The “AR” Controversy

Many will say that “no one” needs an “AR” (AR-15 rifle).  That the cartridge is only really “suitable” for smaller game, that no hunter needs a 30 round magazine.  That it is a military weapon designed for the battlefield and should remain there!  On the other hand it could be an excellent weapon for defense against a mob.  It has light recoil and is light in weight, making it suitable for women and even older children to use if necessary.  It is true that it is a “military weapon”, but the men who fought in our Revolution did use “military” weapons in the form of flintlock muzzle loading smooth bore muskets, which in the late 18th Century were the standard “military weapon” used by soldiers of the era.  Militias later on used whatever shoulder weapon was in current use by the military of the time.  The muzzle loading percussion rifled musket of the Civil War era for example.  The 50-70 trap door later on.  So the “militia” arm of today would be the current military rifle.

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”  Second Amendment, Bill of Rights, the Constitution of the United States of America.  It should be noted when this amendment was ratified, all able bodied men with a few exceptions, were considered to be part of the “militia”.  We did have state militias at the time of the Civil War.  And the concept of the “sheriff’s posse” (as shown in old Westerns) was also part of the militia concept.  The modern National Guard also grew out of the concept of the militia.  So the idea of “the people in arms” has a long historical basis going back to the founding of the country.  The “AR-15″ rifle is a military weapon, and one that would be used by a modern militia.  The National Guard as a matter of fact is armed with the military selective fire version, currently the M4.  All of these rifles, starting with the AR-15 as produced by Colt share the same basic concept and design.  Over the decades of course it has been “improved” and has had the early flaws in the designed worked out so that it is quite reliable today as long as it receives at least a minimum amount of care.  Plus since it is the standard military rifle of the US military, ammunition and parts are readily available.

The Founding Fathers attempted to create a government that was so designed that any one of the three parts (legislative, executive, judiciary) could stop the other two if necessary.  They had sufficient experience with the British system to want a design better designed to safeguard personal and economic freedom from an oppressive government.  As an ultimate safeguard the militia was supposed to be an independent force controlled by the states themselves.  The only mistake they made here was to reject the idea of “demarchy” (representatives selected by lottery which would have given us the world’s most representative government.  One truly representative of all of the American people.  Perhaps the reason they didn’t do this was that they were afraid of the “common people” to the point that they limited the right to vote to a relatively small minority of the people, establishing a system where only the owners of income producing property were allowed to vote.  Even then, Senators were selected by state governments, not the people.  And the selection of the President went through the electoral college, with just a relationship with the popular vote.  This fear of the “mob” (the non-property owning majority) that has “colored” our political system from the start, and made our government far less “representative” than it could have been.  Which could be one of the reasons we’re currently in the trouble that we’re in today…  Especially as our government is now becoming less and less actually “representative” of the American people as a whole.   Thanks to mistaken decisions such as “Citizens United”, we have in fact allowed our government to become less and less representative of the American people than it ever has.  Abuse of the Commerce Clause that has allowed the Obamacare’s ”mandate”.  The first time Americans will be forced to purchase a product produced by private business.

So does the “militia”, the people of America, have a right to possess the AR-15 rifle?  If we look at the writings of the Founding Fathers, it would appear that they do so have this right as members of the “unorganized militia”.  The Founding Fathers felt that if everything else failed, that the militia would step up and set things “right”.  Hopefully it will never come to this, but the American people in arms is the last safeguard we have.

What about the “misuse” to which this rifle has been put?  Guns do not kill by themselves.  They require a human finger on the trigger to do so.  And those who do these shootings all appear to be the victims of mood changing drugs which have been overly prescribed when there were other alternatives that would have been better.  We should also realize that a “gun free school zone” is like painting a target on our children. There should be “NO” gun free zones anywhere.  No invitation to drug crazed lunatics!

 

Subject or Citizen?

Are we “subjects” or are we free citizens?  Are we “self owning” or “subjects of the State”? I’m afraid the answer today is that we are far more “subjects” than we were when King George the Third was King.  Pretty much all King George wanted from us was “taxes”.

King George wouldn’t have cared about illicit drugs (some of these drugs did exist then). King George wouldn’t have cared about prescription laws or giving doctors a monopoly over access to medical drugs.  It does appear that King George favored “gun control”, but the same can be said of President Obama.  King George didn’t “favor” the “professions” by giving them the sort of monopolies that exist today.  Obama does.  King George would not have forced people to buy health insurance or fined them if they didn’t.  Obama does. Just about all King George the Third wanted was “taxes” to pay for the “French-Indian” war.  Most likely the “taxes” that King George wanted from us was a small fraction of the taxes we now pay to the federal government under President Obama.  As the war had been fought to “protect” the colonies from the French, perhaps King George did have a “point” here.  We’re paying for World War 2, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War 1, and Gulf War 2.  Except for World War 2, we were never attacked by military forces of another nation.  9-11 was the actions of a small group of terrorists financed by a Saudi multi-millionaire.  There was no justification for attack Iraq, which had no involvement in the events that took place on 9-11-2001.  Nor was there any justification for attacking Iraq because it supposedly had “chemical weapons”.  A number of other countries, including Syria have chemical weapons, but we have not attacked them because of their possession of such weapons.  The same is true with nuclear weapons, which a number of countries possess, along with others who likely do possess such weapons, but not with 100% assurance.

It rather looks here that we’ve allowed our own government to become more oppressive than the British government we fought during our Revolution.  We have become to a much greater degree “subjects” of our own government than we ever were of Great Britain’s.  If we are “subjects” (to be honest, “property”) of the federal government, then it would appear that the federal government has done the correct thing in passing laws against “illicit” drugs, passing prescription laws because doctors are considered more “competent” than the rest of us to decide how to treat any illness we happen to have.  The same thing applies to virtually any service performed by a professional (one reason their incomes are as high as they are).  We are in the eyes of our governments less and less competent to make decisions for ourselves in virtually anything today.  To government we are seen as little children incompetent to take care of ourselves…  We can call this the “Nanny State” where “nanny” knows what is “best” for us.  And as the “property” of the State, the State sees to it that we are prevented from harming ourselves. One reason being of course as “subjects”, the State can use us as its “property” in wars against other States.  This is really where the justification for the “draft” comes from.  Being “property”, we can be used in warfare much as any other weapon is so used…  Nor are we given a choice in such matters since it is a matter of either “serving” as the State so desires, or being put into prison for a number of years if we cannot escape from the draft.

Matters are entirely different in a society run on libertarian principles.  People in such a society are “self owners”, considered capable of making their own decisions regarding drugs, medical drugs, pornography, prostitution, and all other “victimless crimes”.  Because in a libertarian society, a crime must always have a victim or the action must be one that endangers others.  Any action that affects only the person involved is their own affair.  People are considered “rational”, capable deciding for themselves what to do about such matters.  Thus there are no drug laws, no prescription laws, and no laws favoring professionals over anyone else.  The same is true for all occupational regulation.  People are considered “competent” to make these decisions for themselves.  Competent to make arrangements for their own retirement, for their own health care, and so forth.  Competent to carry the means of their own self defense too.  Something no “State” today really likes, perhaps out a fear that those who are able to deal with such issues are far less likely to support the sort of a “Nanny State” that we have created for ourselves here in the USA.  With examples in other countries of what such a policy eventually leads to!

The very existence of a country with a society organized on libertarian principles seems to terrify governments of the sort we see today.  The reason is that a libertarian society would have a far smaller government, one based hopefully upon the principles of “demarchy” where representation would be based upon “lot” instead of elections where the candidate with the most financing generally ends up the winner.  And since such politicians owe their victory to those who financed their campaigns, we can expect from experience that they will as representatives serve the interests of those who provided them with the money to run for office.  Not a good way of doing things if you really do want a government whose representatives will actually represent the people, not just the rich and the big corporations as appears to be increasingly the case today.  We’d be far better off with representatives who actually are “of the people” as opposed to the present makeup of Congress where the majority of Senators are from the professional classes with considerable numbers of the same sort professionals also making up the House of Representatives!  No doubt they do a good job of representing their own class, but what about the rest of us?  My local state representative is a public high school science and math teacher.  No doubt she is “smart” enough, but it appears that her major interest there in the State of Michigan legislature is getting more money for the public schools.  Along with higher pay for the teachers.  The money for all this of course has to come out of the taxpayer’s pocket, and for all the money they get, the quality of education does not seem that good considering how many fail to graduate along with those able to obtain further education.  I’m 100% in favor of vouchers, vouchers payable to anyone who can educate a child one grade level as verified by comphensive testing.  I’m afraid however that my representative wouldn’t like this if she happens to read it, but that’s the way it is.

 

 

Citizens or Subject? Aristocrat or Commoner?

Are we citizens or are we subjects?  If you live in the British Isles, you are a “subject” of the Queen.  At least in theory, although the time that everyone was effectively a subject of the current monarch is long past.  Still, in those European countries where they still have a monarch as a figurehead, the people are officially “subjects”.  And even more countries consider those living in their country as “subjects of the State”.  A “subject” is generally considered incompetent to rule themselves, pretty much as we view children as being “subject” to their parents’ decisions regarding any number of things.  Which brings up the question:  ”Does the US government consider us as “citizens” or “subjects”?  As the federal and state and local governments actually do prohibit us from now doing things that at the worst only harm ourselves, I’d say that the governments tend to view us more as “subjects” incapable of taking care of ourselves without having the government making a number of decisions for us regarding such things as running businesses, purchasing medical services, medicines, etc. If you sit down and make a list of things that you need government “permission” to do, you’ll be surprised at how long that list might just be!

For example we have prescription laws regarding such things as buying heart worm pills for your dog or cat.  Apparently you are not considered competent to make this sort of decision for your pet.  As dogs and cats are not “people” (regardless of how we might view them), what justification does the government have for a law like this?  There is no legal requirement that you provide these medications for your pet, humans are not subject to this disease, but yet you still have to have the prescription from your veterinary doctor in order to purchase these pills.  Now I could understand that say that the Humane Society might have an interest in seeing that our pets all receive this medication, but there is no requirement by the government that all dogs and cats get their heart worm pills during the season when mosquitoes are active (the carriers of the disease).  So why do we need to obtain a vet’s prescription for this medicine?  There is no issue of “possible abuse” by humans of the drug as it functions mainly to kill heartworm eggs if your dog or cat is bitten by a mosquito.  Unlike narcotics, you can’t get “high” off of heartworm pills.  So in this case the only possible answer is that this law benefits veterinarians in that it gives them a monopoly over access to those drugs that are used for the welfare and comfort of our pets.  Like human doctors, our “animal doctors” benefit financially from these laws and would have lower incomes if these laws didn’t exist.  So the law exists for a professional group that is allowed to profit off of everyone else for their own gain.  Nice of course if you can get the government to do these sort of things for you…  You earn a higher income than you could earn otherwise, but your higher income is derived from being able to use the force of law to extract money from everyone else for your own gain!  We could say that everyone is “equal”, but that some of us are more “equal” than others.  Nice deal of course if you can get government to do these things for you.  Effectively you become a member of an economic “aristocracy” whom the government has favored by passing laws in your favor. Making everyone else “commoners” who do not enjoy the sort of “privileges” that the government has bestowed on you. Of course this means that everyone else has to pay more for anything where they have to deal with a professional…  So we can divide Americans into two groups.  One group is “favored” by the government, the other (the rest of us) are not.  We can vote (as citizens) but our vote means less and less as our political parties, economically controlled by the wealthy, effectively make the decisions for us.  For all practical purposes (except for perhaps a few percent) we are effectively “subjects”.  If we’d wanted to remain subjects, we could have just accepted rule by King George the Third of Britain as they did there in Canada to the north of us…

Instead we fought a bloody Revolution against Great Britain, winning our freedom from King and Parliament after a number of years.  We created a government, replaced it with a stronger one operating under the Constitution with its “Bill of Rights” to protect our freedoms we’d fought for.  Unfortunately we copied quite a bit of English thinking, including the creation of a political system that excluded all those who didn’t own “income producing property”.  The great majority of people didn’t have the right to vote at first, but eventually all “white men” were allowed to vote.  Black men won the right to vote after the Civil War, and women eventually the right to vote early in the 20th Century.  However the political parties and those financing them still yet remained the decision makers.  As they still remain so today.  And while there are small political parties representing differing viewpoints, the Democrats and Republicans still effectively control the political process. Creating in the process an economic aristocracy whose power over the rest of us has grown to the point today that only their wishes appear to be considered by Congress.  Thus we have lots of laws that for the most part are directed against the politically powerless majority of Americans.  Our drug laws are a good example of making something that only effects the individual into a crime.  We have prescription laws that economically benefit every medical professional, along with laws that benefit the legal profession by reserving to that profession things that could just as well be done by those with lesser education.  We have all sorts of occupational laws, which are for the most part designed to benefit those with established businesses.  Laws that exclude those who might otherwise be able to compete with those established businesses.  In effect we have created for ourselves an economic aristocracy that depends upon control of the State for its economic power over the rest of us. We are being forced to purchase health insurance from private profit making companies thanks to Obama and his Democratic Party. There is obviously no doubt that the majority of us have lower standards of living than what we’d enjoy in a society where everyone was truly “equal”.  Unfortunately at the present time only the Libertarian Party represents such ideas. Only if more people start voting Libertarian will there be any change in our affairs…  Most certainly those who profit from the status quo are not going to change.

The Issue of Abortion

This is a very controversial issue for a lot of people.  On one hand we have those who consider abortion to be a form of infanticide, while on the other hand we have those who consider that a woman should have control over her body including the rejection of an undesired fetus.  The “pro-life” people have been successful in passing legislation that in a few states has effectively “outlawed” legal abortion.  While in other states the “pro-choice” people have been successful in preventing these sort of laws from being passed.

The major effect of this sort of legislation mostly applies to poor women.  Those better off can always travel to another state to obtain an abortion.  Even if every state in the US outlawed abortion, women with a few thousand dollars available to spend could travel to another country where abortion is legal.  And prior to Roe vs Wade, when abortion was still illegal most everywhere in the USA, women still obtained abortions or did things to themselves that resulted in the same result.  So the effort to “outlaw abortion” is much like trying to “outlaw guns”.   Or to outlaw the consumption of alcoholic beverages as was tried with Prohibition a century ago.  We also see the same thing with illicit drugs today despite a great deal of effort by law enforcement agencies to prevent their sale to willing consumers.  We should understand that wherever there is “demand”, “suppliers” will arise to meet that demand.  So the best that can be accomplished on a state basis is to prevent those pregnant who do not wish to be pregnant and do not have the necessary money to travel to another state, or find the means legal or otherwise to obtain an abortion will be forced to remain pregnant and eventually give birth to a baby.  Being poor, she is much less likely to have pre-natal medical attention, which means that there can be a possibility that the child will suffer “problems” or have defects that medical care might have been prevented had the mother had the financial means to obtain pre-natal care.  Then the mother has two choices:  She can give the baby up for adoption or she can keep it herself to raise as best she can.  Since the changes in welfare laws back when Clinton was President, it is more difficult today to get on welfare and there is a time limit.  Most likely the woman’s best choice would be to give the baby up for adoption than to keep it.  However if the mother keeps the baby for whatever reason, she has assumed responsibility for it, including being able to earn enough money to take care of it.  If she was poor enough that she didn’t have the means to obtain an abortion, most likely the child will be raised in poverty, with whatever medical attention it gets from a doctor willing to take Medicaid, although this will vary according to the state where she lives.   In any case she will be an unmarried single mother, and likely will suffer a certain amount of discrimination because of it.  Perhaps enough to regret her decision to keep the child instead of giving it up for adoption.  The child of course is much more likely to be living in poverty, which may or may not have adverse effects upon its development.  The taxpayers will undoubtedly be paying a portion of the costs of raising the child…

  There is also the issue of possible child abuse to be considered here.  Women forced into motherhood against their wishes may well take out their anger on the innocent child.  Especially if the mother had higher hopes for herself before becoming pregnant in the first place.  It would seem that if we were encourage adoption along with seeing to the mother’s access to pre-natal care that things would turn out better for both the mother and the child.  As it stands now, our laws are set up in such a way that many of those who would wish to adopt cannot because for one reason or another they do not meet the overly high standards set by the government for adoption.  This is why some have adopted children from other nations because American laws are so strict on this.  Obviously again we see an example of the government mistakenly setting standards that do more harm than good.  We could also allow contractual relationships between those who need help through their pregnancy upon basis that they turn over their child to the adoptive parents after childbirth.  As the “pro-life” movement has considerable political power, it would seem that it could see that legislation is introduced to make adoption easier than it is now.  This might be more “productive” than trying to outlaw legal abortion.  The idea is not mine by the way, but was now suggested by the Presidental candidate from the Libertarian Party last year.  It makes a lot of sense and the suggestion should be followed in my own opinion.

The Minimum Wage, Revisited

The argument is made that raising the minimum wage will cost jobs.  However, studying this, I fail to see how?  I was an employer for a number of years running a small security guard agency.  Did the minimum wage have an effect upon my hiring?  Did I hire fewer people because of an increase in the minimum wage?  At least in the security guard field, the minimum wage had little if any effect upon hiring.  The reason is simple enough…  I only hired people when I had work for them to do.  If I didn’t have work, I didn’t hire people.  Employers do not hire people unless the people they hire are able to be useful and needed by the employer.  This I believe would apply to any business.  In general businesses that pay minimum wage do not need highly trained people.  The average security guard job could be done by anyone with an 8th grade education.  The same is likely true of most minimum wage level employment.  These are not jobs that require much in the way of training by the employer.  Businesses that need educated or experienced or trained people all pay more than the minimum wage.  With the exception of agricultural labor, any ordinary job that pays minimum wage (fast food restaurants for one) isn’t going to be needing people with anything more than a grade school education.  The ability to read and write, follow directions is generally all that you need.  The same is true of most retail jobs.  Today’s cash registers calculate change, so very little skill at math is required.  In any case by the time you graduated from the 8th grade, you no doubt knew how to make change and do the simple forms of “figuring” that would be needed.

Somewhat more knowledge and education are needed for delivery type jobs and truck driving, but these jobs generally are paying more than just the minimum wage as more skill is required.  I’m trying to think of a job where a sub-minimum wage would be justified.  Even grass cutting, leaf raking, snow shoveling jobs effectively would pay more than minimum wage based upon their true per hour rate.  As a matter of fact, the lawn care I have hired done costs closer to $15 an hour and even snow shoveling was at about the same rate. These are tasks that can be done by any physically able person.  It is true that in some parts of the country with high unemployment along with immigrants here illegally, it is possible to pay wage rates below the legal minimum, but this also indicates that there are far more people looking for work than work looking for people to do it.  

During the “Clinton Boom” of the last years of the 20th Century when unemployment fell to levels not seen since the 1960′s, the starting wage for McDonald’s increased to $8 an hour when the actual minimum wage was $5.15.  So we can see that wages do go up as unemployment drops.  The same workers that were hired earlier when unemployment was higher were paid minimum.  But once a sort of “labor shortage” came about, the bottom wage offered increased until sufficient workers could be found to do the work needed.  As these were “service industry jobs” there was likely no incease in productivity, but a shortage of workers forced employers to raise wages for the time being.  Today of course with high unemployment it is likely that employers could pay wages lower than the current minimum wage of $7.25 and still get all the workers they wanted depending upon the nature of the work.  In effect the minimum wage sets a “floor” under wages that would not exist otherwise.  As for the “myth” of the minimum wage being a “training wage”, the facts are that very little training is needed for most minimum wage jobs to start with. These are not jobs that require very much in the way of skill to do.  And as I stated before, they are also jobs that could be performed as a rule by anyone with an 8th grade education.  High school would not be necessary.

No doubt employers would like cheaper labor if they could get it.  This is why so much manufacturing is now done in “low wage” countries like Mexico and China.  Unfortunately most “service industry jobs” have to be performed where the service is needed.  That means if you operate a “service industry business” here in the US, you are going to have to use American workers to do the work. Which means you have to pay minimum wage in most cases.  There are exceptions to this in the case of “tipped employees” which can be paid a much lower minimum wage since they are expected to make up the difference in the tips paid to them. 

From historical observation, increases in the minimum wage are passed through in the form of higher prices.  However there is not a dollar to dollar relationship because most service type work involves more than just “labor”.  The fast food industry has other costs than just the cost of labor.  About the only exception to this is where “labor” is the only thing supplied, such as in the security guard industry.  There the increase in fees charged has a much closer relationship to wage rates. It isn’t perfect even there since there are other costs involved besides just the actual wage paid.

Without the minimum wage during conditions of high unemployment wage rates would drop by a considerable margin. This would have an economic effect because reducing “demand” (people with money to spend) means that suppliers of goods and services would find fewer buyers of their goods and services.  This would likely result in additional unemployment.  A good historical example of this was the Great Depression where this is exactly what happened back then.  Recovery did not take place until there was sufficient consumer demand due to WW2 to make it worthwhile to hire people to produce goods and services.  There does appear to be a relationship between employment and the success of most businesses.  With little consumer demand the producers of goods and service find fewer buyers, and in many cases will end up going out of business due to lack of sales.  The history of the Great Depression proves that this is true.  So without the minimum wage we’d be worse off now than we are.  Less consumer demand means less employment because business needs fewer workers to produce the goods and services that can be “sold”.  There is also a movement towards development of lower cost businesses that do more business per employee.  Walmart is a good example of this.  Walmart’s sucess is due to lower labor costs per unit of sales.  They also have a inventory control system that operates on a “just in time basis” so that the store is neither overstocked or understocked as a general rule.  Plus because Walmart can buy massive amounts of goods at a time, they can get a better price on what they buy.  This allows them to sell at a lower price and still make a good profit on sales.  And of course most Walmart employees are not paid all that well, which also means that their labor costs are lower than their “competition”.  Unfortunately much of what Walmart sells is made outside the USA, so the jobs created by Walmart tend to be outside the US.  In the long run this may prove to be something that will effectively harm the US to the extent that we will no longer be able to afford the economic costs of maintaining the world’s most powerful military along with all the social benefits that we are providing to our own people.  Something I’ll leave for another post.

Do We Actually Have “Representative Government”?

When someone says that we here in the US have “representative government”, my first question is “representative of exactly just who?”  Take a look at the listed occupations of our Senators and Representatives:  About two thirds of the Senate is composed of lawyers.  Over a third of the House is composed to lawyers.  There are also a number of doctors, along with the other professions represented in Congress.  The President is a lawyer, as is his wife.  The governor of the state in which I live (Michigan) is a member of the bar.  Lawyer seems to be the most likely occupation of politicians.  My local state representative is a high school science teacher (another professional).  So the various professions are very well represented in government.  Unfortunately not very many of us belong in the professions even if most of our elected representatives are now licensed professionals of one kind or another.  Most of us don’t have professional level educations either.  The majority of Americans are “working class” people.  So why are we represented by members of the professions?  Why do these people end up in politics so often?  Also, the incomes of our political leaders, even before they were elected, was in most cases considerably higher than the average incomes of those who elected them!

Looking at the above, it becomes obvious why these people cannot truly represent us.  For one thing, most of them haven’t lived the sort of lives that most of us do.  Or earned the income that licensed professionals such as doctors, dentists, lawyers, and others do.  Effectively we are being governed by those of the economic upper class.  Obviously their viewpoint on a lot of issues is naturally going to be quite different than our own.  I doubt that very many doctors (MD) worry about being unemployed.  The ways the laws are written today, with their government supported monopoly over access to medical drugs, they don’t have to worry about not having enough patients.  Especially as they can very easily require their patients to make office visits and have lab tests almost as frequently as they want.  And the health insurance companies will support them in this as for an insurance company, the more you use your health insurance, the more the company can charge you.  And as about only 80% of your premiums are actually returned to you in the form of benefits, the other 20% the company gets to keep for itself.  For those curious, 20% is rather close to what credit card companies charge, and they all make good profits. The dentists do the same thing as medical doctors do, requiring twice yearly visits for “cleaning” and “inspection” (which often includes x-rays).  So again we have a situation where the patient is in effect the “captive” of the doctor (dentists are doctors too), much to the economic benefit of the doctor.  Again, the function of all this is economic profit.  Then we have the lawyers, who have passed thick books worth of laws to benefit their own profession.  These laws effectively require you to use a lawyer for a lot of things where a lesser trained (and less expensive) person would be perfectly satisfactory.  In effect we have created an economic class that functions much as an economic parasite upon the rest of us.  The work that they do may be beneficial much of the time, but they also create “work” for themselves through their political power that they have now gained.  In the case of the teaching profession, it appears that “right to work” laws may degrade their incomes to a certain extent, and the creation of “charter schools” also is effective in reducing the cost of education.  But the rest of the professions seem to be quite able to prevent the same thing from happening to them, even if the American people would be better off if the cost of dealing with professionals was reduced to more reasonable levels.  There is really no reason why US health care costs run 50% higher than those of any other nation on a per capita basis except for the political power of the professions to “carve out” politically powerful monopolies for their own economic benefit…  While in turn making the rest of us pay for all these wonderful “benefits”!

It becomes quite clear at this point that we do not have “representative government” on either the federal or the state level.  Nor does it seem to make much of a difference which of the two political parties are in control.  The Democratic professional is just as eager to support economic monopoly for the professional classes as is his or her Republican counterpart.  So replacing Democrats with Republicans doesn’t get us anywhere.  Both parties are so controlled by the professionals today that there is simply no easy way to free ourselves of this professional monopoly that “colors” almost anything we do in the legislative sense.  The professionals are well aware that “big government” and its power is the major reason they can earn the incomes that they do today.  If you have a “first class seat on the gravy train” (as the professions do today), you will fight tooth and nail to hold on to that “seat”.  This is also one reason why libertarians (who tend to not be members of the professions as a rule) do not usually do very well when running for office.  We are a “threat” to the “establishment”, and they are very much well aware of that exact fact!

What libertarians (and all those who would like a less costly society) have to do is to get sufficient numbers of people convinced of the advantages of “demarchy” as opposed to “democracy”.  In a demarchy representatives are selected by lottery, not by an election.  Having a lot of money won’t increase your chances of being selected in a demarchy, unlike a democracy, where the more money you have, the better your chances are.

If we don’t want the wealthy and the big corporations running our society for their own benefit (and keeping the rest of us relatively poor and powerless), then demarchy is the only answer.  It’s up to us to demand “change”.  The “powers that be” aren’t going to do it otherwise because to them, things are just “great” the exact way that they are today…

muskegonlibertarian

What Is The Source of Rights?

What is the actual source of rights?  We sometimes refer to “God Given Rights”, but is there a God to give us rights?  The closest thing we have along that line is the “Ten Commandments”, but they do not appear to be a list of “rights” as such.  We have the Bill of Rights in the Constitution, but these too appear to be more the creation of those who wrote the Constitution in the first place. So just where do rights come from?  Obviously a “right” also requires someone to enforce it against those who would take it away from you. Generally today that would be the police and the legal system, but the police are enforcers of the “law” as written.  And the laws are written by government.  Here in the USA this is Congress, its counterparts in state governments, and local legislative bodies composed generally of elected officials.  So we could say that the “State” issues “rights” in that it is the deciding body as to if a “right” exists or not.  And those decisions are dependent upon who gets elected to the state or federal legislative body.  Obviously what one legislative body decides can be changed in the next election, or by a superior legislative body, with the US Supreme Court being the ultimate deciding body so far as the US federal government is concerned.  Still, even the Supreme Court can make a decision and then later on another group of justices can decide that the first decision was “wrong” and that their new decision is the correct one.  Leaving us with the situation where there seems to be no real basis of deciding what rights exist and what rights don’t exist except for what the voters decide.  For example, in Roe vs Wade the Supreme Court determined that a woman had a right to have an abortion subject to a rather arbitrary time after conception.  However, various state governments have written legislation that effectively denies women this right, and so far the Supreme Court hasn’t made a determination as to whether or not their previous decision still stands or not.  So it would appear that what rights you have are very dependent upon what the Supreme Court decides.  Or upon legislation that passes Congress and is signed into law by the President.  Not a very firm “foundation” for our rights…  Is there a better one?

Looking back in history, people’s rights appear to be relatively limited to whatever their ruler wanted them to have.  Most of the available data refers more to various laws that people were required to follow, laws given by their ruler for the better ordering of their society.  The idea that people might have rights against actions of their government is relatively modern.  One example of this was the Magna Charta which established limits upon the power of the King of England relative to that of his nobles.  However further on back we have the examples of the Republic of Rome where there was some attempt to bring the viewpoints of the common people to light in the Roman Senate.  Although the best example of the rights of citizens (defined rather narrowly) was the demarchy of the city/state of Athens where representatives were selected by lot to rule over the people.  

We should however note that in all of these societies, there was a limitation on rights by legal status.  Only “citizens” had rights.  Slaves had none.  Only free men could bear arms,  something that was forbidden to slaves.  In Nordic societies a thrall (slave) could become a freeman, and one of the marks of his new freedom was that he was given the weapons of a free man, although he still owed loyalty to his master.  In this aspect we may note that the bearing of arms was a mark of your social status in your society.   As free men had “rights” that were supposed to observed, we might note that there is also some evidence that the bearing of arms had a relationship to being a free person as no slave was generally allowed to possess weapons as a general rule.

One interesting aspect of groups gaining rights was related to possession of arms.  To a certain degree a group whose members were armed was more likely to be granted rights. In this aspect the Black Panthers, while not that numerous, did “hint” at the fact that Blacks in the US in the 1960′s were not willing to accept second class status any more.  No doubt this had its effect upon Congress and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of the time and its signature into law by President Johnson.  There is also a hint in the thinking of gun owning Americans that “citizens have rights, subjects do not”.  It is noteworthy in this aspect that in England the right of bearing arms is gone, as is to some degree even the right of self defense.  Which fits in with the liberal (leftist) viewpoint that only the police and the military should have access to firearms.  Which historically relates back to the idea that people who are “subjects”, are more like “serfs”, that is, people who have few rights against the wishes and desires of their “betters”.  The mindset of some of our political leaders appears to be rather along these lines, that they are our “betters” and that we should do what they wish, not what we wish.  Most of these tend to be on the “left”, but you can see the same ideas in a slightly different “flavor” with those on the right.  Tyranny is not the preserve of either the right or the left as history has shown.

There is also the point that we won our freedom from King George and England through force of arms.  In effect, it was the use of violence against England that won us our freedom from King and Parliament.  In this aspect, the Second Amendment was written upon the basis that the safeguard of rights was based upon the private possession of firearms.  And experience has shown that a disarmed people generally starts losing the rights they once had.  We’ve seen this happening in Europe and to some degree here.  Obviously even “democratic” government can become oppressive, especially if there is a financially powerful group who can in effect select who is allowed to run for office and who is not allowed to run.  Something to think about, especially today…