An old thread on a forum I participate in was revived the other day, and I had an (ahem…) interesting discussion with a self-described police officer about drug legalization. Can you see where this is going? I’d rather not bore you with the ins and outs of the discussion (if you could call it that…), but suffice to say he was no stranger to shifting goalposts and reductio fallacies. I won’t rehash that, chances are you’ve had similar “discussions” with similar people in the past.

At one point, someone else must’ve asked him how he can possibly sleep at night. The guy says he turns off “cop mode” when he goes home, and sleeps soundly every night. Apparently, he thinks “cop mode” is a lightswitch. Turn it on or turn it off, at will.

Thing is, his words indicated otherwise—that he was completely incapable of flipping that switch to the “off” position. You know, like, everyone who’s ever smoked pot is a “thug” or a “worthless hippy” and they’re ruining ‘Merica and they all deserve to go to jail and when he goes to work tonight he’s just itching to bust someone for “possession of marijuana”. That’s how irate, how flat-out vindictive he gets when people challenge the legitimacy of a law—he wants to bust some kid merely because some other people on the internet disagree with him.

Too bad his “dickhead mode” didn’t come with an on/off switch. But I digress.

This lightswitch mentality is a huge part of the problem. It’s compartementalization, it’s what sociopaths do. It is what leads people down the path of “I was just following orders,” or “I was just doing my job,” or “I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them,” and so on.

The idea that you become something other than a belligerent with a gun and a club the moment you punch out at shift’s-end is how people rationalize, how they convince themselves that what they’re doing isn’t wrong at all. When they leave work, they’re just a “regular guy” like you and me; they have families and feelings and they like baseball and apple pie.

No, you’re fucking not a “regular guy”. A “regular guy” isn’t vindictive and belligerent. A “regular guy” doesn’t make thinly-veiled threats on internet forums (he actually said he was going to report the thread to local law enforcement—as if talking about legalization is a crime!). A “regular guy” doesn’t get a hard-on every time someone says that just maybe the war on drugs is a stupid idea and just maybe responsible adults should be allowed to be responsible on their own time.  A “regular guy” doesn’t think it’s OK for people to be shot to death for smoking a joint.

No. You’re pretty fucking far from “regular”.

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In response to my recent post, Government Employees Are Overpaid, someone objected via e-mail, I believe to one of my statements in the comments section, “Most of them don’t know it, because they’ve never had an honest, reflective thought in their entire lives, but they’re all thieves” (to be fair, many n the “private” sector fit that bill in one way or another too, so I’m not trying to single anyone out).

I know government = bad, but you know a guys gotta eat.

“Yes” a guy’s gotta eat. And “Yes” I’d steal a loaf of bread to feed my starving family. I can rationalize it, but it’s still probably theft. Sure, it gets insanely complicated and quick-like, because now you can take some of Chartier’s points and start overlaying them: perhaps the people you’re “stealing” from are really thieves to begin with, and you’re just reclaiming what is rightfully yours. Perhaps they owe you that debt (I’m sure they do).

Now we look around and we can’t say with very much certainty, who is (or is not) a thief. And among the thieves, who is the most heinous, who is the real thief. Behavior like this isn’t natural; we’re the smartest goddamned species on the planet, and we’re perfectly well capable of taking care of our own. We shouldn’t have to grovel. How do we find ourselves here?

Ask instead why you find yourself in such a situation, where perhaps welfare is your only option, or if you’re lucky maybe a government job is your only or best option?

Gary Chartier has posted 11 points about poverty and the State; a list which I’d be hard-pressed to modify in any manner. I’m trying not to just regurgitate what Chartier says, but take a look at his top three – this is all great stuff and he gives a lot more detail, I just want to tee it up because it’s relevant:

1. States don’t treat recipients of their aid well.
2. States actively make and keep people poor.
3. States raise the cost of being poor.

As my Public Finance prof used to advise, “People respond to incentives,” no matter how perverse they are. When the job market for your skills has been co-opted by some bastardized union, or when some government program crowds out private initiatives, where do you turn? what do you do? When that same government offers income, or food, or employment security (even after taking so much from you), most people take it. It’s instinctual, and for most people it jives with all the propaganda that they’ve swallowed their entire lives and they’ve been conditioned to accept it.

But this is what I mean when I say that government destroys community. It’s pitting us against our own. Everyone starts clamoring, in a sense, begging for what’s theirs.

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A lot of people make a big fuss when the federal employee salary and benefit figures come out. There’s an article in USAToday that highlights the ever-widening gap between public and private compensation.

For occupations that “exist both in government and the private sector,” government employees took home an average of about $68,000 in salary, compared to only $60,000 for their privately-employed counterparts. That’s a pretty sizeable gap. What’s more alarming is the value of fringe benefits: pensions, health insurance, vacation allowances, etc. Government employees took home an average of about $41K, compared to only $10K for comparable private workers.

Do the math: that’s about a 50% premium. Many of them also get such unheard-of-in-the-private-sector benefits as: all federal holidays off work, four or more weeks paid vacation, 20-and-done for retirement, etc.

Now, I’m all for people getting paid what they’re worth. But that’s exactly the problem with any of the government functions—there is no market for the ditch-digging that most of them perform, and so it’s impossible to gauge the value of their work. And even if we could, they have one unique advantage which they use to exploit the rest of us: those of us who are paying their salaries do not have a choice as to whether we want to keep buying from them. As long as they show up to work, we get stuck with the bill.

Most of them are nothing but leeches, consuming and destroying wealth, draining productivity from the economy. The fact is that most of these occupations shouldn’t exist in the first place, but they do, and they’re being paid extravagantly for doing non-work.

Most of them don’t know it, because they’ve never had an honest, reflective thought in their entire lives, but they’re all thieves.

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At my office, a few months ago they discontinued styro-foam cups, which means I have to remember to bring in a coffee mug each morning, even if I don’t prepare a cup of home brew. Kind of inconvenient.  What’s really inconvenient is after like 11am, when I don’t want coffee.

I want some water.

I can’t put water in my mug, because after you’ve tainted a stainless steel mug with coffee, everything tastes like coffee.

I could walk to the drinking fountain every few minutes, but that’s not terribly productive. Or I could walk to the vending machine and purchase a bottle of water. But that means I’m wasting money, and to be honest, a plastic bottle is about as recyclable as a styro-foam cup, isn’t it?

This was ushered in under an “environmentally friendly” memo. I suspect it’s really a “cost-cutting” policy.

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A guest post from an anonymous friend of mine, who fired off this rant this morning. Sometimes you just need to vent… I’m sure he’s not the only one who has experienced something like this in corporate America.

Begin rant

Today is a special day here at my place of employment; there is a man here, a supervisor (let’s just call him Bob), who is retiring after 42 years at the SAME JOB.  In this day in age especially with our Gen X crowd moving jobs every other year to find the mythical brass ring.  A ring filled with fame and fortune beyond all comprehension.  This is an accomplishment that most of us will never know of.  Loyalty like this used to be rewarded with such cheesy luxuries like a watch, a clock or plaque something that took thought and a little more than a memo to a secretary to make sure it got done.  It was followed by a hand shake full of meaning and praise and appreciation for a man who had dedicated his life to company.  What does he get here at the wonderful company I work for……..Pizza and Cake for lunch!

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the current state of business today.  A market with so little regard for the working men and women of our country that they don’t even take an employee’s personal life into consideration when wishing him well onto the next stage of his life.

Pizza and Cake?

Bob is a healthy guy; he eats healthy lunches, exercises regularly and is an avid outdoorsman who takes pride in his appearance and has no time for cheesy shit like Pizza and Cake.  In our grandfathers time companies knew their people and appreciated the pride they took in their job and how well they performed everyday.  The plant manager knew their kids and wife had them over for dinner and what do I hear this morning?

“Oh yeah Bob was a good guy, but you know what.  He’s replaceable”

It’s that kind of shit that should piss us all off.

He may be “replaced” but he isn’t replaceable, not by any root of the meaning replace which as we all know is: To put something new in the place of; and implies a filling of a place once occupied by something lost, destroyed or no longer usable.  Is that how management views this great man, no longer usable?  This man of 62 years gets more done in a day than 85% of the people I know.  His work ethic is unstoppable.  Even today on his last day of work for the rest of his life he is getting shit done and getting it done right. He has the care and attention to detail the likes of which hasn’t been seen since, I don’t know, Van Gogh.  Is this how you would reward Van Gogh with a shitty lunch of fatty foods and sugars for the younger slovenly generation to gorge themselves on?  I think not.

So, today, we should all raise up our glasses to Bob.   A man who is a member of a work force the likes of which we may never see again.  Not because we do not have the motivation but because of the society we live in.  A society that has no honor, no loyalty and no chivalry whatsoever.  Sure there are those of us who recognize these failings and do our best to represent our elders and be the men and woman who they are or were.  We are the ones who refuse to honor excess and greed, celebutants and the fat pigs who hang out on MTV and VH1 reality shows fighting for their 15 minutes.

Today lets honor people like Bob.  People, who work for their money; who get up everyday and make the trek to a job that gets them by and lets them live their life the way they want to, with no excuses.  Here’s to you; we should all be so lucky.

/End rant.

Pizza and cake? That’s the same thing they serve when they celebrate all the February birthdays on the first Tuesday of the month.  Pizza and fucking cake! Christ…. – dz

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A friend of a friend of mine had some homework assignment that required him to interview people of various political persuasions.  My friend put him in touch with me to answer some questions about anarchism. Here are my responses, verbatim:

1.  What attracted you to the philosophy of anarchism?

Lots and lots of reading.  The more I read about politics, about history, about the world in general, the more I began to realize that the “State” is in every instance, an evil organization. Some people may argue that some States are “lesser of two evils”, but those States are still evil, aren’t they?  The broadest definition of a “State” when we strip away colorful words like “democracy” and “constitutions” and “civic duty” is this: The “State” is the judge, jury, and executioner (literally, and figuratively).  It is an organization which monopolizes the creation, interpretation, and enforcement of the law within a self-declared geographical boundary – in order to achieve the latter, it claims a monopoly on the use of unprovoked violence.

Furthermore, the State compels (with violence, or threats of violence) every man and woman within its boundary to pay for the “services” it provides with no regard for whether these individuals use, need or even want the services in the first place. In many (or most) areas, individuals are not allowed to organize in a manner which would compete with the government: you can buy supplemental health care, supplemental education (like private schools), supplemental protection (like private security guards, security systems, etc) but you can never opt-out of the programs which the state compels you to support. And if that wasn’t bad enough – you can never get a “refund” from the government when they fail to do their “civic duty”, and you don’t really have any choice about it. When Congress passes an unconsitutional law, what recourse do you have? When the police fail to protect your property from burglars, or your body from assault, or when they fail to apprehend the criminal, do you get your money back?

2.  What made you decide to become active within the anarchist movement?

I’m not particularly “active” – more on that below…

3.  How long have you been active within the movement, and what has prevented you from dropping out?

I think I really got turned on to it about 4 or 5 years ago. It wasn’t an overnight thing, it was a struggle really, because all your life you’ve been told (implicitly or explicitly) that this is just a stupid idea, or that anarchism = violence, etc.  There’s a lot of mental hurdles, a lot of de-programming that has to take place before you can kind of accept that a lot of what you’ve “learned” and accepted throughout the course of you lifetime is in many cases ignorantly wrong, and in a lot of cases its not ignorant, it’s outright lies.

4.  What types of activities have you been active in? (protests, direct action, etc)

Mostly I’m an armchair anarchist, so go ahead and revoke my membership if you want.  I’ve written extensively (but not scholarly) about the ideas of anarchism, and about current events and politics from that perspective. And I’ve maybe put together a YouTube video or two.  My personal strength, I think, is the ability to condense ideas, to write persuasively, etc.  I know I’ve opened some people’s eyes to the ideas; and though not everyone who reads my work is a full-blown “smash the state, power to the people” anarchist, I know a few of them who are certainly on the right path.  The more the merrier.

5.  What is the best and worst part of your experience?

Worst part is in-fighting.  There are as many schools of “anarchist” thought/philosophy as there are schools of competing thought in the State political arena. There are individualist anarchists, agorists, mutualist anarchists, collectivist anarchists, communist anarchists, free-market anarchists, primitivists, georgists, etc., and they all think they have the only true gospel of anarchism, and that all others are “fake” anarchists.  I’m an American libertarian anarchist; and so my background comes largely from Murray Rothbard, and Lysander Spooner. I’m sympathetic to parts of many other schools of thought, and tolerant, too. I’ve changed my mind on many occasions. I can’t say the same for many of the far-Left anarchists that I’ve encountered.  The differences usually boil down to what one considers “oppression” or “exploitation”.  In my personal opinion, the communists, who for example consider any form of wage-labor to be exploitative, and who have very subjective, very squishy definitions for “ownership” and their infatuation with “democracy” make a lot of arguments that I think are just reductio ad absurdum or straw-man logical fallacies.  On the other hand, there are a lot of libertarian anarchists who are really kind ignorant on the other end of the spectrum, too.

The best part, I suppose is that it’s given me a whole new perspective from which to view pretty much everything in the world. I know I don’t have the answer to all the world’s problems, but I find it’s a lot easier to identify the problems, or the root causes.  And it’s kept me reading theory, philosophy, history – all the shit that you put down when you graduate college and never pick up again as you rot your brain on TMZ and Glenn Beck and Survivor: Impossible Island! and it keeps me somewhat in-tune with current events. Keeps me from being apathetic to politics in general.

6.  How might someone get involved in the anarchist movement?

The internet I think is really beneficial to movements like anarchism, which have always been really grass-roots. And it’s helping a lot because anarchists have historically been prolific pamphleteers, too; the advent of self-publishing sites like Blogger and Wordpress have given hundreds or thousands of people a voice, and a means to reach audiences which until very recently, they never would’ve been able to do.  If someone is interested, the internet is your friend.  It’s pretty easy to find people

7.  How would you frame the issue of anarchism to a potential recruit to ’sell’ them on the idea?

It’s a position of non-violence. Not pacifism, per se, but non-violence. Obviously there is a place for legitimate defense of self.  But like I said above, it’s a really tough ’sell’ because it can’t happen overnight. If it does, chances are the person really doesn’t get ‘anarchism’ and is just kind of enamored with the whole mohawks and molotovs idea that he’s heard all his life.  The best thing you can do is try to open the door, and get people thinking. Find something about which they’re passionate, and explain how the governments, or capitalism, or whatever, is totally screwing it up.  And it helps to be able to explain reasonable alternatives.  For instance with health care, we could look back to the fraternal organizations of the 19th century which promoted community. Or we can explain how government interference in the market (especially here in the US) has created this environment where people think of it as A) an entitlement and B) as something they don’t have to pay for. But also what happens is that health care is like 95% tied to your job, and if you lose your job, you’re pretty much screwed unless you can find a new one right away. I mean, this is a pretty elementary example of unintended consequences, but nobody ever talks about it. They just ask for goverment to get more and more involved…

8.  If I understand the philosophy of anarchism correctly as being one step further than Libertarianism, how would an anarchist deal with issues of force and fraud?  (Either generally or specifically?)

I like to try and stop focusing on the 1% of bad elements in society. Think about all the people whom you know and trust, and the others who they know and would vouch for, and who you could easily grow to trust.  This is like real community. Not this fake shit that government creates, which is really just a war of special interests, as each side tries to pit as many of us against the rest of us. The whole “winner takes all” aspect of electoral politics destroys community. In a society with real community, anyone who robs, cheats, steals, etc., is going to have a really tough time. Reputation rules, man, and when you break that unspoken rule you might be run out of town. And where do you go? Somewhere else, where nobody knows you.  So then what? You start all over again. Why would anyone trust you? You’ve got no references, and no history.

I think historically there is a lot of evidence supporting social ostracism as an effective deterrent. The Law Merchant governed international trade during the middle ages without the use of violence and without the backing of any Crown.  No honest anarchist believes that either force or fraud can be completely eradicated, but certainly the existence of an institution (such as government) which is able to perpetrate violence on an otherwise unimaginable magnitude.  Look at the USA, which imprisons more people than any other nation in the world, for using narcotics.  Or the entire 20th century, during which world governments killed an estimated 200-300 million people.  You want to ask about “force” and “fraud” and violence, let’s start by getting rid of those institutions which cause the most violence.

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1. Detroit Area Anarchist Group Blog

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