NRO Supports National Socialism

But if it was still okay to have prayer in school, the Pledge of Allegiance, expulsions, non-self-esteem boosting curricula and the rest, a conservative would say, 'Don't touch the public schools. They're working just fine. Let's give them everything they need.

In other words, "conservatives" (of the National Review variety) believe that theft by the state is dandy as long as it supports their personal agenda. If an atheist, Buddhist, or Moslem is forced to pray a Christian prayer in school, that's OK with them. If a pacificist is forced to pledge allegiance to a flag (a symbol of militant nationalism), then that's OK too as long as a nominal "conservative" is calling the shots. If a childless couple is forced to pay for schooling the children on others, neocons believe that is just fine and dandy as long as their children are still in the school and they approve of the curriculum. If the curriculum is harsh and punishments are meted out regularly, then that is great, pacificists be damned. In other words, neocons, unlike libertarians, have no ethics.

What conservatives do believe in is hubristic/chauvinistic nationalism (which they misleadingly call patriotism). Because they are convinced (by fantastic historical distortion) of our moral superiority, they can justify wars of aggression by us against others, while condemning agression by one unallied party against another. Neocons look approvingly as their military slaughters thousands of innocent civilians, but scream in horror when their children die in war. Neocons support unconditonally those who serve their interests as they seek to create a unique national identity, which allows us to criticize and devalue/dehumanize non-Americans. Neocons are reviled by immigrants seeking to reach their shores and contaminate their unique and holy character. Neocons have no particular love or respect for Christianity, which preaches peace and fairness, but they embrace it simply because it is the dominant religion in the United States and, therefore, can be used to create our identity, our national myth. Similarly, neocons have no special love for English grammar, but they push English-only laws simply because it is the predominant language.

True libertarians can be distinguished from conservatives by their humility and objectivity, as opposed to the destructive power of pride. Libertarians are for individual "liberty" or, more precisely, as much liberty as is possible that does not infringe on the property or use of/access to that property of/by others:

Don't like English's hundreds of grammatical rules?
Choose Esperanto.

Don't like Christianity?
Try Buddhism.

Does the Catholic church charge too much for a Baptism?
No problem, become an Evangelical.

You don't want to wave the flag or support our troops in genocide?
No problem, you can wave whatever flag you want.

Libertarians (or at least real libertarians who do not support aggressive posturing or closed borders) allow the freedom for true morality and prosperity to exist. Neo-conservatism is the prescription for endless war.

Hunger for Dictatorship

The invasion of Iraq has put the possibility of the end to American democracy on the table and has empowered groups on the Right that would acquiesce to and in some cases welcome the suppression of core American freedoms. That would be the titanic irony of course, the mother of them all—that a war initiated under the pretense of spreading democracy would lead to its destruction in one of its very birthplaces. But as historians know, history is full of ironies.

If only the paleocons were as eloquent in their promotion of individual freedon as their opposition to American empire.

Defending the Indefensible War in Iraq

Because the war in Iraq is indefensible from virtually any moral perspective, it is fascinating to see the bizarre fabrications and twisted rationalization of the defenders of one of the most indefensible wars.

Let us review the facts as I see them:

1. Iraq was admitedly a rogue nation (Iran-Iraq war, Kuwait, repressing Shiites, ...) ten years prior to the war.
2. At one point during the Iran-Iraq war, which Iraq started, the US was actually supporting Iraq with satellite imagery and the precursors for chemical weapons!
   
3. Iraq had been beaten badly by those two wars, a de facto Kurdish separation, a Shia revolt, and nearly a decade of sanctions, safe zones, and rigorous inspections.
4. The sanctions on Iraq resulted in a a decline in the social and economic infrastructure or Iraq, resulting in food, water and medicine shortages that killed more than 500,000 Iraqi children according to UNICEF studies.
   
5. Iraq was complying fantastically well with the sanctions, presumably because they wanted the crippling sanctions lifted, but the Baath were legitimately concerned about the US spying on them.
6. Bush was extremely eager to go to war. He paid for false testimony against Saddam, used discredited "facts", invented the threat, and marginalized those in his adminstration who argued against war.
   
7. At the time of the invasion, several independent inspectors had confirmed that Saddam was completely defenseless.
8. George Bush sought even before becoming president to depose Saddam. This was based on three reasons:
   He regretted that his father did not overthrow Saddam and promised himself that if given the opportunity he would not flinch from attacking Saddam.
   He wanted to place a military base in the Middle East to ensure the flow of oil (as if they would not have sold it to us.)
   He wanted to reward his corporate sponsors (Richard Cheney, etc.) with lucrative "reconstruction" contracts
   
9. The United Nations did not wish us to go to war with Iraq.
10. The US bribed many countries to support the war.
    
11. Despite foreign aid bribes, very few countries supported the war, by the end almost all coalition states left.
    
12. The US easily conquered Iraq because Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
13. If Iraq had WMDs, it would have used them when it was attacked.
    
14. The US faced guerrilla warfare from ex-Baathist Sunnis.
15. Bush begrudgingly allowed elections to occur when Shiite leaders started big demonstrations for such elections. (The Shiites knew that they had the most population and would successfully gain power.)
16. Iraqi life became even harder for most Iraqis after the occupation, including shortages of gas, electricity, water, and kerosene.
    
17. Iraqis were in constant fear of being sent of to Abu Gharib or caught in the crossfire between insurgents and US-backed troops.
    
18. The initial euphoria over "liberation" by some Iraqis dissolved into a desire to end the occupation and have a normal government.
19. Vice president Richard Cheney's Halliburton made billions of dollars off of no bid contracts in Iraq. This was a sharp increase over the percentage of contracts in previous wars.
    
20. There never was any connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
21. George Bush's neocons did not even intend to go after Al Qaeda, but wanted to leverage 9/11 to engage in "nation (re)building".
    
22. W attacked Afghanistan with reluctance, knowing that he could then place the attack on Iraq/Iran/Syria/North Korea (and whoever else the administration wanted to eliminate) in the context of an abstract "war on terrorism".
23. The "war on terrorism" degenerated even further into "making the world democratic".
24. Iraq now has considerably less religious freedom (except for Muslims) than it had under Saddam and may well adopt Sharia law.
25. The US has built one of the world's largest permanent military bases in Iraq.
    
26. Saudi Arabia has asked us to remove the military base located there.
    
27. Terrorism has increased dramatically due to the Iraq war.
    
28. The middle east has been greatly destabilized as a result of the war.
    

Given these facts, it was obvious that the war was unjustified. You cannot attack someone for what they did 10 years ago, especially when the country had been severly punished, as was the case with Iraq. Nor did we even purport to do so. We claimed to be attacking them because they were not complying with sanctions; however, this was patently and knowingly false. Fabricating a case against someone is wrong, especially when doing so to wage war. If one can reasonably predict that such a lie will result in the deaths of thousands of innocents, then action is a war crime. This is the same crime for which the Nazis were executed at Nereumberg. George W Bush, Richard Cheney, Condolezza Rich, Ahmed Chalabi, Rumsfeld and others should be tried for war crimes.

Convicting these individuals would make the world a much safer place. In addition, Rumsfeld is guilty of torture and holding prisoners of war illegally, which are both serious war crimes.

Such justice is necessary not only for the survival of our nation, but probably for the survival of humanity. Nuclear war with the Soviet Union/China/Europe is today much more likely due to the United State's heavy-handed imperialism.

Beating a Dead Parrot - Why Iraq and Vietnam have nothing whatsoever in common. By Christopher Hitchens

There it was again, across half a page of the New York Times last Saturday, just as Iraqis and Kurds were nerving themselves to vote. "Flashback to the 60's: A Sinking Sensation of Parallels Between Iraq and Vietnam." The basis for the story, which featured a number of experts as lugubrious as they were imprecise, was the suggestion that South Vietnam had held an election in September 1967, and that this propaganda event had not staved off ultimate disaster.

Whatever the monstrosities of Asian communism may have been, Ho Chi Minh based his declaration of Vietnamese independence on a direct emulation of the words of Thomas Jefferson and was able to attract many non-Marxist nationalists to his camp. He had, moreover, been an ally of the West in the war against Japan. Nothing under this heading can be said of the Iraqi Baathists or jihadists, who are descended from those who angrily took the other side in the war against the Axis, and who opposed elections on principle. If today's Iraqi "insurgents" have any analogue at all in Southeast Asia it would be the Khmer Rouge.

Ho Chi Minh was a communist. So what if he was an ally of the West. Do you think that makes him good?

Vietnam as a state had not invaded any neighbor (even if it did infringe the neutrality of Cambodia) and did not do so until after the withdrawal of the United States when, with at least some claim to self-defense, it overthrew the Khmer Rouge regime. Contrast this, even briefly, to the record of Saddam Hussein in relation to Iran and Kuwait.

So, how are 10 and 20 year old wars relevant? Especially, considering that Saddam did not wish to make war with the US, bent over backwards for UN inspectors who certified his compliance with all of our inane requirements, and finally, did not even have the capability of defending itself.

Vietnam had not languished under international sanctions for its brazen contempt for international law, nor for its building or acquisition, let alone its use of, weapons of mass destruction.

Yes, Iraq did use chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq conflict; however, it obtained these weapons with the complicity of the US government at the time. Furthermore, it is likely that Iran also used such weapons. Obviously, Vietnam was reasonably well armed or they would not have won. Besides, chemical weapons only recently reclassified as "weapons of mass destruction" by the Bush administration. Previously, only nuclear weapons were characterized as WMD. Never before has the mere possession of any such weapons been an pretext for war.

Vietnam had never attempted, in whole or in part, to commit genocide, as was the case with the documented "Anfal" campaign waged by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds.

Good for them, but Saddam's treatment of the Kurds was an internal affair. This was not the main pretext of the war, nor would anyone have bought that as sufficient pretext for an invasion.

In Vietnam the deep-rooted Communist Party was against the partition of the country and against the American intervention. It called for a boycott of any election that was not an all-Vietnam affair. In Iraq, the deep-rooted Communist Party is in favor of the regime change and has been an enthusiastic participant in the elections as well as an opponent of any attempt to divide the country on ethnic or confessional lines. (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is not even an Iraqi, hates the Kurds and considers the religion of most Iraqis to be a detestable heresy: not a mistake that even the most inexperienced Viet Cong commander would have been likely to make.)

This is semantic nonsense. The communists are irrelevant in Iraq. The Sunnis were the one's who stood to lose from elections and opposed on this basis. It is perfectly reasonable that they would oppose elections without sufficient protections of minorities. Furthermore, the Viet Cong did discriminate against Cambodians.

No car bomb or hijacking or suicide-bombing or comparable atrocity was ever committed by the Vietnamese, on American or any other foreign soil. Nor has any wanted international gangster or murderer ever been sheltered in Vietnam.

Different military tactics. Is dropping a 500 pound bomb on civilians somehow more morally justifiable than a more targeted car bombing??!

American generals and policymakers could never agree as to whether the guerrillas in Vietnam were self-supporting or were sustained from the outside (namely the northern half of their own country). However one may now view that debate, it was certainly true that Hanoi, and the southern rebels, were regularly resupplied not by minor regional potentates but by serious superpowers such as the Warsaw Pact and China, and were able to challenge American forces in battlefield order. The Iraqi "insurgents" are based among a minority of a minority, and are localized geographically, and have no steady source of external supply. Here the better comparison would be with the dogmatic Communists in Malaya in the 1940s, organized principally among the Chinese minority and eventually defeated even by an exhausted postwar British empire. But even the die-hard Malayan Stalinists had a concept of "people's war" and a brave record in fighting Japanese imperialism. The Iraqi "insurgents" are dismal riff-raff by comparison.

Most Iraqi support the insurgency and understandably hate the torture-happy Americans. Futhermore, support for the insurgency grows continually.

Where it is not augmented by depraved Bin Ladenist imports, the leadership and structure of the Iraqi "insurgency" is formed from the elements of an already fallen regime, extensively discredited and detested in its own country and universally condemned. This could not be said of Ho Chin Minh or of the leaders and cadres of the National Liberation Front.

So, you are saying that a known communist is nicer than the ruler of a regime that (at the time of the attack) posed no credible threat to any outside power???

The option of accepting a unified and Communist Vietnam, which would have evolved toward some form of market liberalism even faster than China has since done, always existed. It was not until President Kennedy decided to make a stand there, in revenge for the reverses he had suffered in Cuba and Berlin, that quagmire became inevitable. The option of leaving Iraq to whatever successor regime might arise or be imposed does not look half so appetizing. One cannot quite see a round-table negotiation in Paris with Bin Laden or Zarqawi or Moqtada Sadr, nor a gradually negotiated hand-over to such people after a decent interval.

Yes, Vietnam would probably have evolved into market Capitalism at about the rate of China; however, you are making a rediculous slur again: There has NEVER been any connection between Baathist Sunnis and fundamentalist Shiites such as Bin Laden. Perhaps, you could never envision such round table discussions with the likes of Arafat or Ariel Sharon, both heads of terrorist groups.

In Vietnam, the most appalling excesses were committed by U.S. forces. Not all of these can be blamed on the conduct of bored, resentful, frightened conscripts. The worst atrocities—free-fire zones, carpet-bombing, forced relocation, and chemical defoliation—were committed as a direct consequence of orders from above. In Iraq, the crimes of mass killing, aerial bombardment, ethnic deportation, and scorched earth had already been committed by the ruling Baath Party, everywhere from northern Kurdistan to the drained and burned-out wetlands of the southern marshes. Coalition forces in Iraq have done what they can to repair some of this state-sponsored vandalism.

In what bizarre fantasy world do you live?! Is that why Iraqis still do not have reliable electricity and can no longer afford gasoline or even kerosene. Obviously, they were much better off before the war despite enormously destructive sanctions.

In Vietnam, the United States relied too much on a pre-existing military caste that often changed the local administration by means of a few tanks around the presidential palace. In the instance of Iraq, the provisional government was criticized, perhaps more than for any other decision, for disbanding the armed forces of the ancien regime, and for declining to use a proxy army as the United States had previously done in Indonesia, Chile, El Salvador, and Greece. Unlike the South Vietnamese, the Iraqi forces are being recruited from scratch.

Who cares?? After we had completerly disbanded the military we had to reband it with many of the same ex-Baathists. A simple tactical error.

In Vietnam, the policy of the United States was—especially during the Kennedy years—a sectarian one that favored the Roman Catholic minority. In Iraq, it is obvious even to the coldest eye that the administration is if anything too anxious to compose religious differences without any reference to confessional bias.

Seems to be that the bias is strongly in favor of Shiites as any majoritarian rule must be.

I suppose it's obvious that I was not a supporter of the Vietnam War. Indeed, the principles of the antiwar movement of that epoch still mean a good deal to me. That's why I retch every time I hear these principles recycled, by narrow minds or in a shallow manner, in order to pass off third-rate excuses for Baathism or jihadism. But one must also be capable of being offended objectively. The Vietnam/Iraq babble is, from any point of view, a busted flush. It's no good. It's a stiff. It's passed on. It has ceased to be. It's joined the choir invisible. It's turned up its toes. It's gone. It's an ex-analogy.

Time will tell that your fantasy bears no relation to reality. Iraq will be your next Viet Nam, fool.

Socialism Versus Libertarianism

Socialism (advocacy of socialized costs) necessarily entails regulation and enforcement in order to control costs (necessarily low incentive for conserving socialized or subsidized assets). If one desires personal freedom (libertarianism) from social control, then one has to accept personal responsibility without a social safety net. This is also a very consistent system because costs are very controlled (natural incentive level for conservation) and they are borne by the individuals so the society cannot use that as an excuse for regulating the lives of the individuals.

The consequences of the two systems are as follows (trying to be as fair as possible):

Socialism:
neutral: low personal choice, high social choice

good: scientific, many public/subsidized services (parks, museums, monuments, sculpture, roads, libraries, fountains, light rails, sidewalks, beaches, ...), few decisions required, high amount of public information (potentially) available, decent pollution control

bad: requires a powerful centralized goverment, which leads to totalitarianism, over-reliance on the integrity of scientists, high social regulation, intrusive amounts of information collected, high control (fines, jail terms, licenses, ID cards, censuses,..), high taxation (to pay for the regulation and enforcement), high poverty (due to socialized incentives), and inflation

Libertarianism (Paleoconservatism): high personal choice, minimal social choice (only to the extent that one agresses another's property)

bad: lack of public places (parks, roads, fountains, monuments), lots of important decisions required, lots of personal regulation required, no social choice, lots of undirected marketing, lots of temptations (addictive drugs, pornography, ....), requires arming or contracting with a protection agency

good: distributed contracted power, lots of personal choice, no monopoly on regulations, a plethora of private services (security services, road services, private transportation vehicles, legal services, brokerage services, variety of religious services.), private roads, shopping malls, insurance companies, a choice of spiritual facilities, relatively inexpensive/attractive goods, coffee shops, clubs, gated communities with communal facilities, private research facilities, etc.

Distributed Democracy

A preferred form of government to democracy would be to have a type of anarchical/miniarchy in which "government" is replaced by multiple competing agencies, each with their own means of enforcement and own limiting documents (constitution). People can dissolve any one of the agencies as they see fit. None of the agencies should be allowed to alter their charter, that is up to the electorate. All the agencies will constantly seek power over others, but this will be limited by competing agencies. In no case will an agency be allowed to exercise authority beyond its charter. Nor will any agency be allowed to violate fundamental property rights. Enforcement will come from other competing agencies.

For example, right now we have one entrenched hierarchic power structure (government). Whether regulating pollution, crime, maintaining streets, parks, etc. There is a geographic monopoly on who provides the service. But why do the different monopolistic services have to be affiliated within the same power/control structure? Why can't people vote independently for every established entity, i.e., one votes for a park manager, a police chief, a fire chief, a street maintenance chief, an electrical service provider, etc. There is no reason that a single individual should choose all of these groups. They should be independently responsible to the people that they are supposed to serve! A headless organization! Furthermore, each organization would have its own budget or bill for its own services. People would just throw out the CEO/board/or entire corporate structure of a monopoly as necessary. Individuals could also decide on what should be privatized. Business would have to argue for the benefits to the consumer of monopolizing certain markets .

Vox Clara

The family unit is the cornerstone of our society...Yes, we must support families as they exist today, but to pretend that a single mother household is equally desirable to a traditional (husband and wife) household is lunacy.

Suppose that the father is a hardened wife abuser. Is it still preferrable?

Certainly, there are extreme cases where divorce is the best option, but they are in the small minority.

Who should decide what is best?

By supporting the traditional family unit, I am not suggesting that, as a society, we cling to some traditional family model that harkens back to a fantasy of how things used to be, but that we simply recognize a sociological fact: the common good is furthered by a strong family unit headed by a married male and female.

Really? The world's population does not seem to need any encouragement.What is the "common good"? This sounds very communistic.

Marriage is ontologically between a man and a woman, ordered toward the union of the two distinct sexes, always open to procreation, and forming the foundation of the family.

This is pedantic. The meanings of words can change. The whole gay marriage issue arose because conservatives want to give people in heterosexual relationships a tax break. If tax law did not discriminate against unmarried individuals, it is doubtful that anyone would care. Homosexuals would gladly acquire the name "civil union". They just want legal recognition of their fidelity to each other. Surely you can see that caring and fidelity are the more important aspects of "marriage" than sex and should be allowed tax benediction as civil unions. (That is if you believe that government should be promoting certain lifestyles.)

Married men and women ensure the succession of human generations and of human society in that they can create new human life in the act proper to them, the conjugal act. In this act, they literally become "one flesh,” with the husband giving himself to his wife, and she receiving him.

Again, does procreation need any encouragement. The survey says "no".

By so ensuring the survival of society, married men and women provide an indispensable service to the common good. The sex acts of homosexual couples simply cannot do this.

It may easily be argued that married couples hurt the common good in as much as they increase the population and deplete finite resources. Individuals should only be concerned about public policy to the extent that it impacts them. Seeing individuals who care for each other be together is clearly a "good" in my book.

Praise God for G.W. Bush!

Only fools are certain. Scientists and sages only ascribe probabilities to various potential realities based upon theory and evidence.

Obviously some Christians pray to a different god: What Christian sect teaches that God blesses liars (falsely claimed he had hard evidence that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and intended to use them, encouraged others to exaggerate the threat, was planning to attack far before 09-11), war mongers (100,000+ dead Iraqi civilians as a result of the war resulting from a lie), or big-spending thieves. There seems to be a strong correlation between naivete and biblical literalism, but it is a naivete that is definitely inspired by wishful thinking. These simpletons believe in a loving God (who they cannot define) because they want to believe in a loving, nurturing God, not because they have any statistically-significant evidence for his existence. (How many of these individuals actually even understand statistical significance?) They believe that their government is uniquely good and holy and that it has a duty to conquer and oppress other peoples, so as to enlighten them with their truth. Yes, Al Qaida and the religious right in this country have an enormous amount in common. They simply use different tactics in spreading their absolute truth. Of course, their religious truth is not really about Truth, it is about getting on board with their feel-good message.

Cow political economics.

The Malthusian Trap :: Ludwig von Mises Institute

I suspect that Malthusian population increases may occur in welfare (socialistic, redistributive) societies with no population control and no social stigma attached to bearing a large number of children; however, the left-statist solutions (coerced birth control/abortion, implemented most completely by communist China or subsidized birth control/abortion as sponsored by the US government) or right-statist solutions (Brazilian death squads) are repugnant patches on a system deficient in natural monetary incentives to having a number of children commensurate with one's ability to provide for them.

In a libertarian society, population control arises naturally from pricing signals. The number of children that a couple chooses to have is influenced by the personal cost to them, which depends somewhat on the scarcity of the resources from which those products are produced. Libertarianism encourages resource conservation in the same manner.

As population increases relative to scarce resources for which no alternative exists, one expects that the cost of the scarce critical resource increases, resulting in more parents choosing to have fewer children.

Trust God, Not Man by Charley Reese

Christians and other religious people have a perfect right to advocate their moral positions in the public arena. The idea that one can have a purely secular morality disconnected from religious beliefs is nonsense.

Not true. I am not religious, but I deeply oppose aggression, torture, hypocrisy, and obfuscation. The religious George Bush apparently endorses these behaviors. Both secular morality and religous morality (as opposed to simply professed morality) haver their foundations in personal values. It is possible that this arises from one's treatment and upbringing during one's formative years.

All morality has its origins in religion of some kind, and laws are reflections of morality. There is no purely practical reason why it is wrong to steal and to kill, yet virtually all societies recognize that those activities are wrong. Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and other religions condemn them, and religions preceded the modern state.

This is an unproven assumption. That every societies tend to discourage these behaviors within their groups is necessary for the survival of the society. In other words, certain behaviors are naturally socially-selected.

Nazism and communism should stand as warnings to those who think you can build a rational society devoid of religious beliefs. Millions of people were murdered under those systems, and why was that? Because without religion, one can make a perfectly logical and reasoned argument for murder. Why should society spend the money to maintain the lives of the hopelessly insane or retarded? Why shouldn't the government round up and execute people it considers a threat? Does not the greater good trump the fate of individuals?

Have secular regimes really killed more individuals than religious regimes? This is quite dubious considering the crusades, inquistions, and witch hunts.

If indeed there is no God, then human life is just an accidental phenomenon and no more valuable than that of a mosquito. As we saw in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, societies without God create rivers of blood. In a crazy way, humans will always be under a god – if not the God of the universe, then the state will become God. Personally, I prefer the one in the sky to the one in the uniform.

All life is naturally valuable to those who possess it. The lives of others are valuable to the extent that we have naturally-occurring and socially-encouraged empathy.

Western civilization was built on the foundation of Christianity. That's a fact, not an opinion. A lot of sinning notwithstanding, the laws and institutions of the West were derived from Christianity. It is no accident or whim that Europe was long known as Christendom. It is no accident that George Washington said a man who was an enemy of religion was also an enemy of the republic.

The founders were greatly influenced by the enlightenment, which was a completely independent influence from religion. This country has always had a strong secular tradition from Benjamin Franklin to Mark Twain.

Unfortunately, the West is losing its Christian moorings. Europe today is far more secular than the United States. The Europeans could not even bring themselves to acknowledge Christianity in their new constitution.

What Christian mooring have we had? Where is religion mentioned in our constitution other than to limit its influence?

In the United States, the push is on to lock Christianity up in its church buildings. Keep it out of politics. Keep it out of the public arena. Well, this militant secularism is one way to commit national suicide. Washington's comment was connected to the fact that it was impossible for a free republic to exist with immoral people. Cut people loose from the moral moorings of religion, and the state will have no choice but to step in and control them. Remember, it's always a choice between the God in heaven or the God who commands the army and the police.

Define heaven. Define God.

One of the favorite canards of the secular folks is to blame wars on religion, but the truth is that the all-time champion murderers have always been atheists. Nobody in human history murdered more people than Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot. The 20th century was the bloodiest in human history, and not one of its wars was about religion.

The fact that communism, which advocated violent revolution and happened to be atheistic, was widespread in this century casts an unjustified pall over atheism; however, it seems likely that the advocacy of violent revolution is a more likely reason for violence than atheism.

One piece of sophistry employed by the secularists is the claim that "you have no right to impose your morality on other people." That's bull. Every law in every law book in the land is an imposition of morality on other people. The only question is whose morality is going to be imposed. What the secularists are really up to is imposing their morality on Christians and other people of faith.

You just contradicted your claim that atheists can have no morality because all morality comes from religion. How do you impose your morality if you have none?

I really believe the future of America depends on whether we experience a revival of the spirit. If we don't, if the secular trend continues, then politics won't save us. In fact, politics devoid of God will doom us.

Liberals hate it when I say this, but the Third Reich was secular liberalism carried to its logical conclusion. That's plain enough if you study the Third Reich and compare it with the positions advocated by today's secular liberals. It is always a fatal error to put one's trust in man instead of in God.

So what? I have seen the gamut of secular beliefs: from liberalism to libertarianism to conservatism. It seems as though a lack of belief in a divine creator is compatible with the gamut of political thought.

Why Legitimacy In Iraq Matters

Legitimacy is a matter of degree. It seems that Bush's venture in Afghanistan will be much more sucessful than that in Iraq because

1. In Afghanistan we overthrew a regime (Taliban) that was protecting an organization (Al Qaeda) that attacked us. In Iraq we overthrew a regime that was neither threatening us nor capable of attacking us.


2. Although Karzai was picked by the administration. He does seem to be genuinely concerned about the future of Afghanistan. His position does not seem to be a reward for supplying false information to the U.S. or working as a covert operative.

Open Borders Equals Tribal Warfare by Bob Wallace

"Leftists refuse to believe mankind has an animal nature that most people cannot
truly overcome, and they also believe people have complete free will, which they
do not."

Most leftists I know are quite scientifically literate. They are well aware that human nature (like that of all living creatures) is to propagate one's genotype.

"If we had complete free will, then any socio-political-economic system would
work, because people could make themselves into whatever they please. But we
can't, because we don't have that kind of power over ourselves. We never will."

I assume work means here that the system is sustainable. Also, it only follows that any socio-political-economic system would be sustainable if the state could mold people into whatever they want, not if people themselves could mold themselves into whatever they want. History shows that communism only works for months or very small populations. Managed (socialist) economies work for decades between wars, and pure anarcho-capitalism may or may not work, but it certainly seems more workable than managed economies because it admits the fallability and self-interest of the managers and has the most incentives for citizens to be knowledgable, responsible, and productive.

"People, although they are a lot more than animals, do share certain traits with them. We are social beings who group ourselves into family and tribes, just the way all social animals forms packs. Those libertarians who think we are merely individual atoms disconnected from everyone else are showing a profound lack of understanding of human nature. Perhaps, they are showing a complete lack of understanding of it, which is probably the main characteristic of the Left."

True, but I do not think this is the distinction between left libertarians and right libertarians. Right libertarians seem to be enamored with war and do not seem to apply libertarian justice to other cultures even when those cultures do not threaten us. Left libertarians require that groups have the same responsiblity and culpability as individuals.

"These days, most tribes have grouped themselves into huge units known as nations. There is no way around it. If people weren't like that, then they wouldn't do it."

Yes, people do like to create an "other" that they can vilify and ridicule. This is how we define our social selves and acquire a social identity. However, as the existence of sports teams show, this group selfishness and hubris does not have to get to the point of violence, nor should such dark characteristics, which are usually built on exaggerations of differences, be rewarded.

"Since we form ourselves into tribes (nations), any one nation is going to view with great suspicion when large amounts of the members of another nation moves onto the first nation's land. This is something that anyone of the Right understands."

This is only a problem in a statist society; otherwise, foreign vistors can only access travel easements or private land that they either purchase or are invited to enter.

"The Left, including left-libertarians, do not understand this, because they unconsciously believe everyone has complete free [sic, maleable] will. They believe that all tribes can share the same land and get along, because they naïvely think everyone can change themselves on the inside (in the snap of a finger!) and get along with everyone else."

Perhaps, the national "governing authority" (I am a miniarchist) could post a sign regarding property law, access routes, and proper behavior in public areas. Nothing else is required. The various laws would be enforced by the various enforcers detailed in the contracting agreements.

"Toss into a huge salad every religion and ethnic group, and the open-borders crowd truly believes hundreds of millions – if not billions – of people will respect everyone else as an individual and not judge them as members of their tribe. The open-borders crowd, including left-libertarians, believes in multi-culturalism."

Libertarianism is completely compatible with coexisting cultures. Cultures define themsleves in terms of the cuisine/diet, dress, holidays, behavioral strictures, etc. You are implying that all of these qualities should be controlled by a governing authority. Now that truly contradicts any possibility of limited goverment.

"Unfortunately, multi-culturalism is the wrong name for what it really is – multi-tribalism. And tribes, when they are large enough and trying to share the same land, fight. Anyone who does not believe this, just look around the world. Every war there is, is one tribe against another, one religion against another, one ethnic group against another."

War is the quintessential violation of property rights (including the right to life). If one group consists of a sufficiently large number of libertarians then their enforcing authorities should be able to defend their signatories against aggression.

"If we were truly individuals, and nothing else, we would not need families, fathers, mothers, and friends. We would have no desire to gather together at theaters, stadiums, clubs. We would be as independent as cats."

Even cats need fathers and mothers and, sometimes, responsible owners.

"It is the Left that has always believed human nature either doesn't exist or is infinitely plastic. It is for that reason they have consistently tried to social-engineer people into being what they cannot be. The open-borders crowd, including left-libertarians, are trying to social-engineer people being what they want them to be. Under the veneer of their "libertarianism," do they do not a lot in common with leftist totalitarians? Don't they in fact hate their society, and wish to see it destroyed?"

People can be bred (socially selected) into anything over a period of generations. Just look at a domesticated dog for proof.

"Let's do a thought experiment. Imagine there were no borders whatsoever in the world? What would happen?"

Let me see.... no border guards, more prosperity (from increased trade), less fighting, more tolerance and understanding of other cultures. I suppose you though the Berlin wall was a good idea.

"In the fantasies inhabiting the left-libertarian mind, people would freely move around to where the jobs are, and everyone would get along almost perfectly."

True enough. Those who do not "get along" would be able to isolate themselves along cultural lines, not based on militarily established borders.

"In the real world, however, one tribe would attempt to impose its will on another, and murder and expel the members of it. That's why open borders equals tribal warfare. That old saying, "Good fences make good neighbors," is true."

Your doomsday scenario is similar to that of those argue about the huge crime wave that will result from legalizing firearms, or trading freely. It is actually exactly the opposite: Closed borders create cultural distinctions and mischaracterizations that lead to warfare. The contracted enforcers of the peace would most likely be able to deal with those who are not committed to anarcho-capitalism.

"There is another aspect to human nature to which I have given a great deal of thought for the last few years: hubris. All tribes have, almost without exception, considered themselves to the Chosen of God; almost all have called themselves "The People" or "The Humans." This means anyone outside the tribe is non-people and non-human."

True, but you know logically that it cannot be that every tribe is superior to every other. Thus rational humans do not behave in the petty way. Shouldn't society be based on truth, not socially-acceptable myth?

"Hubris is part of our limited, imperfect nature. It's why humility – which is founded on a self-awareness of our imperfections – has always been considered a virtue."

True, but closed borders reward hubris and ignorance of foreigners. Open borders punish hubris and those who would tell us that we are the chosen people.

"What answer does the left-libertarian open-borders crowd have to the problem of fighting tribes, with each considering themselves the Chosen? They have no answer, other than that the free market will make everyone get along. They wish to destroy the nations of the world, even if they don't know it."

Nations come and go. Obviously, no state of peace can exist between people who do not recognize the rights of each other, unless the two groups are separated or one of the two groups enslaves the other. The reality is that many countries *citizens* are respectful of the rights of the others and yet the countries themselves do not have sufficiently good relations to consider dissolving their borders. Would Canadians of Mexicans start trampling our rights? This seems unlikely in a libertarian society, but it is possible in a democracy unbridled by constitutional limitations or principled citizenry. The logical course of action is for the citizens of all countries with sufficient respect for each other to lobby for their borders to be eliminated.

"The ultimate problem of the open-borders crowd is the hubris of which I just wrote. Anyone who thinks they can destroy nation, state, and neighborhood, and replace it with their vague understanding of the free market, is showing the arrogance and ignorance that has almost exclusively been the province of the Left."

We have various regional identifiers: country, state, county, city, neighborhood, family. But how much does anyone really identify with, say, their county or neighborhood? Do we not identify more with those associations which we voluntarily join than those we have thrust upon us? Would one identify oneself more a, say, South Side Duluth Minnesotan or a Right-Libertarian Buddhist Mac-Lover?

Who would have thought that one could have open borders between states each a "tribe" with millions of people. Why if it is possible to have open borders between, say, California and Oregon is it inconceivable that one could have open borders between Canada and the United States or between Mexico and the United States?

"In the case of the open-borders crowd they believe the free market – which they misunderstand – will bring [about] this Utopia. We only need to destroy all the nations of the world. And exactly how will this destruction bring peace? "

Nominal nations may still exist, but with open borders, people will have greater
understanding of other cultures. This may not guarantee peace, but it will
certainly encourage it.

DECLARATION OF COMMON LAW

DEFINITIONS

This declaration of common law is believed to approximate the ideal bill of rights to ensure the maximum happiness for the maximum number of individuals in a society. Individual happiness is determined by the freedom to pursue those goals that the individual believes will make him happy without infringing on the pursuit of others to maximize their happiness. The possession and protection of
property is crucial to the pursuit of happiness because without property there is no incentive to improve resources and great incentive to exploit the resources. This declaration is
a supercontract in that it applies even to individuals who do not subscribe to its tenets and therefore may compete with other declarations of common law.
The author expects individuals to subscribe to this by virtue of its sustainability and inclusiveness, as well as
the happiness and wealth that it gives to its subscribers.

1. individual: any rational being capable of entering into a
   valid contract.
2. aggression: acquiring or damaging another individual's property without a (explicit or implied) valid contract
3. coercion: the threat of aggression or aggression itself
4. signatory: signer of a contract
5. enforcing authority: the party specified in a contract that will resolve any conflict according to the punishments set out by the contract
6. (valid) contract: an agreement between two or more individuals by which property is exchanged with
1. consent of all signatories, including the enforcing authority
2. stipulation of plausible self interest of all signatories, including the enforcing authority
3. stipulation of the punishment of signatories for not honoring the contract
4. stipulates no coercion against any non-signatory
5. signed without coercion (the contract itself will generally specify aggressions against all signatories)
6. truthful representation of the identities of all participants and facts either expressed or implied by the contract
7. documentation of contract as required by the enforcing authority
8. documentation of identity and consent (insignia of all individuals involved in the contract including that of the enforcing authority) of the signatories as required by the enforcing
   authority
7. (valid) association: any collection of individuals that creates a binding document with
1. 100% consent of the members
2. does not prevent any of its members from leaving the group
3. restricts the contract to the property of individuals that agree to the contract
8. scarce resource: any resource that is not in unlimited supply or for whom ownership by one individual precludes ownership by another
9. authority: a third party that all parties governed by the contract agree to have enforce a contract
10. owner: one who is named in a contract as having control over a property
11. property: a scarce resource that was obtained by valid acquisition
12. arbitrator: an individual or association endowed by all participants in a contract with the power to
    resolve a dispute between themselves
13. just compensation: a value of property equal to the costs of damages (including prosecution costs) resulting from the aggression of others as determined by an arbitrator
14. retaliation: aggression resulting from aggression designed to deter future aggression
15. escalation: obtaining or destroying a value of property in excess of seized or damaged property
16. violence: violence is a subset of aggression in which harm is done to another's body
17. conflict: an incident in which any number of individuals accuse other individuals of initiating aggression
18. peace: a state where all conflicts have been resolved and valid, non-conflicting contracts bind all individuals to each other
19. enforcing the peace: All individuals have an interest in not letting an aggressor profit from deliberate aggression because he may become emboldened to aggress against others. All aggressive actions will be judged by their ability to reduce further aggression without the aggressor profiting, once the victims have been compensated as much as possible. (The society may decide to either kill or isolate a violent aggressor.)

Axioms

1. Freedom
1. All non-aggressive behavior by or between any individual or association of individuals is allowed unless restricted by valid contracts.
2. Justice
1. Aggression between any individuals or association of individuals is allowed
   only if
   
   
   
   1. specified by a valid contract or
   
   
   2. as necessary to defend property from aggression.
   
   
   
   
3. Property Rights
1. property restriction: Resources that are not scarce are owned equally by every individual.
2. acquisition: Individuals may acquire property only by
1. birth: An individual's existence entitles that individual to exclusive ownership of the individuals' body and actions.
2. first use: Property that is unowned becomes owned by a living individual that first physically acquires or makes use of it.
3. valid contract: Exchange of ownership of property may occur only via prior valid contracts.
4. inheritance: Property of the deceased is no longer owned by the deceased, but passes to those according to the will of the deceased (to do otherwise would infringe on the right of the giver) if an explicit will does not exist, an implicit will is assumed to exist that passes the value of one's property to one's descendants in equal proportions.
3. imminent threat axiom: Any individual may act immediately to deter an imminent threat to one's property without dispute resolution. The dispute resolution process will be initiated after the threat ceases to be imminent.
4. Property Owner Responsibility
1. responsibility: All individuals are personally responsible for any damage to the property of others that results from their property, bodies, and/or actions.
2. anti-establishment: No individual shall submit to an authority that the individual did not personally authorize by contract.
5. Dispute Resolution
1. conflict resolution: any conflict between signatories should first be resolved by
1. just compensation
2. contracting authority,
3. an arbitrator,
4. jury trial by arguing one's case before third parties interested in and capable of enforcing the peace
2. de-escalation: Should an individual initiate an act of aggression without a valid contract and the resolution have already passed beyond the contracting authority and arbitration stages, then any response to that aggression in excess of compensation shall be judged by the self-appointed enforcers of the peace by its serving to reduce the incentives for further aggression.
6. Associations
1. voluntary association: Associations may be formed by valid contract.
2. society: No association is allowed a right or privilege not granted to an individual.

Corollaries

1. non-aggression: exchange of ownership of property may occur only via prior valid contracts.
2. non-legislation
   of morality: It is unwise to impose one's belief systems on another
   because this will necessarily reduce the universality and acceptance of
   these axioms. Most beliefs that are commonly held result from genetic
   "morality" such as the prohibitions against incest, orgies
   (disease transmission), taking psychoactive drugs, and eating rotten or
   diseased food. The prevalence of such practices will necessarily be
   low without moral legislation; otherwise, such individuals will not be able
   to compete on the market. Libertarianism minimizes the amount of aggression
   by eliminating majoritarianism, i.e., the belief that any law goes as
   long as the majority of individuals approve of it. Majoritarianism frequently
   conflicts with all of the other principles and makes morality irrelevant
   because morality requires that you have the freedom to act in an
   immoral manner.
3. no-excuse: Religious beliefs or mental health do not excuse adherence to these axioms.
4. property ownership axiom: All individuals are owners of all of their legal
   property to the extent specified by the valid contracts by which
   their property was obtained.
5. compensation
   axiom: An individual may obtain just compensation from an
   aggressor with or without the consent of the aggressor
6. copy restriction: copies of an original are the property of the copier
7. information
   freedom: Information is not a scarce resource and therefore is
   owned by all that obtain the information. One may charge a fee for the collection, organization, or
   dissemination of information.
8. non-aggression: right to engage in any non-aggressive behavior (derived from freedom axiom)
9. identity ownership: All individuals are exclusive owners of their identities (persons), misrepresentation of identity in a contract voids the contract and damages may be assessed by the enforcing authority of the contract.
10. thought ownership: All individuals are exclusive owners of their thoughts (Follows from being owners of their brains and their actions (thought = action of the brain)
11. life ownership: All individuals are exclusive owners of their lives (Follows from being owners of their bodies and their actions (life = action of the body)
12. individual responsibility: Individuals are responsible for their actions (Action Ownership + Responsibility)
13. right to truth: the exchange axiom implies that any contract formed on false pretenses is invalid
14. no eminent domain: The compensated aggression axiom means that sellers must initiate sales. Eminent domain is forbidden. This also means that polluters can only pollute if allowed to by all of the victims.
15. right to defense: all individuals have a right to take any measures necessary to protect themselves
    either individually or collectively as long as they do not violate the rights of others in doing so.
16. generational choice: No generation shall create an authority over subsequent generations. The authority must be recognized by the individuals of the subsequent generation because of the value of recognizing their authority. An authority's jurisdiction is limited to the contracts that they authorize.
17. consensual association rights: associations of individuals may be endowed with all of the rights of individuals,
18. right to discrimination: any voluntary association may discriminate on any basis
19. associations will possess no rights that our not granted to individuals
20. Preemptive defense is forbidden.
21. Punitive damages shall not be awarded.
22. Right to agree to an arbitrator.
23. Third parties may require unique identification of its members.
24. All individuals are exclusive owners of their speech.
25. All individuals are exclusive owners of their actions.
26. Coercively limiting speech is aggression; however, an arbitrator may assess damages resulting from false speech.
27. Free speech is a corollary of free exchange between individuals.
28. right to know: supercedes any other right to nonaggression, no damages may be assessed. No liability should be attached to the expression of ideas.
29. Escalation of aggression is aggression. De-escalation is not aggression.

Involuntary Associations (Government)

Whether involuntary associations should exist is debatable, but if they do exist they possess additional restrictions as compared to voluntary associations:

1. Involuntary associations should discriminate only on the basis of
   performance and should have no barriers to entry, advancement, or exit.


2. Free mobility, all public employee positions must have open hiring and
   firing policies.


3. Forced association, public employees can choose coworkers only dependent
   on bureaucratic criteria.


4. All government operations must be transparent.


5. There must be checks on government power.


6. The branches of government must be independent.


7. No government officials shall receive respect not accorded to individuals.


8. No laws shall refer to specific groups.


9. All information collected by government must be made freely available.

The war in Iraq was a breach of contract given by the Congress to the president because the facts were misrepresented.

To whom does property of the deceased go when there is no estate or will? Property is divided among children, when they exist, or sold, and the profits divided equally among the next surviving generation.

In fact, there are no human rights that are separable from property rights. The human right of free speech is simply the property right to hire an assembly hall from the owners, or to own one oneself; the human right of a free press is the property right to buy materials and then print leaflets or books and to sell them to those who are willing to buy. There is no extra "right of free speech" or free press beyond the property rights we can enumerate in any given case. And furthermore, discovering and identifying the property rights involved will resolve any apparent conflicts of rights that may crop up.

The current Federal Government is not legitimate because its acquired powers have exceeded what was given to it in its charter (initiating contract). The institution should be dissolved.

We Are All Socialists Now

Prenazi Germans faced a lovely choice between Communists and Nazis. The communists were left socialists and the nazis were national socialists. It is exactly analogous to the current choices for the United States presidency:

democrats = left socialists
neocons = national socialists

In the end, whether the socialists nationalize the economy via environmental laws, "monopoly" busting, mandatory social insurance, and labor regulations or via restrictions on lawsuits (attacks of property rights), anti-terrorism licenses, morality laws, sub-market interest rates, and aggressive theocratic wars makes little difference to the wealth and freedom of Americans. It also makes little difference whether these programs are paid for by taxation, tariffs, or inflation. These socialists' programs result in distortions of the economy and more money flushed down the toilet of government bureaucracy. Furthermore, both parties want to reinstate the draft to maintain the debilitating American empire.

When I was a progressive, I viewed libertarians as selfish and unsympathetic to the plight of the poor and religious fundametalists as primitivistic, scientifically-illiterate, self righteous, authoritarian nut cases. (OK, so I was wrong about libertarians, and I have even met some reasonable fundamentalists.)

I have always feared the Christian Right forming a militant, messianic theocracy. (And, sure enough, it did happen with George W.) Studying the ethics of property and contract, libertarianism opened my eyes to the reality that those socialistic redistributionary schemes were both unethical theft and dangerous ways of empowering a centralized government, which is now the biggest threat to our freedom, security, and prosperity.

Jumapili's Web Apparitions

Excellent!

A Thoroughly Modern Monetary System

 

A monetary system
may use banks, gold storage  vaults, coins, magnetically-stripped plastic cards,
smart cards, or bills, but these are
only various means to an end: a convenient, reliable, transparent
and secure way of accounting what all of
the participants of the system owe or are owed to all of the other participants
of the system. Note that barter has none of these desirable attributes.  This credit-debit information can be either communal or
maintained by a "trusted" third party. In a modern system,
it is usually combined with other information such as uniquely identifying
the participants and of rating their integrity and ability to repay and security
codes.

Indirect Exchange

There are many ways of getting things from someone from
whom we have nothing to give that he directly values; however, only a few these
ways are both ethical and universalizable: 

1. 
   

   IOU: personal  debit document dependent on your good faith
   and ability to repay



2. 
   

   contractual IOU: legally-binding personal debit
   document (personal check, debit card) 



3. 
   

   3rd-party IOU: a gift
   certificate that is honored by the issuing authority. This is of moderate value
   because they may not be selling an item of interest.)



4. 
   

   pooled IOU that
   can be used with millions of other vendors (This is of the highest value because
   someone is bound to have an object of interest.) Rather than thinking of a fiat
   currency as a legally-backed government creation. The most productive conception
   of it is as 3rd-party pooled IOU, where everyone agrees to honor it because they
   are honoring the work of participants in the system, knowing that they have an
   interest in maintaining the system because they are a participate in the system. This ensures that others will honor the currency when it is
   their turn to be buyers. 

The only legal backing that a established fiat currency
requires is contractual backing. A good currency system will minimize the amount
of enforcement necessary. An established fiat currency is so robust that the
only method of destroying it is to produce too much of it too fast (price hyperinflation). While
government may establish laws favoring "their" currency (the New York
Bank monopoly currency), these laws are not the primary reason for the success
of these currencies. Rather, it is their near universal acceptance for payment
that gives these currencies life. No law requires anyone to give anyone else anything for
their fiat currency. Yet, people do it gladly as members of an economic
system.  Legal tender laws are unenforceable because no one can
claim that you refused to sell because of the currency and not because you the
price was unacceptable or that you simply did not want to sell. Furthermore, legal tender laws only apply to debts, but a debt does not exist until a
contract is made. Suppose a contract stated that one would owe 50 cuid at the
end of the month if one agreed to the service. If one refuses, $ 1000 for the
service one would have to know the exchange rate between cuid and dollars to
determine whether the collector was refusing the dollars as tender for debts.
Perhaps a cuid does not have a definable exchange rate with a dollar. 
Furthermore, legal tender laws do not prohibit one from not accepting bills even if
one accepts an electronic transfer of  virtual dollars. 

Debit System

Debt Notes 

If one generates debt notes, then they must reside
with the seller because the buyer would have no incentive not to destroy them.
Anyone could grab as many debt notes as they want, but sellers would want to
make sure only that the buyer has direct assets for which they can legally force
the debtor to redeem their notes at any time. Note the similarity to a gold
based system, but with the benefit that the assets do not have to be held in
escrow, they can be used until claimed. This disadvantage is that there is no
third party guaranteeing that the debtor has sufficient assets to cover his
debts.

Debt notes could be generated by any number of debt
note authorities; however, the debt note authorities must pool their information
(just as credit agencies do) because a debtor could have debts from several
different authorities, meaning that the apparent value of one's assets from the
directly valued objects one possess may have virtual liens on them. This would
mean that one could extract debt notes equivalent to many times the value of
one's property. Another option is to create a debt note monopoly, so that no
debts are honored except those from a single entity; however, this would entail
the same moral hazards that arise any time a debt monopoly exists.  Debt
notes must positively identify the debtor. (With credit cards this is done by
signing a piece of paper. A credit card is simply a positive identifier for an
issuing. The debt note is the merchant copy of the signed credit card receipt.)
Everyone wants to hold debt notes with other's names, but do not like having
those held by others. 

Debt may be held by a third party. The debit card industry
uses this system. (Amex, ...) One does not have to worry about multiple liens
against one's property or information sharing. The issuing bank of a debit card
is always the same as the saver's bank. The transaction is not authorized unless
the funds exist. The funds may be denominated in either a fiat currency or in a
precious commodity  (eGold, ePlatinum, etc).

Another alternative is to generate credit notes (such
as dollars). Credit notes will be passed from the buyer to the seller. All
entities have an interest in holding credit notes as long as they are honored by
sellers. Credit notes do not have to mention the creditor. Credit notes can be
generated by multiple authorities with each one promising to honor his
particular credit notes. In the past this was done by independent bank deposit
notes. Credit notes that only specify to give the bearer of the note a
particular quantity of a directly valued object (gold, for example) encourage
theft. Credit notes that only give credit to a positively identified bearer (travelers
checks) discourage theft, but do require a processing fee.  

It is also feasible to have a mixed system debt and credit
notes. In this case, every time a debt note is created a corresponding credit
note is created. To have the nicest symmetry, the seller should keep the debt
note; however, he has no incentive to do so. The debt note would be kept by a
third party credit agency. The credit note would circulate until it
reached the original debtor who could give it to the credit agency who would
eliminate both. 

Let us define a currency in terms of the modern service that it would provide
in a world without a state-sponsored currency, rather than in historical terms.
Historically, currencies started as commodities in and of themselves (gold and
silver coins with an authority figure guaranteeing their weight). This created
the temptation (moral hazard) of the authority figure cheating on the weight.
Since the authority (monarch, Caesar, etc) had a monopoly on the currency, this
was too much of a temptation. Moral hazard exists in a market economy, but
when someone cashes out his integrity, the market can realign itself. 

During the banking era money was essentially a tradable
deposit slip consisting of contracts to receive a specific quantity of a
commodity: gold, silver, etc from specific banks in exchange for them keeping
the gold safe. When people started making claims on their contracts less often,
there was a temptation on the banks to loan out the money, even though that was
a breach of implied contract. The banks justified this be claiming that they
could get the money back if the depositor ever claimed it. As an added incentive
to depositors, they would give a small percentage of interest. 

Of course the claim of recoverability of funds could no longer be
guaranteed because those being loaned the funds may run off without paying back
the banks or may be unable to repay the loan because of a miscalculation or
unavoidable loss. If the depositors should recall their deposits (savings), then
the bank may go bankrupt. In addition, banks had the temptation of writing
contracts that were supposedly backed by gold, but were not fully backed by deposits. (Today this is a
routine practice, banks are only required by the Federal Reserve to have 10%
reserves.) The lower the reserves that a bank held, the more easily it could go
bankrupt if depositors ever asked for their directly valued commodity
back.  Now the banking system is so corrupt that the Fed will just print up
the money that is required and give it to the
banks, devaluing the currency that was supposed to be convertible to a specific
quantity of whatever commodity was initially deposited (usually gold). (The Fed
only requires 10% reserves.)

This history has led many Austrian economists to say that we must backtrack
and require 100% reserves and convertibility to gold. Requiring 100% reserves is
no more than requiring honesty. Requiring convertibility to gold is only a requirement
based on the original contract that explicitly or implicitly stated that one
would be able to obtain a specific weight in gold upon demand whenever the bank
was open. Of course, a bank can store any valued commodity and this should be
redeemable at any time.

As banks consolidated and trust in the remaining banks grew, people realized
that it was more convenient to trade bank deposit slips than even denominated
gold. A purely contractual currency had been born, (backed by
frequently-misplaced faith in large private banks) which was not
the original intent of banking: a safe deposit for one's
precious commodity. In time the banks consolidated to the point that a
consortium of banks sought a single monopolized currency. Indeed modern currencies are so useful that the only way
that they are destroyed is by their excessive overproduction, which necessarily
leads to hyperinflation. 

A modern currency does not require legally forcing people to accept it;
however, a monetary system does require legal enforcement of its
contract. In
any private monetary scheme, the contract should be made explicit. The federal
government commands 40% of the economy that if it were to refuse dollars as
payment and favor some other currency, the dollar would cease to exist as a
viable currency. A
contract that says if I do x dollars of value-added service for people w,z,f,
then you will do a composite value of service for other individuals with whom I
will trade indirectly.  Anti-counterfeiting measures are a part of this
legal contract. The artificially lowered interest rate is a breach of the social
contract implicit in money. When the breach of the social contract is
sufficiently egregious, the currency will cease to be viable. 

Features of a Good Currency

		Direct Commodity Exchange	Banked- Commodity-backed Notes	Scam Notes	IOU	Credit Cards	Debit Cards	Transparent Crecit
Examples		Gold Coins	Gold-backed Notes	Dollars	Personal Check	Visa	ATM/eGold	(quid)
Convenience	Portability	4	5	50	6			9
	Durability
	Universality
	Stability
Security	Verifiability
	Counterfeit Protection
	Transparency
	Accountability
	Exchangeability
	Integrity
	Identity Protection
	Brokerage
	Legal Protection
Cost

Moral hazards: 

A true debit system has commodity assets banked at a central location. A
modern "debit" system simply has dollars (credit notes that say that
you have done so ) banked at a location. Credit systems have the following
issues: 

1. not accounting for depreciation of assets, 


2. multiple lines of credit backed by the same set of assets (appraisal does
   not help)

Debit systems have the following issues:

1. The commodity bank will sell off communal assets (Current dollar system)


2. System of claims may never get cleared. 


3. The commodity bank incurs costs related to storing, accounting and
   protecting the communal commodity. 

The transparent monetary system reduces moral hazard by
distributing massive amounts of account information among the participants in
the monetary system. By being voluntary,  everyone can see
everyone else's debits and assets and assess their ability to repay.

Everything to the right of direct gold coins, consists of promissory notes.
One does work for nothing until one sells them off. It is at that point that the
promissory contract is closed.  If a monetary system has integrity, the
particpants in the system will voluntarily labor in exchange for promissory notes.  TETS Transparent Electronic
Transaction System is a proposed improvement over other currency systems. Like
ATM and Credit Cards monetary units would be electronic; however, it would have
the following innovations that would leverage the ability to handle large
quantities of information:

1. All currency units would be enumerated (just as all dollar bills are
   enumerated). 


2. All participants are enumerated when they join the currency system.
   Biometric and contact information is collected and made public to all
   participants, including other brokerage firms. A default credit rating is
   assigned and a user password created.


3. Participation may also require buying a minimum number of cuids
   from a central issuing authority or the bank. The bank sets
   the currently accepted exchange rate, records and publishes a foreign
   exchange transaction. As far as the ETS is concerned the cuids are
   created de novo. This constitutes an expansion of the ETS
   economy. 


4. A participant agrees to honor all cuids.


5. The ETS would promise never to sell, loan, or invest the deposited assets
   and would not issue interest in cuids. The central authority's mission would
   be to stabilize the value of the cuid by not issuing any that are unbacked. 
   Deposited assets may include durable goods. Cuids may also be issued against
   assets that the participant agrees to have seized, if one's account balance
   should fall below a certain level.  The cuid bank does not own
   deposited assets, assets are supposed to be held in escrow. 


6. A participant who leaves the system must receive a fiat currency of the
   same type that was deposited at the exchange rates at which the funds were
   deposited in exchange for CUIDs that he possesses minus a pre-agreed
   upon transaction fee. (Because brokerage firms are forbidden from investing,
   it would not be feasible to give the funds at the current exchange
   rates.)  Any brokerage firm that is unable or unwilling to refund the
   amount deposited will have its assets seized and the brokers will be jailed
   and barred from continuing as brokers. (Real monetary deflation (as opposed
   to price deflation) in a fiat currency would destroy the ETS, but that has
   never happened. )


7. A brokerage firm is chosen that validates the transaction and that is
   obligated to act as an arbitrator should there be a dispute.


8. A transaction consists of the following:
   
   
   
   1. The buyer and seller agree to a transaction and a brokerage firm
      (eVisa, eMoney, ...)
   
   
   2. The buyer and seller IDs and quantity of the transaction are
      transmitted to the broker.
   
   
   3. The broker inspects both public available files and, if he accepts the
      transaction, proposes a (small) transaction fee.
   
   
   4. If the participants accept the fee, the broker must record and publish
      the following information:
      
      
      
      1. A unique transaction identifier assigned by the broker (that might
         roll over at, say, 1 trillion transactions),
      
      
      2. the buyer and seller IDs (either of which may be institutions),
      
      
      3. a list of the currency units that are transferred:
         
         (broker ID-transaction ID), BuyerID, SellerID,
         CUID#1,CUID#2,CUID#3,..... 109834-70983, 098787634-129384985,
         895-123-498-943,
         895-093-840-102,895-120-394,895-123-948,987-130-989-858,....
      
      
      
      
   
   
   5. Once a brokerage firm asserts that a transaction has taken place, the
      currency units enumerated are deleted from the memory card of the buyer
      and added to that of the seller.  This information must also be
      made publicly available. Brokerage information is updated immediately on
      the computer systems of the brokerage firms and is updated periodically
      on everyone's information devices. This helps to prevent theft and one
      can also trace the flow of any give currency unit.
   
   
   
   


9. Transaction disputes are settled by brokers. If necessary, independent
   arbitrators. Finally, by public courts.

(The "buyer" is the buyer of a commodity and a seller of
currency units.)

• Portability: The unit of currency or information should be easily
  moved around.


• Durability: The information of the participants should not be
  easily lost.


• Verifiability: all transactions are enumerated and trackable by all
  participants


• Accountability: One's monetary assets and those of all other
  participants of the system should be known as well as why they have those
  assets, not just the total. Each individual assets should be Every exchange
  of assets should be known.  This prevents theft. Nonmonetary assets
  cannot be known exactly because value is created de novo.


• Transparency: All users of the system should have easy access to
  where the currency is and who produces it. In the cuid system this is done
  by publishing and dissemination of information files to stored info cards.


• Universality: The currency system should be accepted by as many
  people as possible.


• Exchangeability: The ability to convert the currency into other
  currencies with minimal transaction costs. No legal restrictions or barriers
  should be placed on its conversion.


• Integrity: The integrity (credit) of each of the participants
  should be rated if and only if this is important for establishing intention
  to pay. These credit ratings should be available at no cost. 


• Incorruptibility
  
  
  
  • Security
    
    
    
    • Counterfeit Protection: ideally the currency should not rely on
      the integrity of a monopoly authority. If bills are issued, these
      should be difficult to forge.
    
    
    • Brokerage: consumer, seller protection transaction Brokers should
      not be biased to either the buyer or seller.
    
    
    • Identity Protection: Either biometric or security code based
      identification as the proper owner of an account.
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Legal Protection: Those who do try to corrupt information
    such as the amount of currency owned, transactions that did not occur or
    were not mutually satisfactory, or one's credit ratings should be
    punished appropriately. All legal protection can come under the
    miniarchist rubric of contract violation.
  
  
  • Stability: The currency should not depreciate as a result of
    government counterfeiting money. This makes savings more difficult.
  
  
  
  


• Cost: The total cost of the currency system should be as low as
  possible while maximizing the other features.

Why would someone want to use the cuid system instead of trading in dollars?

Because of all of its great transaction features. It would also allow
competition for trust. Not trust in a monopoly authority.

What is to prevent the cuid bank from lowering the value of the cuid to
expand the cuid economy at the expense of those participating in the cuid
economy?

cuid price = e * d

The cuid value of an object is the product of an exchange and a dollar price.
Imagine the exchange rate e = 1 and the interconvertibility with dollars does
not involve any exchange penalty. In that case, users of the cuid economy would
not even realize that they are using a different currency. Users of the system
would conceive of the system simply as another payment scheme with added
security and convenience features. People would be satisfied to trade their
dollars for cuid, resulting in an expansion of the cuid economy. 

How would the currency be decoupled from the dollar?

If the currency is supposed to be non-inflationary, at some point it would
have to decouple from inflationary fiat currencies, such as the dollar. The
central issuing authority 

Unlike the FED, if the central authority is irresponsible in its production
of cuids, participants will balk and other currencies will be used. Cuids should
only be issued for deposited cash or verifiable declared assets.  The
system acts as a shelter from government inflation (just like an interest
bearing long-term account at a bank). The system also offers transaction
services. 

The cuid economy could expand slowly because participants would have all of
the other benefits conferred by the system. Fast expansion of the cuid economy
by the bank placing a very low value on the cuid would be unfair to cuid
participants who respond slowly to cuid monetary policy. The participants could,
however, leave the economy.

One can think of the cuid system as a currency that is coupled to the dollar,
but only according to some formula that seeks to boost the cuid. Like any other
currency there would be a natural exchange rate dependent upon the previous
exchange rate and whatever expectation there is that the currency issuer
(central bank) will be responsible and not over-issue the currency. Central
banks know that by printing up a lot of bills they debase the currency making it
attractive for people to buy an item with newly created currency; however,
exchangers try to anticipate the eagerness of the central banks to do this and
therefore lower the exchange rate of the inflating currency.