Why Pacifist Libertarianism Doesn't Work

I was recently pointed to the 1951 sf story by Eric Frank Russell "And Then There Were None" as a good Libertarian story. Reading it, it explains why there are so many libertarians who consider themselves followers of Gandhi, and from it I was able to rather quickly deduce why their leftish approach to libertarianism simply doesn't work with threats to liberty like Islamofascism.

The story centers on the experience of the crew of a large spaceship from the Terran Empire that has landed on a planet that was colonized long ago by followers of Gandhi's philosophy of civil disobedience, and forgotten. The Ambassador is intent on bringing the planet and its people, who call themselves "Gands", into the Empire, except he can't get anybody on the planet to cooperate in being subsumed. There is no government, no elected leaders. The economy functions by trading in IOUs, those who try to give orders are answered with "I won't!", and nosy busybodies are rebuffed with "MYOB!". These acts of civil disobedience are The Weapon that Gandhi invented for the self styled "Gands", and it is only useful against "anti-Gands", anti-Gands can't use it against Gands...

When the highly regimented crew of the ship discovers the power of refusal, the number jumping ship rises so high the Captain is concerned about having enough crew to get back into space.

The libertarian who pointed this story out to me was rather proud of himself, using it as an excuse to condemn Bush's foreign policy against Islamofascism. The problem is that Gandhiism doesn't work against Islamofascists, and any simple perusal of history should be able to see that fact by noticing that the partition of India and Pakistan is evidence of the failure of that policy.

The reason it doesn't work against religious fanatics is rather simple: the principle rests on the idea that a would-be tyrant is primarily motivated by secular materialistic ideas: the idea of having lots of people around to tax and boss around, so if the tyrant killed everyone who refused to cooperate, pretty soon he'd have nobody to tax and boss around.

It should be rather obvious why this strategy doesn't work with Islamofascists: they don't care to have you around to tax and boss around if you are not going to convert to the one true faith. They are just as happy to kill you and send you to Allah for judgement, repopulating your land with their own faithful. "Convert or die" cannot be beaten by "I won't" when the thug believes in the afterlife and would rather send you there than rule over you.

Civil Disobedience only works when the opponent is civil, when he has a vested interest in your cooperation and continued productive existence, and when his government is run by people who fancy themselves moral and civilized. This is why Gandhis strategy worked on the British Government, and why Martin Luther King's strategy worked on the US Government. This is also why it most certainly would NOT work against Muslim groups or governments.

Szablog: Nick Szabo's "Unenumerated"

Nick Szabo is an interesting friend of mine. A lawyer slash computer geek, and fellow veteran of the Extropians list, we collaborated a year or so ago on an idea for an online currency to be backed by computer processing time. This concept would have turned the network processing techniques of SETI@Home into a viable commodity backed anonymous digital currency.

The reason, we proposed, why such a monetary system was necessary was because of the Singularity: exponential growth in technology and its resulting productivity gains accelerating the rate of exponential growth in a vicious cycle as the core of our information economy could not, we reasoned, properly be accounted for by currencies either backed by gold, silver, or the land and debts of the current fiat money system.

Any techno-economic singularity will always be choked off by a shortage of currency when the currency is restrained by a finite resource. It is a fair argument to make that the dot com bust of 2001 was such an event, when the chair of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan, described the New Economy as "irrational exhuberance". Greenspan's ability to judge the fitness of the new information economy was as impaired as letting a dinosaur decide the evolutionary fitness of a mammal.

Anyways, intervening events had hindered our bringing our concept to fruition, but Nick is still out there, and has a blog I've added to the IntLib blogroll, "Unenumerated". He has written in the past on the pre-history of money, back to the pre-neolithic use of shells and beads as "wampum", and now notes the recent discovery of 90,000 year old currency found by archaeologists.

This is, IMHO, logical that we find that money is as old as humankind is. After all, if prostitution is the oldest profession, proto-man obviously needed something to pay the proto-hos with. Likewise, if politics is the second oldest profession, proto-man obviously needed something to bribe his tribal elders with...

Dartmouth Dumbocracy

You folks may recall the outstanding demonstration that I conceived and we held at Dartmouth College last year to support alumni candidates Zywicki and Robinson against the "official" candidates for the board of trustees. Dismayed at the results of the election, the powers that be are rewriting Dartmouth's constitution to make a mockery of democracy. Read on:

Currently, petition candidates can declare their candidacies after the Alumni Association has announced its official slate. The new rules would reverse that, so the Alumni Association would know of any outside challengers before selecting its candidates.

Mr. Daukas said the current system put the official candidates at a disadvantage because they did not know whether they would face outside challengers at all or who they might be. The chairman of Dartmouth's board, William H. Neukom, class of '64 and retired general counsel for Microsoft, in an interview called the proposed constitution "a sincere effort" to create "a more democratic, more participatory form of alumni self-governance."

Merle Adelman, a vice president of the Alumni Association, said the election for new officers, which had been set for October, was not postponed to extend the terms of incumbents but because the new constitution would change the structure of the association's leadership and could render the election results moot.

But critics said the changes upended the whole rationale for petition candidacies — created as a mechanism for expressing discontent with the status quo — and gave the official Alumni Association the upper hand.

Editors of the on-campus Dartmouth Review and The Dartmouth Free Press, conservative and liberal publications that seldom agree, called the new constitution "a slap in the face to open democracy" that "makes a mockery of the spirit of dissent and free speech."

Mr. Robinson agreed. "This is as much a reform as when Joseph Stalin decided to hold elections in Eastern Europe," he said. "Voting? Yes. Democracy? Not at all."

Indeed Mr. Robinson. I have hereby proffered the services of this states Libertarian Legions to demonstrate in support of liberty and democracy, once again, on the Dartmouth Campus. We shall teach these so-called "liberal arts" majors, what the true meaning of liberalism is...

Eminent Domainia, part tres

As we're enjoying our eminent domain victory here in NH, our work has inspired similar efforts elsewhere. My good friend, Karl Dickey, of Boca Raton, FL, chairman of the Palm Beach County Libertarian Party, and candidate for state senate, has been behind ED reform efforts down there, and is holding a rally:

Dear All Libertarians & Friends,

As you are aware our state legislature smartly passed a bill to limit eminent domain in Florida. The legislature is even going so far as to propose it be in our state constitution for which you will be able to vote on in November - hopefully it will pass.

There is a rally scheduled for tomorrow (sorry for the late notice) that we are going to conduct with the Institute of Justice (www.ij.org) that I hope you are able to attend! Friday is the anniversary of the Kelo decision and a protest/demonstration on the abuse of eminent domain is in order.

We will meet at 5:15PM at Ocean Reef Park, 3860 N Ocean Drive in Singer Island.

Please email me back if you expect you are able to make it - and bring a friend!!!

Thank You!
Karl Dickey
Chairman, 2005-2006
Libertarian Party of Palm Beach County
www.lppbc.org
888-236-7895

Those of you in Florida are congratulated and wished good luck for your vote in November.

"Network Neutrality" vs Bandwidth Rationing

In todays issue of Good Morning Silicon Valley, John Paczkowski comments on Andy Kesslers proposal in The Weekly Standard that the only solution to the telecoms proposals to eliminate "network neutrality" in favor of price-based bandwidth rationing is to use the Kelo v New London ruling of the SCOTUS (of which you all know I've been involved in a little action on myself) to eminent domain the telecom networks.

Kessler's rationale is that the telecoms have not made any effort since the backbone glut of the late 90's (Enron/Worldcom/GlobalCrossing, etc) to expand consumers bandwidth, particularly the "last mile" of fiber optic to consumers doorsteps, therefore the networks could be construed by a creative silicon valley lawyer to be "blighted" from telecom neglect.

As I comment on GMSV's blog entry in response to JP's piece, the problem is not telecom neglect, the problem is government regulation. Here's what I inform the readers of GMSV of:

As I'm one of the guys who had the idea of using eminent domain against Justices Souter and Breyer, I've got a pretty good idea of what is and is not eminent domain, and as a person who has written on the real reason for things like the Enron/GlobalCrossing/Worldcom collapses and the failure to go "the last mile" on fiberoptic lines, I can say why Kessler is wrong here too.
The reason the networks have been ignored for years is because of the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1998, which, rather than encouraging the telecoms to build "the last mile" of fiberoptic, was amended by democrats to require that telecoms that did build last mile access must provide their competitors with access to their customers at a price below the cost of access.
Given this financially untenable requirement, the telecoms told congress to stick it, and have done nothing about last mile fiber optic since.
The current fight over network neutrality is the result of a scarcity of high bandwidth, due to TRA 98, that is resulting in proposed price-based bandwidth rationing.
Until the diseconomic strictures of the TRA are rescinded, this is an economic inevitability, and calls for eminent domain are simply the end game of a socialist plot hatched back in 1998 to nationalize the network.
Current network "blight" is the fault of the governments regulations, not telecom neglect.