If there is one thing to be taken from this book, it’s that the state is an idea. The people viewed as agents of the state - lawmakers, police and military would not be able to maintain their positions without the *consent* of the population. If a significant portion of the population, the exact percentage I am not sure, is opposed to a given state, then the people who make up that state will not be able to command the population as a whole. This consent need not be deeply held patriotic fervor, simply keeping your mouth shut and paying your taxes, and not giving matters of state much thought, works fine.

The fact that the state is just an idea was seen very starkly during the fall of the Soviet Union. In June of 1991, Boris Yeltsin won the country’s first democratic election, and became the president of Russia. Mikhail Gorbachev was the General Secretary of the Soviet Union.

In August that year, the New Union Treaty, which would reform the Soviet Union into a confederation of states with a uniform military and foreign policy, was going to be signed. On August 19, a group of hard line communists commanded some troops to prevent the signing of the treaty.

As the troops approached “The White House”, which was the parliament of the Russian republic, a large crowd formed to prevent the troops from entering the building. Gorbachev had already been placed under house arrest by the army. On August 19, Yeltsin climbed on top of one of the tanks and addressed the crowd. On August 21, the troops were ordered to attack the “white house”. As the troops moved to attack the building, they were met by blockades and partisans. The troops killed 3 partisans which stormed a mechanized infantry vehicle, then abandoned that vehicle, which was then destroyed. No soldiers were killed, but the soldiers withdrew anyway.

And then the soviet union dissolved quickly after that. It’s an interesting story that can be explored in much more depth, but the principle to be derived from this event was just how obvious it was that this was a battle of a psychic construct. You had the authority of the generals who organized the coup, the authority of Gorbachev, the authority of Yeltsin, the authority of the Russian protesters. And all of these authorities are mere projections.

The idea that Boris Yeltsin was “The President of Russia” is nothing more than a story. A story which the agents who follow his orders believed in, and which the petty bureaucrats believed in, and which the people of Russia largely believed in. Thus, because these people believed that story, they would follow what he said, or in disputes with each other they would cite Yeltsin as an authority when presenting their case.

The idea that the “generals” were “generals” was another story. The lower officers believe the “generals” are “generals”, and so will cite orders from the generals when telling the privates what to do or as evidence when they have disputes with other officers.

Etc.

And when you see these stories for what they are, stories, the events surrounding the “fall of the soviet union” appear as an expression of mass insanity. When I read these events, I recognize that there is no such thing as “The General Secretary of The Soviet Union”, and that there is no such thing as “The Soviet Union” except as a mass hallucination.

The mythology of “The Soviet Union” fell apart as technology made the world more interconnected. It wasn’t so much defeated as outgrown. In the early days, to a bunch of pre-industrial peasants, the story of the state was titanic and fantastic, but as time went on, people could see the west. Technology allowed people in what was called “The Soviet Union” to see what was going on just a few miles away in West Germany, people that they could talk to, and the story of “the soviet union” eroded.

Why would the lives of the mass of people called Russians be affected by killing Boris Yeltsin? This man picked as team captain for the Russians?

How does preventing a piece of paper from being signed, whose symbols have completely subjective meaning, prevent the mass of Russians changing who they obeyed? When one team captures their opponent’s flag… what?

But of course the events at some building where some guy signs a piece of paper only have significance if the fantasy of the state is believed. And when you *consciously* recognize the state as a fantasy, you will see that you are surrounded by mystics and live in a dark age.

Hopefully, as technology gets more and more advanced, the state altogether will be outgrown. Individuals can see the entire planet, can do a Google search on any product, food or drug and see the health ratings at consumers report. This was not possible when the FDA was founded. The uninsured are getting doctor visits at Wal-mart for $45. The idea of a state monopoly on currency is being questioned more and more, and people are realizing it’s no more “real money” than chuck-e-cheese tickets. In fact chuck-e-cheese tickets inflate a lot less. Gangsterism and various fanaticisms are becoming increasingly marginalized, a relic. Nuclear weapons render conventional armies obsolete. People can see each other, the veil is being lifted, and it’s not scary anymore.

Well I’ve written about the revolutionary war, the constitution, now it’s time to gore another sacred cow: WW2.

I’m assuming you know the basics of Nazi Germany in world war 2, so this will just be a sheet making all the case that needs to be made.

http://www.jrbooksonline.com/HTML-docs/David%20Hoggan-The%20Forced%20War.htm

http://www.jrbooksonline.com/HTML-docs/Polish_Atrocities_intro.htm

Germany in World War 2:

The economic ideology of Nazi Germany was similar to that of the US at the time and today. The German government was larger as a percentage of GDP, but the basic idea of fascism - the corporate state - was in full bloom in the United States. The idea was to combine industry with government - high taxes, high subsidies, and high regulations. It was NOT a clash of ideologies in the main, it was a clash between the interest of states.

The Nazi Economic policies were disastrous, nominal wages rose but real wages fell under Hitler.

German invasions of various states:

- Austria: Austrians volunteered for the German Army at a rate similar to the rest of Germany. German troops were welcomed into Austria, and Hitler was from Austria. Hardly an invasion at all.

- Poland: The Polish Government reapportioned land, denied employment to the Germans in Poland. The easiest way to solve the problem would be to allow Germans in Poland back into Germany, but instead it was used as an excuse to invade Poland.

- Sudatenland: Land and wealth redistribution schemes favored Czechs over the German Minority. The seizure of the Sudatenland, presupposing the validity of “ethnic groups”, was valid. There were about 4 million Germans in the Sudatenland. In comparison, there were about 6.6 million Germans in Austria. This was a significant German population.

- Czech Republic: Simple act of aggression, seizing the remainder of Czech. Slovakia was not seized. Bohemia and Moravia had been under Holy Roman, Austrian and German dominion as far as can be remembered. Today it appears barbaric since the Czech have for so long been a distinct people.

- Norway: A great deal of iron ore from Sweden passed through the port of Narvik. British warships were using Norwegian ports, to the exclusion of German warships, while Britain and Germany were at war. At any point Norway could have shut off the spigot. That is, Germany could have been losing the war against Britain and France, and then Norway could have shut off Narvik, but Germany would have been powerless to invade Norway in response. 

The battle of Norway should really be called the battle of Narvik, since that was what it was about. Many were puzzled as to why the British sent troops to Norway after it was clearly too late to stop them from seizing most of the populated areas. The British kept sending troops, and the Germans kept their foot on the gas until Narvik was captured.

Because Norway was not neutral, the attack on Norway get my *relative endorsement*. Remember, I oppose states per se, but given the states, the German invasion of Norway was not an act of aggression.

The invasion of Norway was a stretch of German resources, and no more would have been invaded without cause than Spain or Turkey (or Yugoslavia had Italy not invaded).

- Denmark: The invasion of Denmark was a prerequisite for the successful invasion of Norway. The Nazis did not control the domestic affairs of Denmark, and the Danish government surrendered in two hours of the invasion. The German occupation allowed the Danish government to function at first, but later on in response to increasing Danish resistance, the Germans took direct control and attempted to seize the Jews, who luckily escaped to Sweden.

- France: Declared war on Germany

- Holland: More Dutch soldiers joined the German army than participated in the resistance. Given British fanagling in Norway, and that Holland was directly situated in a prime position next to the Ruhr and the north sea ports, the invasion of Holland was strategically understandable.

Remember that Hitler didn’t know how successful the invasion of France would be:

Both armies had 3.3 million men

The Germans had more aircraft, the French had more tanks and artillery

The success of the attack through the Ardennes wasn’t known entirely

If the war in France led to a stalemate like that which occurred in 1915, then a British co-opting of Holland would facilitate attacks against the Ruhr and north sea ports. If that occurred and British troops started being moved from France to a now-allied Holland, the British would be at a tactical advantage, because from Holland they could attack EITHER the Ruhr or north sea ports, and the Germans would have to at least in part split their forces to defend both critical points, while the British only had to defend the portion of Holland where all the people were. This also would have brought the war to German soil.

Even if the Germans had defeated France without invading Holland in 1940, they would have invaded Holland eventually because they went to war with the USSR and couldn’t have Holland serve as a launch-pad then either.

- Belgium: On the way to France, same problems as with Holland.

- Greece: Italy invaded Greece from Albania, but was unable to conquer Greece. Greece wasn’t able to push Italy out of Albania or invade Italy, but Greece was now at war with the Axis, and was in bombing range of the Romanian oil fields for British bombers. Peace with Greece would have been like peace with Holland, that is Greece was apt to now align with Britain if Germany became overstretched. And because Germany was unwilling to break off the alliance with Italy, they had to invade Greece.

- Yugoslavia: Yugoslavia was dominated by Serbia. The public of Yugoslavia was anti-axis and pro-USSR. In world war 1 Russia used Serbia to cause problems and divert resources. That is in order to be safe the Austro-Hungarian Empire had to spend more resources on the war with Serbia than the Serbians mustered against Austria, and this was while Austria was fighting a war with Russia. A similar thing could have been done during Germany’s war with the USSR.

Invading Yugoslavia allowed the Germans to knock them out independently and to focus on the USSR.

It is better to fight one army of one million men, then another army of one million men, than it is to fight both armies at once. Or in this case one army of half a million men, and then an army of 10 million men, than to fight both at once.

On March 25 1941, the Yugoslav Regent Paul Kadadordavic agreed to join the Axis with Italy, Germany, Japan, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Finland. This was unpopular in Yugoslavia, and he was replaced by Peter II on March 27. Peter II maintained the alliance with the Axis, but it was clear that Yugoslavia was none too enthused.

During world war 1, Italy was originally allied to Germany and Austria-Hungary, but later joined the British, French and Americans. German planners were cognizant of fair-weather allies.

I am not giving my endorsement of all of these invasions, I am explaining the rationale for each invasion. Remember invasions cost lives, equipment, fuel, ammo and popular-ideological support within and without Germany. War is expensive, Germany had limited resources, and Hitler wasn’t just invading places precipitously.

- USSR: As bad as Stalin’s purges were and meddling was, the reason for German early success in the USSR was surprise. When looking at the USSR, there were two real avenues to win: cut off the north, and cut off the south. Cutting off the ports in Karelia (north Russia next to Finland) Archangelsk and Murmansk would prevent war material from coming in from the US. Seizing the oil fields in the Caucasus would cut the USSR off from their main source of oil. Neither of these critical points were taken.

Moscow was not critical. Many thought that the war would be over if the Germany captured Moscow, and I have no idea how anyone could think this. The war in Russia didn’t end when Napoleon captured Moscow, and the Soviets were willing to relocate entire industries away from the German invasion. The initial German invasion was a failure, and all of that land captured had to be, at least partially, controlled by the German military government, which cost more than the land was worth. 

The only two exceptions would be the Donestk basin which had excellent mining facilities and the general farmland area between Kiev and the Crimea. Perhaps you could say that those areas provided more value than the troop cost of suppression, but that didn’t help much in the war with the USSR because minerals were not the limiting factor in German offenses, petrol was, and while additional surplus food production was definitely useful given the closing of imports by the British fleet, it was not critically valuable.

And all of this happened without any US intervention, except the shipment of supplies which was I do not believe was critical:

http://www.onwar.com/articles/0302.htm

The war was in doubt between June 1941 to February 1943, so lets be generous and say for 20 months. Between 1941 and 1943, USSR GDP averaged a GDP of $313 billion, and my best guess for USSR GDP during the months that the war was in doubt is $522 billion. (Though this is misleading, as the USSR was outproducing Nazi Germany even when they had a lower GDP.)

The US gave the USSR $11.3 billion over the entire 45 months during the war. My best guess is that $5 billion worth of material was given during the months the war was in doubt. This would be less than 1% of USSR GDP. I don’t like using GDP for anything in general, but in this case it gives us some idea of how much was produced and how much the lend-lease program really did.

Japan was allied to Germany, but did not declare war on the USSR. On December 7 Japan attacked the US, and offered to attack the USSR if Germany declared war on the US. Given that the initial thrust into the USSR had failed and the German army was practically immobilized by the winter, Hitler was looking for a way to apply immediate pressure to the USSR before they recovered, and a Japanese attack on Vladivostok and thrusts across Siberia could do that.

While Japanese ground forces, as far as a war with the USSR was concerned didn’t have any tanks, they had excellent infantry, superior aircraft and a navy that could assist in coastal operations. And once Vladivostok et al was taken, the push into Siberia would be over area with minimal infrastructure in which large armored forces would be of dubious value.

But Japan did not invade the USSR, and it makes sense for Japan: if they defeated the USSR, Germany was in position to take the good stuff in Russia while Japan would get Siberia, and then there would be a single state: Nazi-Germany / USSR, which would be the most powerful state in the world, right on their border.

The second offensive toward Stalingrad failed. Stalingrad was also not as close of a fight as is portrayed, because the battle of Stalingrad was really the battle of the Caucasus oil fields. Capturing Stalingrad would have prevented Soviet reinforcement of the caucasus. The city itself wasn’t very valuable, nor was the territory captured in the push from Donetsk very valuable.

And even if the Germans captured Stalingrad and there were no Soviet forces so close in vicinity as to have the same effect as being in Stalingrad, the German army would still have to have enough power left to drive into the Caucasus and capture the oil fields, which were in very mountainous and defensible terrain. This is because the Germans already sent out an army fitted to fight in the mountains, and that army was unable to capture the oil fields.

But the Germans lost at Stalingrad, and that was the end of it.

In Europe there were three problems occurring between 1939 and 1945:

1. The German State murdering selected groups of people

2. Combat deaths

3. State control of economies

I am going to be America-centric:

If Roosevelt wanted to save the lives of minorities, the easiest way would be to open borders and offer to accept all of the peoples Hitler wanted to exterminate. This would have been useful for Hitler to purge the peoples he wanted without having to kill them quasi-secretly with the death camps (that took resources). Americans didn’t even have to KNOW what was going on in central europe, they just had to open their borders and support freedom.

But because of restrictive immigration policies, those 11 million had to die, locked in Europe with a nazi beast which tore them to pieces. All of the civilians Hitler wanted to exterminate in the USSR could have been shipped to America, and this promise to not kill but deport all “undesirables” could have been made in exchange for the US not directly declaring war on Germany, or more realistically supporting British involvement. But the labor unions opposed immigration.

The US didn’t deploy any ground forces against the Axis in Europe until November 8, 1942 in Morocco. The battle of El Alemein, which gave the British the advantage in North Africa in their own right, ended on November 5, 1942. The Battle of Stalingrad ended on February 2, 1943, only 4 months after the US troops arrived in North Africa. 

The battle of Kasserine Pass, in which the American forces where eaten alive by a smaller German force, was fought between February 19 and 25, 1943. By the time Americans started to have an impact on the war, the Germans had already been contained by the British and Soviets at Stalingrad and El Alemein.

At the height of their power in 1941, the Germans were unable to invade Britain across the English channel. The idea that they would be able to cross the atlantic and invade America after 1943 is transparently laughable. That was all propaganda.

The Americans were not decisive in preventing a German victory. But I will assert that they were decisive in unnecessarily prolonging the war.

The situation in February 1943 for Germany was this:

- The Soviet Union was outproducing Germany. Even without US intervention, time was not on Germany’s side. The US intervention certainly accelerated this dynamic, but the notion that Germany was winning otherwise is a myth.

- Germany had a large “empire” full of partisans and resistance fighters that took resources to suppress: France (41m), Poland (35m), occupied Ukraine (~25m), Yugoslavia (15m), Czech and Slovakia (15m), Belarus (~10m), Holland (8.7m) and Belgium (8.3m), The Baltic States (5m), Denmark (3.7m) and Norway (2.9m). Granted the Germans didn’t use their best troops or the latest equipment to suppress these areas, it still took men and supplies.

- Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria were fair-weather allies that could (and did eventually) switch sides at any opportune moment. Romania did this in August of 1944, and the German army later had to take direct control of the Italian and Hungarian governments to prevent them from surrendering. It was more of a coalition than a true alliance.

- On paper the combined manpower of these states is impressive. In the field they were just fodder.

- There was an oil / rubber shortage, the USSR and British Empire surrounded and cut off the continent from the rest of the world.

~550K German civilians were killed in the bombing raids over Germany, bombing raids that were later determined to have little impact on war production. It was just slaughter, an atrocity. Stategic bomber pilots in WW2 were not shortening the war or lowering German production, they were just killing people who weren’t able to serve as soldiers.

On January 24, 1943 (the outcome of the battle of Stalingrad was pretty much decided by then) in Casablanca Roosevelt demanded unconditional surrender on the part of Germany. This was opposed by both Stalin and Churchill. This demand for unconditional surrender was used by the German government as a propaganda tool to fight long past the point where victory or even an acceptable peace was possible.

Given the response to what Germany did in world war 1 (versailles), the German government could only imagine what would be done to them this time. Roosevelt’s call for unconditional surrender confirmed this fear. German generals who knew about the Holocaust could only imagine calls for retaliation in kind, and had all the incentive in the world to fight to the end. German troops were fighting after the Rhineland was taken, and fanatics where fighting in the hills of Bavaria and Austria after the surrender. Hitler ordered a scorched earth policy in Germany, which given the fear that the Americans would destroy Germany anyway wasn’t completely irrational.

In Michael Balfour’s article in International affairs, “Another Look at ‘Unconditional Surrender’”, he wrote:

“… those Germans-and particularly those German generals-who might have been ready to throw Hitler over, and were in a position to do so, were discouraged from making the attempt by their inability to extract from the Allies any sort of assurance that such action would improve the treatment meted out to their country.”

From the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, a German Language Swiss newspaper:

“So far, the Allies have not offered the opposition any serious encouragement. On the contrary, they have again and again welded together the people and the Nazis by statements published, either out of indifference or with a purpose. To take a recent example, the Morgenthau plan gave Dr. Goebbels the best possible chance. He was able to prove to his countrymen, in black and white, that the enemy planned the enslavement of Germany. The conviction that Germany had nothing to expect from defeat but oppression and exploitation still prevails, and that accounts for the fact that the Germans continue to fight. It is not a question of a regime, but of the homeland itself, and to save that, every German is bound to obey the call, whether he be Nazi or member of the opposition.”

The Morgenthau Plan for Germany was to deport all scientists and engineers from Germany to other countries and turn Germany into an agrarian state with no heavy industry. American public opposition caused Roosevelt to shut up about it.

Early in the occupation, while there were still many nazi fanatics fighting a guerilla war against the Americans, Hoover was implementing the Morgenthau plan. But it was difficult to uproot industry and people, there was little political will to do so, and the recognition of the Soviet Union as the prime enemy resulted in a change to the Marshall Plan, which is credited to the German postwar “economic miracle”.

——————-

A bit of a tangent, but the reason west Germany did so well was that the Germans resisted the occupiers so much, and it was difficult to collect taxes or impose wage and price controls or any licensing or regulations. The result was that Germany was in a de facto relatively free market for the short period of time in which the boom occurred. Once the state regained it’s footing, the taxes and controls were re-imposed and the boom promptly ended.

——————-

So what would I have the US state do?

1. Open borders. Hitler wanted to purge undesirables, and this was known before the extent of the savagery was known. I know there is a real debate on the numbers of civilians exterminated in the death camps (and that debate is relevant, which I will explain) but at any rate the course of action is the same: provide a refuge. Let them in.

2. Instead of issuing an ultimatum of unconditional surrender, offer Hitler conditional peace terms in February of 1943. 

Roll back the occupation of France and Belgium. That is, allow German military forces in place, but give the German Government no control over the economic affairs of the citizens in those areas. Make a 20-year phase-out of the occupation of those places.

Immediate withdrawls from Norway, Denmark and Holland on the condition that those states remain neutral (which Norway was not).

Break up Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania from the USSR. Break up Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia from Yugoslavia. Break up Czech and Slovakia from Germany.

Make arms balance agreements between Germany, Britain and the USSR, recognizing the precarious geographic position Germany is in. Breaking Austria from Germany would not be in the tradespace.

Doing both of these things would have not only saved lives from the death camps and by shortening the war, but would have prevented the whole iron curtain scenario. Racism was already becoming more stigmatized by the 1940’s, by the 1970’s the Nazi ideology would be at odds with the majority of Germans, and by the 2000’s positively despised.

To summarize:

1. Nazi Germany would not have taken over europe if the US did not intervene.

2. Closed US borders caused many unnecessary deaths

3. The US bombing campaign caused ~550k deaths with no appreacable shortening of the war

4. US interference lengthened the war and created the Iron Curtain

Therefore, from any point of analysis, be it economic efficiency, individual freedom, or saving lives, the US should not have gone to war with Germany in world war 2.

Population in 1939:

Germany-Austria-Sudaten: 80.2 million

Switzerland: 4.2 million

Hungary: 9.1 million

Romania: 19.9 million

Italy: 44.3 million

Bulgaria: 6.4 million

Poland: 34.8 million

Czech and Slovakia: 15.3 million

Yugoslavia: 15.4 million

Greece: 7.2 million

USSR: 168.5 million

USA: 131 million

Britain: 47.7 million

France: 41.7 million

Belgium: 8.3 million

Holland: 8.7 million

Denmark: 3.8 million

Sweden: 6.3 million

Norway: 2.9 million

Finland: 3.7 million

Lithuania: 2.6 million

Estonia: 1.1 million

Latvia: 2 million

In February 1943, Germany had a population of ~80 million, Italy a population of ~44 million, and their other allies in Europe had a population of around 39 million. This totals 163 million.

The Axis states were occupying an area that had 143.8 million people plus however many were occupied in the USSR, which I estimate was about 40 million, so they were trying to suppress 183.8 million people.

They were doing this while at war with Britain (47.7 million), Canada (11.2 million) and the USSR (128 million given the land lost during the invasion), which totals ~187 million. I will presume the resource equivalent of Australia and India were focused on the war against Japan.

If we presume Canada and the UK were as militarily effective man-for-man as the Germans, and there were 59 million of them vs. 80 million Germans. This leaves us with the equivalent of 21 million Germans in surplus. Let us further presume the Finns are as militarily effective as Germans, giving us 24.7 million “Germans”.

If we presume the USSR was as militarily effective man-for-man as the Italians, Hungarians, Romanians and Bulgarians, and there are 83 million non-German Axis vs. 128 million Soviets, this leaves us with 45 million surplus Soviets. So it’s 24.7 million surplus Germans vs. 45 million surplus Soviets.

In this hypermodal analysis, the war appears roughly equal, but this is misleading. By 1942 Soviet Weaponry had advanced while that of the German allies did not, and so Soviet troops, man-for-man, were superior to the German allies, though I would not say as effective as the Germans themselves, and the German allies, as stated before, were ready to crack.

And those 187 million people which took resources to occupy, what did they produce? Maybe munitions, a few volunteers.

The Axis forces had more oil shortages than the British who had the Persian Gulf and the Soviets who had the Caucasus. The German drive to the Caucasus was stopped at Stalingrad, and the drive to the Suez canal and Persian Gulf was stopped at El Alemein.

Now I am not going to make any case about the Holocaust, I’m in enough hot water saying what I have already said throughout this book. But I stated before that the bombing campaign over Germany caused ~550k German deaths directly, and we can only estimate how many total deaths were caused by American intervention. If we presume than Hitler had 11 million people killed, that makes it seem like a war as close to a battle between “good and evil” as you can get.

But if we presume that the Nazis only killed 250,000 people in the various labor and death camps, then that opens the prospect of the American intervention causing more deaths than the Nazi death camps. THAT is why the debate over the Holocaust is relevant. It’s not about making the Nazis out to be heroes. But it definitely would take a big bite out of Americanist mythology and cause people to take a more critical look at everything else that was done during that general era.

———-

When sharing this writing to other people, even after reading it, they will respond, “but Nazi Germany declared war on the US.” At first I thought it was only a few dolts who were saying that, but then more people kept bringing this “point” up. I was stunned.

Hitler declared war on the US because he wanted Japan to attack the USSR. When Japan did not attack the USSR,  Hitler found himself at war with the US, which wasn’t something Hitler wanted just for the heck of it. The US didn’t have to actually send troops over to Europe, and the unconditional surrender doctrine prolonged the war.

If we remove the militarism, and remove the persecution of various untouchables by letting them leave Germany, Nazi Germany looks a lot like Germany today. Remember the Nazi Party was popular because of the military victories. In 1943, when they started losing, they may have been unpopular but Roosevelt’s call for unconditional surrender made the war no longer about the Nazi regime but about Germany itself.

The constitution was ratified in 1789.

It is often supposed that the constitution exists to “protect our rights”, though the falsehood of this is evidenced by the behavior of the US Federal Government following 1789, but also by the fact that the word “right” doesn’t appear in the constitution. This omission was so glaring that the “Bill of Rights” had to be added two years later in December 1791.

This suggests that the men creating the constitution were not concerned with your rights, but with creating an instrument of power, and I contend an instrument of LIMITLESS power whenever they wanted to use it that way.

Let me take a few parts of the constitution:

Preamble:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Very fair words, they sound very nice, but have you ever taken the time to read them carefully to find out what they mean?

“We the people of the United States,”

By the use of this phrase, there is a clear inference that the people on the United States either directly or through their representatives either wrote or approved of this document. That is NOT true. That phrase is essentially fraudulent. This instrument was never examined by the people of the United States to find out if they cared to approve it. None of them have explicitly approved of it of their own free act and deed, they have never been asked to and have never bound themselves voluntarily under the provisions in it. The people who drew it up had no legal right to impose it upon them as law, yet it says, “We the People of the United States…”.

“in order to form a more perfect union,”

I’m not at all certain that I would favor that. The idea of a “perfect union” can be traced to Plato’s Republic, which was his vision of a perfect society where everyone had a place in society and was to be under a captain at all times, and give obedience to that captain at work or at play. You must obey the state, and the state as Plato saw it was the “perfect union” under a philosopher-king.

In contract, Xeno believed the object was not to provide a perfect society but to create perfect individuals. Xeno, founder of the stoic school, claimed that if you do create a perfect society with imperfect people, then you would have to take these imperfect men and put them in a perfect society by force. How much better would it be to have the emphasis be on be on perfect individuals and let each person provide whatever society he pleased?

“establish justice,”

Now what does that mean? Establish means to found, to do something for the first time. This presupposes that there was no justice prior to the constitution. Apparently the writers of this instrument were going to “establish justice” for the first time for us. How kind of them.

“Justice” is subjective. Is justice to mean fair dealing, quid pro quo, and mutually agreed upon exchange? Or is this to mean retroactive vengeance over all that is claimed to be “unjust”? Because justice is not defined, this leaves the door open to experimentation and “interpretation”. This is partly why statism is so chaotic, because law is not regulated by a matrix of explicit agreements, each of which can be opted out of, but is just written down and “interpreted” and then applied to all in an area. This is bad enough in clear contracts, the vagueness of the constitution only amplifies this problem.

“insure domestic tranquility,”

What does that mean? Insure is obvious, it means to guarantee, to make certain.

Tranquility is also obvious, we have pills for that. You can have tranquility through meditation and avoiding conflict.

But what does “domestic” mean? Two possible interpretations:

1. Domestic as opposed to foreign in the sense of being within the borders of the United States as opposed to within the borders of the United Kingdom.

2. Domestic in the sense of inside somebody’s home.

And both interpretations have been accepted. The US Federal Government, by this statement, has the power to interpose in your home to insure that you are tranquil. Well what if you don’t want to be tranquil? In fact, why is tranquility something to be strived for at all?

I wouldn’t want to be tranquil if the world around me was going to hell, but the state can cite this passage and “insure domestic tranquility” whether you like it or not. This is not a passage I, nor do I suspect many others, would have approved of.

“provide for the common defense,”

What does that mean? Provide means to pay for. So the Federal Government is to pay for the common defense, how generous of them.

What is common defense? Well I suppose it is defense against any common danger. Now what are the common dangers? Well there would be dangers of invaders from abroad, bank robbers, rapists, murderers, arsonists, theives, etc. - but there are many others.

Though other types of dangers could be a lack of work, education, money, opportunity, bad health, termites, rats, etc. Almost anything that exists could be viewed as a common danger. Does this authorize the state to intervene in these areas? Indeed it does, and indeed the government has.

Can you think of something that doesn’t represent a common danger? Drinking too much water could drown you, taking too many aspirins could kill you, eating too much meat could give you a heart attack. There is nothing we are not in danger from. This gives the state wide open doors to provide against any danger, as long as we experience it on a common ground.

“promote the general welfare,”

Promote - now that’s a very active word. You don’t just allow something, you pick it up from where it is and you promote it!

General welfare - now what does that mean? Or more properly, what doesn’t it mean? Is there anything that is excluded? It could be anything, and it is to be promoted.

“to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,”

Whatever is meant by “the blessings of liberty”, “we the people” are not only binding ourselves but also our posterity to our particular interpretation. Is it proper to bind our children into an arrangement, which as adults they will have no opportunity to consider?

Would you counsel that I run up a debt and ask my children to pay it? This is essentially what is being done, is it not? The current state is running up a debt so fast that we will not live long enough to pay it off.

“do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America.”

Very solemn words. “We the people… do ordain and establish this constitution…”. That is a fraud. “We the people” have no power to do such a thing, we have never done it, the people who put this together had no such right to do this over their contemporaries - let alone over you.

There is no reason we have to do this. This is merely the statement of some men, who are now dead, who had no power to speak in the name of their contemporaries, and never asked for such power, and it has been merely put over.

Let me read from Article 1, Section 8 of this constitution which we were told has limited powers:

“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;”

So the congress shall have the power to do two things:

1. Lay
2. Collect

To lay in this sense means to levy. That is, these men called state have the power to decide how much money you have that they want. And then the power to collect whatever it is you have that they want. Where is the limit? Well there isn’t one. They can do this insofar as taxes, duties, imposts and excises.

But there is a modifier stating that these taxes, duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States. But what does that mean? Well it simply means that if you collect a 10% income tax in Virginia, you must also collect a 10% income tax in Massachusets.

But at what level? 10%? 40%? 80%? 100%? 150%? It doesn’t matter, as long as it is uniform.

And what is to be taxed? Well there is no limit at all, the congress has the power to lay taxes.

For what purpose? To pay the debts. What debts? It doesn’t say, it could be any debts. If the congress wants a brothel and runs up a debt, of wants the best medical services on the planet, they can run up debts for that and tax you for it.

And provide for the common defense, whatever that may mean. And the general welfare, whatever that may mean. Where is the limitation? There is none, that is exactly what it says, and exactly what it means, and the state has behaved very much in accordance with the constitution.

“To borrow money on the credit of the United States;”

What does that mean? Well it means that congress has the power to borrow money on YOUR credit. They don’t borrow money against their own personal credit, they borrow against the expectation that they can tax YOU, without any limit whatever, whatever they think you’re good for, and what your posterity is good for, they can borrow against to pay off THEIR debt. There is no limit.

“To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;”

What does that mean? Well it means that congress can regulate the trade that occurs:
1. Between this and foreign states
2. Between the domestic “states” of the union

How far does this go? Well a test for this has already shown us. If a man raises chickens on his farm, and also raises grain on his farm by means of which he feeds his own chickens, that man is affecting interstate commerce and can be regulated by congress. Why is this?

Because if the man did not feed his own chickens with his own grain, he would have to go off his farm to buy chicken in exchange for grain. And conceivably, the grain he produced could go across state lines. Therefore, the fact that he chooses not to sell his grain impacts interstate commerce negatively, thus congress has the power to “regulate” this man.

Another example is a case where a judge determined that window-washing was a matter of interstate commerce, because a window-washer can look into a window, see a telephone which crosses state lines, and is thus impacting interstate commerce and can be “regulated” by congress. Well that just opens it up now doesn’t it? Practically speaking, congress has the power to regulate all commerce.

Imagine if a delegation from a foreign country came to you and determined that you would make an excellent dictator, and wished to appoint you as such. They would offer you unlimited power to tax (presuming the tax rates were uniform) and borrow against the credit of the nation, to provide for whatever you deem to be “the general welfare” and “the common defense” as defined by you, which is to say you can tax whatever you want FOR whatever you want. As a budding dictator, what else could you ask for?

But these are precisely the powers given to congress and used by congress, and these powers came FROM the constitution, purportedly an instrument of limited powers. Where is the limitation? There is none. The US constitution is an instrument of LIMITLESS power.

Lets go at bit further down:

“To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;”

Note that “Nations” is plural. That means that congress has the power to define as piracy a shipload of vegetables crossing from the bahamas to Miami, and order something done about it.

Suppose you picked up the Soviet Constitution (I don’t know if there was one, so if not just go along with it), and it said:

“The Supreme Soviet has the power To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;”

Would that give you the impression that they intended to operate beyond their continental limits? And is this not precisely what the United States Federal Government has done? Perhaps this explains much of the anti-American sentiment abroad.

Now you are probably not militant, and don’t wish ill upon anyone. You wish to live a peaceful, productive life and be a good neighbor, but when you travel abroad or abroad travels to you, can you not see the glint in their eye?

“We know all about you Americans. You are two-faced.”

You aren’t two-faced! But you see they have experienced the constitution first hand, whereas you as the tax cattle are kept fat, productive and protected inside the pen, with a portion of the product of your labor used to fund wars abroad.

“To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

Now that particular clause is called the “grab-bag clause” in Washington DC, and attorneys know that whenever they lack precedent or authority anywhere else in the constitution, they can always cite that.

———-

But this argument is ad-hoc and specific to the United State constitution, so let me say this:

All language has to be interpreted, and will have some vagaries. This includes private contracts between two people. This is why private contracts can only be functional as a reminder of something explicitly agreed upon by two individuals. Now it is impossible for both parties to be in perfect harmony of understanding as to the agreement, and this disharmony will eventually manifest is some sort of conflict. Perhaps the contract can be referenced, but if the conflict persists they will have to consult a mediator. If the conflict still persists, then what? Well then both parties must break off the agreement.

A state constitution is like a contract except that it is involuntary. So even if it were written to clearly limit the powers of the state (which the US constitution is NOT), if individuals cannot break off (which they can’t in the US), then you are stuck with a contract that cannot be exited. And the result is an artificially high level of conflict, because the contract can’t simply be exited as occurs in normal, sane human interaction, we are artificillay stuck in this contract and this leads to a STATIST level of conflict.

The freedom to leave regulates behavior. State constitutions prevent leaving, and hence lack the primary means of regulation on a free market: freedom of association.

The revolutionary war 

(April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783).

First off the revolutionary war had about 40% active support among the population, while about 15% were British loyalists, and 45% were neutral.

The Continentals had about 90,000 troops at any one time, and 250,000 men served in the Continental Army.

About 10,000 loyalists were serving alongside the British at any one time, and 25,000 loyalists served in the British Army.

About 6,000 French troops fought under Jean Rochambeau, though French support came mostly from naval support and attacks on Gibraltar in conjunction with Spain. The French also fought the British in India, and aligned with the kingdom of Mysore against the British.

At the beginning of 1775, the British Army had around 36,000 men worldwide. In order to suppress the rebellion, they had to conscript most of the army, an exact number I am not sure. The British Army had about 60,000 men at any one time, and hired about 30,000 mercenaries from various German states.

Black troops served on both sides, though more with the British than the Continentals. Blacks were slaves before, during and after the revolutionary war, so it didn’t mean liberty for them. That may be something to keep in mind when you’re puzzled about why blacks don’t seem to care much for the constitution.

To put it bluntly, Continental victory was not an amazing feat, and Britain was far more impressive given that they were overstretched with wars against Mysore, Spain and France. Especially since the Continentals had a significant popular advantage (though it wasn’t complete) and thus the British had to expend soldiers to occupy any area they conquered.

Shay’s Rebellion

In 1786, a rebellion in western Massachusetts later dubbed “Shay’s Rebellion” occurred in response to the state enforcing debt collection, which creditors demanded in specie. Because farmers (of which roughly 90% of the United States was at the time) didn’t have much specie, their debts were repaid by having their lands seized. This became a problem after the war because of so many soldiers (20% of the male population) were conscripted, many weren’t paid, yet were expected to pay their debts and taxes.

This led to a high default rate, and the state seizing the property of farmers and transferring it to the creditors. And I suspect most of these creditors didn’t homestead the land and didn’t acquire it from someone who homesteaded the land, which is to say that the private debt wouldn’t have occurred on a free market in the first place, though was exacerbated by unpaid conscription.

There were riots and the shutting down of courthouses. In response Samuel Adams spearheaded a resolution to suspend habeas corpus and a distinction that unlike under monarchy, rebellion in a republic should be punished by execution.

Then there was a battle and / or a bunch of battles and the rebellion was crushed by the state. Shay’s rebellion was used as evidence that the central state needed to be stronger, so that private property could be better protected against local majorities. The irony of course that it was the state seizing the property of the farmers and that there were no property problems before the conscription of men and confiscation of property.

Whiskey Rebellion

The Whiskey Rebellion was in response to the Whiskey Act of 1791, which Alexander Hamilton advocated “more as a measure of social discipline than as a source of revenue” and that he “wanted the tax imposed to advance and secure the power of the new federal government.”

The Whiskey Act was similar to the British taxes on stamps, tea, sugar and… whiskey. The British had imposed a tax on distilled spirits and carriages, and now the new government was doing the exact same thing. There were spontaneous rebellions in response, but this time the imposing state wasn’t far-away and overstretched Britain, but the very near and focused United States Federal Government, and so the rebellion was quickly crushed.

I believe more money was spent on crushing the rebellion than actually collecting the tax.

First Barbary War

There were 4 Barbary States in North Africa: Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. Morocco was an independent kingdom, the other 3 were loosely connected to the Ottoman Empire. Morocco was willing to negotiate a peace without tribute in 1786.

In 1785, Algiers declared war on the US and attacked several US ships which were no longer protected by the British navy, and in 1789 the US adopted the constitution. This allowed the taxes necessary for the Federal Government to buy off the Algerians. In 1801 Thomas Jefferson refused to pay tribute to Tripoli, and sent an invasion force, and in 1805 the US didn’t pay tribute to Tripoli.

But it is important to recognize that the reason the Barbary STATES could be bought off: it’s because they were states, and the reason the piracy was so systematic is that it was state-sponsored.

That said, American merchants could rent escorts from the Dutch and Spanish in the Mediterranean, and while the Spanish Galleons were obsolete by then, they could still destroy the Barbary dinghys without much trouble. The Barbary pirates would attack merchants even if they flew the flag of a country that paid tribute, and so the only sure way to not be attacked would be to rent an escort.

And ships that aren’t being used cost money to just sit around. If merchants across the board rented escorts, then barbary pirates would either have to find a way to beat the escorts - in which case there would be no more raids but everything would be a naval battle - or the pirates would have to find productive jobs, likely selling off their fixed capital (the ships).

In response, less merchants would buy escorts, though new would-be pirates would have to acquire ships all over again, and it would be unlikely if they could gain enough booty to cover the costs of a new ship before the merchants started hiring escorts again.

The economics of the Barbary wars just don’t make any sense. But of course neither did the suppression of the Whisky Rebellion, which did not result in the Federal Government being able to collect the tax. What other motives could the US Federal Government have had for starting a war?

The United States government had just signed the Naval Act and recommissioned the navy in 1794, and the conclusion of the war was a successful military adventure by the US Federal Government.

The War of 1812

The War of 1812 started on June 18, 1812. The modus of the war was the conscription of American sailors to serve in the British Navy (Royal Navy), who at the time had a shortage of experienced sailors. Many British sailors defected during the revolutionary war to the Americans because they were paid better.

British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was the main advocate of this policy, which was very unpopular in Britain and viewed as suicidal. Perceval was unwilling to negotiate with the United States. On May 11, 1812 Perceval was assassinated, and replaced by Robert Jenkinson (often referred to as Lord Liverpool). Jenkinson was willing to stop the conscription, but we are told that congress didn’t know about this at the time.

The United States congress declared war on Britain 38 days later, and their first move was to invade Canada. The United States army was very much unprepared, but was thrust into war, and it should go without saying that the British army in Canada was likewise unprepared.

Because Britain was waging a war against Napoleon, they had few troops to spare, yet were still able to repel the American invasion of Canada. By 1815, after Napoleon had abdicated in Europe, the British were able to spare the needed troops to make 3 attacks into the United States:

1. Toward Baltimore. The British were able to capture and burn down Washington DC, but were unable to capture their main objective of Baltimore, and sailed back up to Canada.

2. Toward New York, but were defeated early in the attack at Plattsburgh.

3. Up through New Orleans, but were defeated at the battle of New Orleans.

Some questions need asking:

- If the modus of the war was the conscription of American sailors, and Jenkinson was willing to stop conscription, why didn’t congress try to negotiate as soon as they learned of Jenkinson’s appointment? Even if they didn’t know of it when they declared war, they certainly knew by 1813.

- Why would congress declare war and invade Canada when the United States army was in such a shoddy condition? Why wouldn’t they pass an act to build up the army like they did with the navy with the Naval Act in 1794? What’s the rush? 

- And if saving the sailors was the reason for a rush to war, why wasn’t there a rush to war a year sooner? 

Why did congress rush to war as soon as they got news of Perceval’s death and the appointment of Prime Minister Jenkinson who was willing to negotiate, thus eliminating the modus for declaring war on Britain? Well to ask it like that is to answer it.

The US congress wanted an excuse to declare war on Britain and invade Canada. During the Revolutionary War, Washington invaded Canada, believing they would defect to the United States (wisely, they didn’t). It took about three weeks for news to cross the Atlantic in 1812, and it took some time for news to cross over land. That’s 21 days by sea, plus 17 days by land for the US congress to hear of Perceval’s death before they declared war.

They learned of Perceval’s death, but the US army was unprepared for war. They didn’t have time to rebuild the US army, but news of Perceval’s death and Jenkinson’s ending the conscription policy would soon spread throughout the colonies, thus the US congress had to STOP Jenkinson from ending the conscription policy lest they lose their modus for war. And the only way to do that was to declare war on Britain before peace could emerge.

The Civil War

I very much wanted to believe the Confederacy was not fighting for slavery. And I did believe this for a long time, and I still believe most confederate soldiers were not fighting for slavery, and that neo-confederates today deeply oppose slavery. But in the various charters for secession, expanding slavery into the western territories is cited as a reason for secession, and the political class in the confederate states all had slaves.

The specifics are unimportant, but the Confederate States seceded. Union troops were stationed at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. South Carolina seceded, and so the Union troops were trespassing and wouldn’t leave, and so the Confederates fired on the Union troops. Lincoln then used this as an excuse to declare war.

Lincoln, in the prosecution of the war:

- Suspended Habeas Corpus

- Imprisoned dissident reporters

- Conscripted hundreds of thousands of men and fought battles in the north against “deserters” (read: confederacy-supporters)

- Allowed Slavery in the Union States

In 1863, Lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation, which promised to free the slaves in the states that had joined the confederacy (but not in the slave-holding states in the Union).

One might say Lincoln did this because he cared for the negro man, and didn’t command the slaves be freed in the loyal states for political reasons. I do not believe this is the case for 3 reasons:

1. Lincoln had stated very clearly prior that he viewed black and white people as incompatible and that he was indifferent about slavery.

2. Ending slavery in the South made all of those blacks loyal Republicans for the foreseeable future. It also killed the expansion of slavery (and thus the democrat party) westward, and any possibility of the issue being revived. Northern industries liked tariffs which kept out foreign industrial goods and subsidized northern industrial goods, and the south paid most of this tariff. Ending slavery and preventing it’s expansion westward assured Republican success.

3. Britain was contemplating entering the war on the side of the Confederacy in order to keep the US split and possibly pit the two against each other. But slavery was extremely unpopular in the UK, in fact slavery had been outlawed in the British Empire in 1834. The emancipation proclamation made the war about slavery, and the UK couldn’t enter the war on the side of slavery.

Lincoln had plenty of non-altruistic reasons to issue the emancipation proclamation, and clearly had no principles as evidenced by his approval of Sherman’s scorched earth tactics and shutting down dissent in the north.

If Lincoln’s prime goal was to abolish slavery, he could have given an Emancipation Ultimatum. All states would be allowed to secede if slavery was abolished in their state. This would have the interesting effect of pitting the politically connected slave-holders against the majority of southerners who didn’t own slaves and just wanted secession.

It’s a simple and elegant solution that forces the south the solve the problem itself, and it makes perfect sense that Lincoln wouldn’t do this if we understand that Lincoln cared about the Republican party and his industrial patrons. This is why he engaged in politician-speak about “the union” and how “a house divided against itself cannot stand”. These were not grand speeches, this was empty and vague political babble, only half a step removed from being as meaningless as Obama’s “hope and change”.

Slavery and Progressivism

Slavery can and was sustained on a free market. It was sustained in medieval Ireland, which didn’t have what I would call a state and is otherwise a good example of a stateless society. The reason being that slavery was believed to be legitimate by the general population in medieval Ireland, and this is the only way slavery can be maintained.

(Similarly, in a stateless society there can be laws against murder, assault and theft. As well as provisions on how much a husband can beat his wife, which is certainly “authoritarian” by most people’s subjective perceptions of authoritarian. Laws against theft are sustained on a free market just like laws supporting slavery and wife-beating are sustained on a free market: it all comes down to the belief of the populace.)

If a given population on a free market would no longer sustain slavery, then a state can sustain slavery against a free market. The way this works is that the population doesn’t support slavery directly, but does support the state, and the state supports slavery. I call this “proxy support of slavery”. The population on the whole isn’t very favorable to the slavery laws, but tolerates them. This was helped in the US where racism was rampant, and racism made Americans more tolerant of slavery since in the US blacks were enslaved. 

I do not believe pro-slavery sentiment was so high that slavery would be sustained on a free market (as evidenced by the fact that black people were employed to as high a position as the various anti-black employment laws would allow). This is why the fugitive slave laws were necessary: slavery could not be sustained on a free market in the US at the time. 

In Brazil, the state simply declared slavery abolished, though did nothing positive about it. No troops were sent out to break up slaves from the plantations. Slavery simply ended because the Brazilian state was no longer enforcing slavery.

I do not know of any examples of this, but it is possible that a state can end slavery against the free market. That is, you have a society that is so pro-slavery that it can be sustained on a free market, but this society also believes in the state. If this state outlaws slavery, the society may stop having slavery not because they would have on their own accord, but because they believe in the state law. This is systematically unlikely in a democratic state, because if the population directly supports slavery, they will vote for a slavery-supporting state. It could happen in a monarchy.

This is the basic idea of “progressivism”: using the belief in the state to legalize / make illegal actions according to the “progressive” ideal.

The problem is that there is no guarantee that any “progressive” movement is going to be made up of people who advance society down the optimal emergent path faster than would have occurred on a free market. In fact we have very good reason to believe they are not:

- Most “progressives” support increased state control of medical services

- Mandatory “education” camps

- Seizing upwards of 50% of the product of your labor

- Subsidizing nonworking people

- Raising the minimum wage

For us it’s easy to see that slavery was something that needed to be ended, but the self-proclaimed “progressives” of today will cause more harm than good. Their notions of the good are indelibly connected to the system they are in, and so will view all deviance from this system as a deviation from what is “normal”, and thus will not advocate radical change. 

They see the current situation, and see the trend, and correctly understand that the world has been getting “better” over the centuries. They then make an error by assuming that the current specific trends must be a continuation of the general trend of improvement. That is, universal healthcare is supposedly part of the long arc of progress.

Opposing the state is not even considered to them, because it goes against the current specific trends, or at least is not salient in them. The thinking goes like this:

- The world has been getting better over the past thousand years

- Over the past 20 years, there has been a drive toward increased state control of the economy

- Therefore, increased state control over the economy is progress

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that most supporters of the free market in the United States do so out of tradition, and tend to uphold other traditions. Thus free-markets get lumped in with racism, religiosity and, paradoxically, aggression abroad.

Of these, racism seems to be the only fair association, but it is not an aggressive or authoritarian racism, but a voluntary racial communitarianism. Perhaps this is technically “racism”, but it is not the hateful bigotry that the word “racism” conjures.

The free rider problem as it pertains to scientific research is as follows:

Company A spends $100K on developing a product, but company B can spend $10K and copy it, having the exact same product. Thus research and development is punished on a free market. That’s the theory.

Edwin Mansfield, the late economist at the University of Pennsylvania came to the conclusion that in OECD countries, across all industry it costs $65 dollars to copy $100 worth of research. Or 65%. But that’s just direct cost.

In order for a company to copy research, they have to have smart people.  An example would be in the drug industry. If I gave you a Viagra pill, would you be able to reverse engineer that? No, a company needs to have smart people who can do that, with the equipment, on hand if they want to copy. So there are sunk costs involved if a company wants to copy research. This isn’t just copying your neighbor’s Scantron answers.

Also it takes time to reverse engineer a product, and in that window the company that made the original product enjoys a monopoly. The more complex the innovation, the more difficult it tends to be to reverse engineer, and the longer that company enjoys a monopoly.

Given the advantage of the temporary monopoly of the originator plus the sunk costs needed for copiers to be able to copy, copying research and doing original research tend to come out as equally profitable strategies. Private firms in OECD spent about 3% of the budget on research.

That said, all firms engaged in research both copy and do original research themselves. Because in order to copy, you must have smart people doing original research in that field, you’ve got to have guys in the know, and when one company makes a breakthrough, everyone else rushes to copy.

The reason copying a product and originating a product tend to be equally profitable is basic economics. Products are only released by firms if it’s revolutionary enough to earn a profit that makes up for the cost of development. And in order to make a profit, it must be difficult enough to provide a period of monopoly for those costs to be recuperated.

Products which are only slightly revolutionary aren’t as expensive to develop as products which are extremely revolutionary, but also tend to be easier to reverse engineer, resulting in a shorter monopoly period. If you’re interested in more detail, I would recommend Terence Kealey’s book:

http://www.vimeo.com/4798314

http://books.google.com/books?id=tKJuIBtjpvsC&dq=Economic+Laws+of+Scientific+Research&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=tyd3S9rbFJTUsQP44oXLCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false

http://www.amazon.com/Economic-Laws-Scientific-Research/dp/0312173067

When the state funds scientific research, there is crowding out. For every $1 spent on research, $1.25 less is spent on research in private firms according to Kealey. I have an idea why this might be: government jobs are more secure and have shorter hours than private jobs, and so a government job of $100K a year is worth more than a free-market job of $100K a year. Or more discretely, a government job of $100K a year is worth about as much as a private job of $125K a year. That’s just my guess as to why state funding crowds out private funding at more than a 1 to 1 ratio.

Also, state funding often goes to military research, which can lead to innovations, but it is not connected to what individuals choose to buy with their own money but what the military wants. And what the military wants isn’t even necessarily tied to what’s the best for waging war. For example the air force continues to fund the research of piloted aircraft because that provides jobs for pilots, whereas UAVs are clearly the wave of the future. The limiting factor of the F-22 isn’t the airframe, its how many gs the pilot could take.

Francis Bacon, torturer and embezzler, put forward in 1605 the idea that science is a public good based on pure research. That yes it is applied science that leads to immediate discoveries, but that applied science can only come from a pure research background, which the short-sighted marketplace will not provide to appropriate degrees, and thus the state must fund pure research.

Now as it turns out, the best way for a firm to come up with some profitable breakthrough is to engage in pure research, because science is unpredictable and that which deals with the most fundamental and open-ended concepts - pure research, tends to result in the most novelty and thus breakthroughs.

And even companies whose sole goal is to merely keep up with the bigger companies and sell knock-offs of popular drugs have to employ scientists, and those scientists have to stay in the loop doing pure research. And so everyone is engaging in pure research constantly.

Francis Bacon’s idea of state-funded science was implemented in France but not in Britain. Britain didn’t implement any state science program until World War 1, and the United States didn’t do very much at all until 1940.

Now one can always come up with many anecdotes about state funding of things causing that thing to come about, a great example that statist hack Noam Chomsky likes to bring up is the internet. As though connecting computers over long distances was something only state research could come up with. Sure, private research invents the airplane, automobile and about half of the computer, but connecting those computers together is a job for the state.

And on the airplane, at the time of the Wright brothers, the Smithsonian was attempting to fly a heavier-than air craft as well. They were beat to it by the Wright brothers. 

Now just imagine if the Smithsonian had won, we wouldn’t hear the end of it. “Oh, without the munificent foresight of state research planners, how would we have ever achieved heavier than air flight!” And the statists would make up arguments about the free market being unwilling to take such abstract risks or not being able to crash expensive airplanes repeatedly, and may even point and laugh at the Wright brothers and say “look, there’s your free market, two wacko brothers. Look at this clown show. 

What a failure! Maybe this crapshoot worked in 1000 AD, but look at how complex things are now. Sure the free market worked then, but so did hunting with stones and spears. We’re evolved, it’s civilization. Enjoy your airplane, courtesy of the US government. Free market fundamentalist, you got pwned.”

Anecdote. The state is not necessary to fund research and development, and from every angle of analysis, the state appears to pervert and distort the structure of production, in this case the production of scientific research.

While these societies may warrant just as much depth as medieval Iceland, I just cannot get up the interest to study them, largely because in descriptions of them is filled with juvenile “anti-capitalist” and “anti-authoritarian” rhetoric.

The Ukranian Free Territory was an area controlled by the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army led by Nestor Makhno. In January of 1919, Makhno led several “Regional Congresses of Peasants, Workers, and Insurgents”. In these conferences he basically told everyone to do whatever they needed to do to make the factories, railways and farms run. And so they did, and people were able to organize themselves and were able to produce things just fine. Makhno’s army was made up entirely of volunteers, and while Makhno allowed units not under his command to form, apparently they all flocked to his command.

Desertion in the Free Territory army was different than in the Monarchist or Bolshevik armies. “Deserters” would simply find their way back to their homes, hide their weapons, and then rejoin and reform units when the time was right and when they were signaled by their local leaders. This made it very difficult for either the Bolsheviks or Monarchists to defeat the Makhnovites. Eventually though the Makhnovites were defeated in 1921.

Another example of anarchism are the Hungarians during the revolution between October 23 and November 10 in 1956. From what I can tell, it was a clusterfrack rebellion of various anarchists and nationalists spontaneously fighting against the Soviets. It’s not really an example of a functioning anarchist society, as it was put down very quickly.

The Israeli kibbutzim were an example of voting-system production occurring between 1909 to today, though today they are controlled somewhat by the state and thus have declined. The kibbutzim operated independently from the state, and fielded their own units during the Israeli war of independence in 1948. They had a clear ideological preference for voting-system firms as opposed to classical firms, and this preference was clearly ideological and not the result of a nexus of individual actions. But other than that they are another example of a stateless society functioning admirably in an extremely high-pressure environment.

Anarchism in Spain has a rather long history, one which you can read about elsewhere, and which did not impress me much. The “National Confederation of Labor” (CNT) was formed in 1910, and engaged in a series of “general strikes” which paralyzed industry, swelled membership, and caused the organization to be outlawed from time to time. In 1931 when the monarchy fell, the CNT did not collaborate with the new government. In October of 1934 there was a miner’s strike in northeastern Spain, and in addition to attacking Republican troops, they killed 37 priests and destroyed 58 churches.

In 1936 the CNT was legalized. During the Spanish Civil war, the CNT sided with the Republicans against the Nationalists. I don’t know if an alliance with the Nationalists was possible, but over the course of the war the Communists became more powerful in the Republican Government until it was overly Marxist-Leninist. During the war the Republicans / Communists killed roughly the same number of noncombatants as the Nationalists, with estimates centering around 50,000 for each. After the war the Nationalists killed roughly 150,000. Given that fascism is a better economic model than communism, and that the Communists in Russia crushed the anarchists there, and the Communists in Spain appeared to only be tolerating the Anarchists since they were fighting on their side, I don’t think a Communist victory would have been good for Spain and that the Communists would have promptly outlawed the anarchists once they were no longer needed.

There is also no reason to believe the Communists would have killed less if they had won, given the history of Communist revolutions elsewhere. 150,000 is actually quite light in comparison to the USSR. Even though the USSR at the time had about ten times the population as Spain, that would only amount to 1.5 million scaled up, less than killed in the forced famine in Ukraine. It’s probably a good thing the Nationalists won and the CNT picked the wrong side in that war from any perspective.

Why am I so hard on the CNT? The Communists were their only option? Too bad. My anti-statist movement would have no problem allying with nationalists or moderate socialists. The inability of the CNT to ally with the Nationalists came from their voting-system preference and “anticapitalist” and anti-clergy baggage, none of which is relevant to anti-statism and is totally unnecessary. They failed because they treated their preference for a certain kind of organization in the absence of a state as the political movement in itself, and that prevented them from being able to ally with Franco, the lesser of two evils.

Of course the areas where the anarchists in Spain predominated such as Barcelona and Huesca did manage to run things just fine, it was not chaos or disorder, it was spontaneous order and the units the Anarchists fielded were voluntary and served with distinction on the wrong side.

The idea of a “worker-owned firm” strikes me as bizarre. It’s not that a “worker-owned firm” as most people define it wouldn’t work, empirically we know that what are called “worker-owned firms” do work and they compete with the classical “hierarchical firms” just fine. But the thing is, a capitalist works, he just has a different job, he is a worker.

If the capitalist, in addition to dealing with the stockholders, deciding to start a new plant or not, negotiating with shipping rates and hiring and firing and interviewing, worked on an assembly line, would we call this a “worker-owned firm”?

In firms that have some complex voting-system of capital management, there are still capitalists, just a lot more of them. I am not interested in the specifics of these voting systems of capital management, the optimal voting system is something for the employee-capitalists to figure out. It’s just a business plan. Maybe they’ll win out on a total market, maybe they’ll fail, or maybe they’ll exist alongside the classical firms, I don’t know.

But I do believe the classical firms and the voting-system firms each have a role, and that role comes from the type of worker each is to employ. If you work in a voting-system firm, you have much greater involvement in the production structure of the firm and inevitably more connection and will be spending more time with not only your immediate coworkers but throughout the entire company. Maybe this appeals to you, maybe it doesn’t.

If you’re just come high school kid looking for a summer job, this probably isn’t what you’re looking for. You just want to sign up, do what needs to be done, get paid, and leave. In this instance, a classical firm may be better. Or if you’re an engineer and you want to keep your options open and move from firm to firm, it may be easier to do this between classical firms. You may not care about establishing some deep rapport with your coworkers.

I don’t view either as inherently superior. The classical firm has the advantage of being able to hire people more easily, since the employees aren’t going to be involved in managing the capital. The voting-system firm has the advantage of more interested and involved employees. McDonalds will probably never adopt a voting system, which is fine. They serve a perfectly legitimate and necessary role in both the labor and food markets. Hospitals, dental offices, carpenter, plumbing and electrical companies are probably more likely to adopt a voting system.

Harappa was a city that emerged in the Indus valley around roughly 2600 BC. This city was noted for having a bath in virtually every house, collective irrigation systems, streets and a sewage system, a uniform city plan with uniform building methods, and a few temple houses and at one point a ritual bathing house, and a single non-concentric wall around the city with no moat.

Harappan civilization was known to have poorly developed weaponry despite metallurgy on par with contemporary civilizations. The city of Harappa had various public services. Even if we assume that water usage could be metered and charged individualistically, there would still be the issue of road and wall maintainence. There are a variety of ways roads could have been built, with standardization being a market phenomenon.

There is little evidence of a state or a king, with public works being financed by cooperation between the various trading companies and clans. Perhaps this was done through a dominant-assurance contract. The Unicorn seal was found on various documents and public works, and this appears to have been a trading company based in Mohenjo-Daro, apparently the second-largest city in the Harappan civilization (with Harappa being the largest obviously).

One could say that this wasn’t a trading company but in fact the head of a state. This is possible, but this state would lack palaces and monuments on the scale of their contemporaries, far greater amenities for the general public, and few and poorly developed troops, and a lack of anything other than trade records.

The reason this appears to be is that unlike Mesopotamia and Egypt, at the time the Indus valley had a much larger area people could branch out to. People weren’t all cloistered around the river, and so if a religious cult formed and tried to conscript resources or labor, people could move further out more easily. This ease of movement made it more difficult for states to form. Again, Carniero’s circumscription theory of state formation appears to play an important secondary role.

However, since this population didn’t have an anti-statist ideology, I believe they would have eventually formed states once the population density rose and it became more difficult to move.

www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_10_3_04_thompson.pdf

Money is just a medium of exchange that is used to prevent what is known as a “double coincidence of wants”.

Lets say Bob grows tomatoes and wants pickles. Without money, he would have to find someone who wants tomatoes and grows pickles. He may have to spend quite some time searching. Barter works this way.

Now what normally happens is that it is found that there is something that can easily be exchanged for something else. For example gold and silver – who wants gold and silver? Well rich people who want to make jewelry. If you have gold and silver, you can give it to these people in exchange for pickles, sheep, wool, milk, or whatever.

And so individuals all start wanting gold and silver because they know they can exchange it. But then what that does is it causes the people who originally didn’t care about gold and silver to want gold and silver not for it’s value in and of itself, but for it’s exchange value. This of course artificially raises the value of gold and silver, but it makes transactions much much easier. So money emerges from the market.

Kings would then officially decree that only coins that they mint can be used to buy things, and outlaw the use of any other coin, perhaps confiscate all of the gold in the kingdom. With this they could claim the coin that has 1 ounce of gold was worth 2 ounces of gold. They would debase they currency by adding junk metal, and in this way they could pay off debts and soldiers with less valuable coins. This strategy of course never lasted in the long run.

Today in the US, Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs), aka “dollars”, are used because everyone must have them to pay off the state. If you have any land property, you will have to pay property taxes, and these taxes must be paid in federal reserve notes. And so everyone must have these federal reserve notes, and the only place one could get them at first is from the federal reserve. This resulted in FRNs becoming like gold once was, everyone wants them and they become common currency.

Furthermore, the state can print up more and more FRNs to pay off the soldiers and debts, reducing the value of each FRN, but you’ll still have to get FRNs in order to pay taxes, which will certainly be adjusted for inflation.

I encourage the reader to look into the liberty dollar. The liberty dollar is a barter note backed by silver. Which means that you can take your note back to the liberty dollar company and receive the stated amount of silver in return, or for federal reserve notes.

Goods and services haven’t actually gotten much more expensive. An ounce of silver in 1970 could buy about as much as an ounce of silver today. It’s just that federal reserve notes are worth less.

If one is worried about their liberty dollars not being accepted, just remember that they can be cashed in and the specified amount of silver can be sold. Also one can just buy actual silver liberty dollar coins and not have to worry about storage.

Currently about 100,000 people have placed orders for liberty dollars.

On November 15, 2007 the FBI and Secret Service (SS) conducted a raid on the liberty dollar office in Evansville and seized took all the gold, silver, platinum and almost two tons of Ron Paul Dollars. The raid was justified by charges of fraud and illegal activity. As of writing this on August 10, 2009, the trial has not concluded. I implore the reader to explore the matter further:

http://www.libertydollar.org/ld/legal/raid.htm

http://reason.com/blog/2007/11/16/your-liberty-dollar-raid-updat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Dollar

The charges of fraud did not come from outraged consumers anymore than demands for “regulation” came from consumers.

Between the years 1837 and 1861 was what is considered to be the “free banking” era in the US. Over this period, there was an 11% decline in prices along with a 160% increase in the money supply, which works out to an annual deflation rate of .47%.

As long as one had the prescribed reserve ratio as outlined by the Michigan act of 1837, anyone could start a bank and lend out bank notes. Which were demand deposits on silver, gold, or whatever.

And if one didn’t feel at ease with fractional reserve banking, they could always deposit in a full-reserve bank and probably have to pay a storage fee, or just make purchases with gold and silver (real money) directly.

Proxies for deflation rate during the free banking period:

http://mykindred.com/cloud/TX/Documents/dollar/

Because the Minoan language has not been adequately deciphered, the process of state formation in Crete is rather vague. There is little evidence of war among inhabitants of the island, and large palaces which are signs of a state weren’t built until around 2700 BC. Of course large palaces don’t necessarily mean the building agency was a state, but they probably were. And the fact that palaces just started being built around 2700 while being virtually absent anytime prior (the Minoans are said to have had their ethnogenesis on Crete around 7000 BC) points to there being states on Crete.

The building of palaces coincided with the arrival of bronze-working. One may think that this enabled wealthier people to conquer their opponents with bronze weapons and setup states. But bronze also certainly increased production, perhaps in agriculture and ship-building and thus trade, creating more surplus for Crete. This greater surplus meant more disposable resources for religion, which has been the historic origin of states.

According to Richard Hooker, the Cretian states were dominated by religion and heavily controlled trade. That appears to uphold the model of the religious authority giving a natural elite kingship. In Crete, the natural elite are traders, so it appears that the preisthood granted kingship to the best merchants, who became kings. As kings they could then conscript labor and resources to build beautiful, wasteful palaces, and control the trade on the island.

That there is little evidence of war makes sense, as the only military the kings needed was to enforce the law against those who disobeyed – if that was even needed since the religious mob itself could enforce the commands of the religiously sanctioned state.

http://wsu.edu/~dee/MINOA/HISTORY.HTM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_civilization#History

If you’re interested in a more detailed view of this, I would recommend Henri Claessen’s book “Ideology and the Formation of Early State”, which has an extensive preview on google books.