exempt to encourage contribution. Companies wanting to attract talent could also provide automatic or matching funding, much like they do with 401k plans. (My own company currently provides $1500 a year in a health savings account to anyone choosing a high deductible plan.) Throw in a loan program for those who encounter expenses before accumulating enough savings, and you have a nearly complete program.

Conclusion
The above provides health care for almost everyone with very few changes to the existing system. Most people can probably agree about the children, and the ER coverage ought to have been part of whatever bill mandated that ERs take all comers (so you should either support the coverage or oppose the mandate). Encouraging a greater focus on savings and responsible lending should also be acceptable to everyone. I understand the last part is likely contentious, but it really is the best solution for everyone else. The only people whose needs WOULDN’T be met by the above are those with extreme long term illnesses that have an early onset. For these people, the high deductible every year would be a problem, but my hope would be that these people can be addressed through friends, family, charitable organizations, or even government welfare.

Modern Education Based on Poor System

Published by Atanamis September 30, 2009 in General and Essays. 17 Comments

On our forums recently, the following was posted (to the “weekly links” thread):

Written by: Jew

This is just great. Not content with trying to tackle the biggest, most complex problems in the world (peace in the Middle East, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and oh, health care in America), the President has decided to meddle with schools. President Obama proses longer schools days and shorter summer vacation.

No thanks, Mr. President. I’ve been to school before. School days at the public school are too long, not too short. Students spend too much time in class, not too little. Summer vacations should be longer.

I was home schooled. My school days were about 3 hours long, I could complete a full school year’s worth of work in 4 months, and I graduated ahead of most honors/AP students in terms of academic courses and college credit. Each day I would read my lessons, ask any questions I had of my teachers (my parents), and begin working on homework. Any questions my teachers could not answer they found someone who could. Any problems I got wrong we reviewed together to determine why I had gotten it wrong, and then I did more problems that focused on making sure I got it right in the future.

I will admit that I started out a privileged middle class kid with well educated parents and a decent IQ (sub genius though), but in my experience most time spent is classrooms in a massive waste of everyone’s time. I have had ONE class that made effective use of everyone’s time. The professor would walk into class every day, ask if anyone had questions from yesterdays reading, and after answering all questions would hand out a quiz. After the quiz, he would present the next reading assignment, expand on any subject he felt was inadequately covered by the textbook, and dismiss class. The tests were a concatenation of the quizzes. If you didn’t read the material and ask good questions, you failed.

ANY class where students don’t read ahead before class is a waste of time. Why should I have someone with 20 years of education wasting time teaching me what I can read out of a book? Why do we all have to be present in the same room for a lecture, when he could just record it at his leisure and email me a link? Only interactive sessions between a prepared class and a knowledgeable teacher makes any sense. The problem with our school system isn’t time spent in class, it is a fundamentally broken educational model combined with lack of expectations by teachers and parents. Until parents become more involved in their children’s education, our test scores will continue to drop.

The current system requires teachers to have extensive training in things like crowd management and presentation skills that simply shouldn’t be required to teach at the elementary or high school levels. In fact, the ONLY time such skills are needed is when presenting new information that has never been published! This level of learning only takes place at post-graduate levels, meaning that even bachelor’s level teachers don’t need it. At all lower levels, students should be expected to work individually on their subject and request help on an “as needed” basis. Students that require a lot of individual attention wouldn’t have learned from a lecture regardless, and those who don’t can race ahead of their peers

The “lecture” format simply holds back advanced students while failing to help those with greater need. With greater parental involvement, it becomes possible to have a rotating group of “tutors” for every 2-3 students who can escalate any questions they don’t know the answers to. No special knowledge is needed to do this! In colleges, many schools will allow any student who has taken a class to “TA” the class, and many students will attest that they learned more from their TA than from the professor. This is because the TA is doing REAL education by answering specific questions that a prepared student has come to after first struggling the concepts to be learned, while the professor is doing traditional “education” by lecturing to a group of unprepared people who cannot reasonably be expected to retain much of what they are hearing. Why is is that we insist on doing the one that doesn’t work, instead of making a greater effort to do the one that does work?

Why Government Programs Typically Don’t Work

Published by Atanamis April 6, 2009 in General and Politics. 2 Comments

As I have state previously, government is nothing but a corporation which utilizes physical force for causes it considers “just” [a] [b]. As such, there is no reason why a government should be any better or worse at competing in a market than any other player. Those who pay into a government (through taxes or service fees) are the customers, those who control the government (through elections) are the owners.

That said, why do I so often take the position that government run services are generally inefficient and ineffective? It is (only) partly due to the source of the funding. In most government services, the funding is not provided primarily by those benefiting from the service. This means that a government service can offer an equivalent service for an equivalent price to a “for profit” business without being as efficient. This is because the gap in costs is paid from other sources (such as taxes). This problem isn’t exclusive to government, but is shared by all charitable (often non-profit) businesses that take donations in exchange for providing a service to third parties. In the case of charitable businesses, those providing the funding are expected to keep an eye on the cost differential between what the charity they are funding requires to provide a service, and what that same service would cost from an equivalent non-charitable business.

Some level of increase is acceptable since some costs are incurred to ensure that the recipients of the service meet the criteria set by the charity, and more is spent collecting additional donations. If this overhead becomes too high though, competing charities will normally rise up which will offer the same subsidized service to the target audience for lower donation sizes. Once such options become available, donors will begin to migrate to the new charity forcing the original to tighten expenses or lose support. Unfortunately, government funded charitable operations often are not exposed to this competition of charities, and continue to see their overhead costs rise until they are extremely inefficient at providing charitable service. An improvement to this system would be to take out bids for providing the desired service, which would include penalties if the service was provided to people who do not fit the criteria or refused to those who do.

The other major issue with government funded charities is that government often abuses its ability to use force to prevent competition. An example of this would be the Post Office. The government prevents by force any organization providing first class mail service other than the US Postal Service. This means that even if there existed a company capable of providing universal mail delivery services for a price far lower than the US postal service, they would be prevented by the force of the US Government from doing so. Morally, I believe the use of force is justified to protect the life, liberty, and property of another person from misuse against their permission by another person. This criteria cannot include prohibiting the delivery of envelopes by a company in competition to the US government. There may exist a legitimate need for a government run delivery service to process government business related deliveries. If such a delivery service wishes to process the delivery of private envelopes though, it ought to compete on the free market against other providers of such services. Perhaps there exist one or more companies that can be contracted to provide the security, reliability, and universality demanded by the US government for its own business. If so, there may be no need for a government run delivery service.

This second separation from the market is the more worrisome of the two. In the case of services like universal healthcare, separation of payer and beneficiary is actually the point. Those supporting such a measure WANT to finance the care of others, even if the total costs increase as a result. There is danger in costs skyrocketing out of control, but as some validly point out US costs are already far higher than they should be due to lack of preventative care. Allowing such care to be obtained for no cost to the recipient could well drive down costs. The scary part comes from the use of force to prevent seeking private care. If the government provided service does not have to compete with services provided by other services for quality, there is no competitive pressure to maintain high quality. While there is no inherent reason why a monopoly imposed by force CANNOT provide consistently high quality, there is also no alternative if it fails to do so. Since all services tend to have poor spots in areas, there is no way of knowing whether your service is lagging because a certain area cannot be done better or because there is no competition showing how it can be done better.

So long as a government obtains its resources in a moral manner (though payments by taxpayers service fee payers who intentionally request the services it is providing), there is no moral reason why it cannot provide any type of service its owners (voting citizens) choose to provide. The voters should demand that overhead costs of providing a charitable service are kept to a minimal level while still providing the quality of service for the target group desired, and get clear updates regarding the overhead amount paid. Government should NEVER use force to impose anticompetitive restrictions that are not based on its own property rights, or the rights of others to life, liberty, and property.

Where Anarchists Respond Wrongly to Government

Published by Atanamis March 9, 2009 in Essays, Politics and Philosophy. 5 Comments

In my last article, I argued that in anarchist terminology,government is a corporation. I received a lot of comments that argued that the actions taken by government are immoral. These include theft of land (government claims ownership to all land in their borders using the anarchist definition of “own”), opt out contracts (taxes for rent/services) rather than opt in, and abuse of force against the human rights of individuals. What anarchists refuse to understand is that adopting anarchism won’t change this, because we already live in an anarchy.

Defining the Relationship Between Anarchy and Government
Anarchy as a modern philosophy doesn’t mean a complete lack of rules or structure. Instead, it is based on the assumption that a person cannot have their physical liberty, life or property restricted without that person’s agreement unless another person’s rights are being infringed upon against their will. In such cases, force can legitimately be used by any party, preferably using an arbitrator which both sides agree is neutral to resolve the dispute.

There is no “higher authority” of the majority to tell any individual what to do with their life, property, or personal efforts. The common argument AGAINST anarchism is that without government, corporations will abuse their capability of using force to abuse the individual. The common response to this is that just as corporations can be abusive, so can government. Where both sides drop the ball is in realizing that there is nothing “magical” about a government. A government IS a large corporation, and like any other corporation it can sometimes abuse its power.

Protection Rackets in Our Current Anarchy
Anarchists like to suggest that without government, people would contract with private companies to get their personal security. The “free market” would meet their needs. The problem with this is that the market (whether free or not) is ALREADY meeting the needs of individuals for freedom, in the form of huge corporations called governments. Individuals often choose to remain customers of these corporations despite regular abuses due to their desire for the services they offer.

I have suggested in the past (on our forums) that anarchist protection services would act like mafia “protection rackets”. I was told that this would be prevented in an anarchist society by “security insurance companies”. All of this is based though on the assumption that we don’t already live in an anarchist world. In fact, we do! Government ARE the protection rackets I suggested would result. Their use of force IS the consolidation of violence into the biggest and most powerful wielders. And nowhere to be seen are the “insurance companies” I was told the free market would demand.

Truly “Free” Markets Are A Myth
The fact is that there is no such thing as a “free” market. Force is ALWAYS a possibility, and unless both parties have agreed to a common wielder of force stronger than either of them they are subject to the other party deciding to implement their own force. This force then sets the rules for the market, but is the only alternative to both sides setting the rules based on what they have the physical power to implement. This might not be a moral result, but it is a human result.

The problem with anarchism as a modern theory is that like “true” communism it relies on fundamental changes in human nature. Man will no more voluntarily respect the rights of others than they will voluntarily seek to maximize their contribution to society. Individuals MUST band together for personal and corporate protection, and in doing so they ALWAYS end up in a group that commits immoral acts as well. The answer is not to dissolve such groups or demonize their existence, but to try to work with them to cease committing immoral acts and to compensate their past victims.

Anarchists cannot consistently call for the dissolution of governments while upholding the right of individuals to form corporations and use force for self protection. What they CAN do consistently is call for governments as corporate entities to abide by the same moral rules they would hold any other corporation to. They should not be “anti-government”, but rather “anti-immoral corporation”.

Describing Government in Anarcho-Capitalist terms

Published by Atanamis February 18, 2009 in General. 33 Comments

I have recently become convinced that modern governments are in fact consistent with Anarcho-Capitalist ideals, they just don’t understand it. To demonstrate this, I will describe government in terms familiar to anarcho-capitalists:

Assumptions:

1) Anarcho-capitalists allow groups of people to form corporations, which can own property.

The concept of a corporation is essential to understand modern governments. In a corporation, many owners collectively fund and own a company. The company can then act in many ways as a person, owning property, producing products, entering contracts, etc. It is the corporation that has customers and liabilities. In many cases, stock holders in a corporation may also be customers of that corporation. The key elements for this article are that corporations can own property, and that corporations pursue whatever goals are desired by the owners of the corporation (who generally can vote on the goals of the corporation and the corporation’s board of directors who select the top positions in the corporation).

2) The owner of a property is allowed to set the price of rent, and to evict people who do not pay rent, even if that person was born on the property.

A primary complaint of anarcho-capitalists is that people to not “opt in” to government. This is categorically not true though, since most Western governments provide full freedom for people to leave their countries. If I own a property which I rent to a tenant, the fact that the tenant has a child while on that property does not obligate me to give free housing to the child. Particularly if the child becomes an adult and their parent dies, I have no obligation to give the child “free housing” or to help them find another place to live if they can’t or won’t pay rent. In fact, I have a right to seek compensation if they continue to use my property without paying rent.

3) The owner of a property has the right to demand payment for the use of services provided on their property

If I own a piece of property and provide security guards to protect those on my property, I have the right to demand that those coming on to my property pay a fee for that protection. That fee can come in the form of a one time payment, or I can charge a certain percentage of the person’s profits in exchange for the service. If the person does not agree to my terms, they are free to leave my property. If they do agree and then later refuse the determined payment, I have a right to seek compensation for the unpaid services.

Conclusions:
I’m sure everyone reading this sees where it is going. Using anarcho-capitalist definitions, modern governments “own” all land in they control. Like any corporation, they claimed unused land, and can buy or sell that land as they see fit. They could choose to sell land to individual buyers, but historically have only “truly” bought/sold land to other “governments” (corporations which sell the use of force). Anyone choosing to live in one has a moral obligation to respect the property rights of the government as a corporation and to pay rent if required. Any business choosing to organize under that government’s legal structure is also a customer deliberately seeking the services offered by the government.

The US government is also a corporation, owned by the citizens who get to choose the goals and leaders of their company. Like any land owner, the US government has the right to evict anyone for any reason it chooses. Like any seller of services, the US government must provide a satisfactory service to its customers (renters and corporations), or it will see them seek out competitive alternatives. Like any service provider, it has the right to charge fees on any calculation it chooses (profit taxes or payroll taxes). Like any owned entity, it has to report to its owner regarding its goals and leadership (elections).

The US is the epitomy of anarcho-capitalist ideals. Their only real complaint is that the US as a corporation chooses not to sell its land to individual buyers, but since anarcho-capitalism holds sacred the rights of a property owner to do as they wish with their own property they have no moral right to criticize what “US Government Incorporated” chooses to do with its assets. As partial owners, they have every right to suggest redistribution of assets, but the corporation MUST listen to the decisions its majority stockholders define. If as customers (taxpayers) they wish to find a new landlord, they are free to do so. Like any property owner, the US enlists arbiters to determine property damage cases with neighboring countries. If we damage Canada with pollution, we end up paying “Canada Incorporated” for the damage to their property, and vice versa.

“Anarcho-capitalism” is not a reaction against infringement of individual liberties, it is either a semantic argument (only governments “own” property in the anarcho-capitalist usage of the word) or it is a rejection of free market ideals regarding ownership of property and the rights of corporations. If they want to run a territory on different rules, they must first purchase some land (from a government under the clear contract that the property will no longer be governed by the selling government, a “real” sale not a “rental agreement” which is normally referenced as a sale in modern usage). There is nothing stopping a government “owned” by a single person. In fact, this is exactly what a dictatorship is! Buy a group of dictatorships, and structure your free association of independent property owners however you see fit.

Claiming a government lacks the right to own and oversee land or charge rent for its usage is simply an attack on the rights of a corporate group of people to own property, and has nothing to do with the rights of an individual to life, liberty, and property. (Obviosuly the above does not apply to a government that refuses to allow its citizens the right of liberty and property to take their person and wealth out of the country. Since they do not actually own the land though in the anarcho-capitalist sense of the word “own”, they cannot take their property only sell their lease on its usage and the rent obligation that comes with that lease.)

Marriage and the Law

Published by Atanamis October 27, 2008 in General. 39 Comments

I’m going to start by explaining my bias, so you can read the rest of my article through that filter.

My beliefs regarding “proper” marriage are that:
1) People ought to refrain from sex until marriage.
2) Marriage should be only between one man and one woman.
3) Marriage should be a nearly* unbreakable commitment.
4) Parents should have a wide latitude of authority and responsibility in rearing their children, with some basic criteria for sufficient care and reasonable discipline.
5) It will make a far better home for their children if the parents are highly committed to one another.
“nearly” meaning only broken in case of clear abuse or unfaithfulness.

Separating the civil and religious concepts of “marriage”:
Despite this “conservative” view on marriage, it is my belief that government ought to get out of the marriage business. “Marriage” as a term has long held religious connotations, and in my opinion it is undesirable and even dangerous for government to be responsible for forming or recognizing religious distinctions. Personally, I feel that the concept of marriage has been massively cheapened in our culture. By allowing government to define marriage, we have also allowed government to define divorce and for it to heavily influence how a marriage should look. When I got married, I made an unbreakable commitment to my wife. No matter what happens in our lives, I will sacrificially make decisions for her best interest. This is the commitment I think “Biblical marriage” calls for from a man. Biblically, I don’t think gay marriage is appropriate (another discussion), and definitely don’t think things like a marriage of convenience for the sake of citizenship or tax benefits makes sense. The problem is that as soon as we equate “religious marriage” with legal rights, protections, or perks people will “fake it” to get those benefits.

The concept of “separation of church and state” is a political theory, and not the law in the US. That said, I do think separation is a good idea for the protection of religion. Allowing government to define religion has only weakened that definition. Far better if government did NOT define marriage, but allowed religious organization to produce their own definitions. A religious group can then base its definition on its holy books, and not have to worry about a civil government infringing on their definition. Properly, religious organizations should already be doing this, rather than allowing the government to define what ought to be a highly sacred agreement between two parties. What would be far better would be to split marriage into legal “civil union” system and a religious “marriage” system. Such a system would allow a single man to form a “civil union” with his elderly mother, making her his “partner” as considered by insurance companies, medical decisions, and for property ownership. Two brothers would be able to for a “civil union” if they wanted to merge their finances. If I wanted to sponser my buddy in Mexico becoming a US citizen, I could form a “civil union” to help him get citizenship (though likely with a “pre-nup” protecting my financial assets). This system would be preferable for both the religious and the non-religious citizen.

As a result, I support a civil union that:
1) Allows any two non-minors citizens to form a legal bond with pre-determined exit clauses.
2) Allows those entering into the bond to establish rules for mutual property ownership / death benefits.
3) Allows those entering the contract to file taxes jointly.

I also support laws that ensure that biological parents have the right to raise their children (with possible court supervision if the parents disagree or are determined to be unfit) and a responsibility to support their children (again with court enforcement in case of disagreement or improper conduct).

Opposing gay marriage:
Given the above, one might suppose that I support gay marriage. In fact, these positions do not make limiting the legal expectations of “marriage” to people of opposite genders legally or logically unsupportable. The above claim of making “civil unions” as a not a morally based institution really only makes sense if no limits are applied (as described above) or when restricted to people with biological children. Any other position is not “ignoring morality”, but rather imposing a new set of moral imperatives. If we allow “gay marriage”, but do not also allow the marriage of close relations and complete strangers seeking a tax or immigration benefit, we are implying that “legal marriage” is more than just a contractual state. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to file taxes jointly with any random person I choose to file with? Why should I not be allowed to change my “next of kin” list at will, or choose to add my elderly mother to my insurance policy as my partner? Sure, this is the way things HAVE been done, and is an entirely legal way to do them, but does it make sense from a non-moral position? I fully support “special” legal protections for the biological parents of a child, and the expectation that they will financially support their child. I support allowing churches to refuse to marry couples that are same sex, or couples that have pre-marital sex, or even couples that have tattoos if they choose. That’s freedom of religion. I see no reason though to restrict tax filing methods or “next of kin” modifications at will though.

Any “just add gays” kind of approach that does not make “civil unions” an unrestricted contract between ANY two adults is STILL making moral judgments (against cousins or siblings). If we are basing the legal definition of marriage on our personal morality, I am in opposition of gay marriage. A legal contract shouldn’t carry any expectation of a “sexual relationship” anyway. Prohibiting a “civil union” made entirely for tax purposes or to gain citizenship is again imposing one’s morality on others. The fact that others believe that sibling marriages are wrong, disgusting, or even harmful to society doesn’t change my opinion, because I believe the same things are true about gay marriage. Either we agree not to enforce personal morality by law (civil unions for any pair of people), or we wait until they have a majority that agrees with their personal morality before we change the laws. We either agree that the legal contract does NOT impose morality, or we all fight for OUR definition of “proper” marriage. Nobody is likely to change what I think marriage ought to be here, and I’m not going to try to change what others think it should be. Either we agree not to impose morality (and therefore allow close family members to form “civil unions” to protect property or for tax purposes), or we agree to impose “majority morality” (in which case I continue to vote against gay marriage until I’m in the minority).

Note regarding terms:
I do think it would be valuable to use a separate term for the government contract to clarify that we aren’t telling religions what to do, but words aren’t what I’m arguing about. What I am saying is that we need to make it clear that the legal arrangement is separate from the religious arrangement. There are two main reasons why religious groups strongly oppose “gay marriage”. The first is that they believe (as I do) that gay partnerships are undesirable for society. That said, most religious people I have spoken with do not wish to forcibly prevent such partnerships. The second reason they oppose “gay marriage” is that they are concerned about the increasing dilution of the term “marriage”. 50 years ago, it was expected that a marriage would be more or less permanent, and that it would only be broken as a result of good cause (abuse or unfaithfulness). Today, we have a high divorce rate which I (and others) believe it hurting children and society. By splitting the terms, we can allow religious groups to define “marriage” as they see fit while not restricting legal relationships between consenting adults.

My intent is to make VERY clear the distinction between the religious ritual and the legal contract. Look through this thread for the people who support “marriage” for gays but not for siblings. There is no legitimate reason for this aside from the moral judgment of the poster. The term “marriage” implies a relationship that should not be needed for a purely contractual arrangement. If you agree that any two consenting adults should be allowed to “marry(1)” and that a religious body should be fully allowed to define its own terms for who it will “marry(2)”, we are probably fundamentally in agreement. I still think that separate terms for marry(1) and marry(2) though would help others understand the distinction better though, and am unwilling to support marry(1) for same sex couples so long as ANY other restrictions are placed on it.

Zeal For Truth