Frimarknadsanarkist

Finansminister Anders Borg upprörs över en dom i Regeringsrätten, och uppmanar till skattemoral (även om man kan ifrågasätta det moraliska i att staten likt en rånare tilltvingar sig undersåtarnas tillgångar). Läs mer här. För detta tips tackar jag Michaël Lehman.

I detta sammanhang vill jag bjuda på följande godbit, på den tiden Anders Borg var anarkist och libertarian:

Med tanke på att jag tidigare idag tipsade hur man smiter från att betala studieskulder genom att emigrera, så känner jag att en lite mer ideologisk kommentar är på sin plats:

Jag betraktar staten per se som ond och som en institution som bör motarbetas. Jag är statens fiende, ingen tvekan om det (och staten är definitivt min fiende). Skatt betraktar jag som en form av utpressning, då staten, likt en utpressare säger: “Ge oss dina pengar, annars händer det otrevliga saker” (kronofogden utmäter dina tillhörigheter, och om du gör motstånd kan du dömas för våld mot tjänsteman, etc). Staten är faktiskt värre än en utpressare, då utpressaren nöjer sig med att få dina pengar (i regel), men staten slutar inte där. Dessutom lägger sig staten i ditt liv, och bestämmer vad du skall få göra, och när. Exemplen på detta är otaliga.
Att ge pengar till staten är att finansiera statens förtryckarapparat.

Trots detta betalar jag skatt, då jag anser det vara idiotiskt att göra sig själv till martyr. Jag värderar trots allt livskvalitet, och ett liv på flykt, eller “under jorden” är inte vad jag önskar mig. Dock, när det går att motarbeta staten, och jag bedömer priset som rimligt (och detta är en bedömning som envar själv får göra), så gör jag det.

Därför tipsade jag om hur man smiter från att betala tillbaka studielån. Pengar som man har mottagit från staten är visserligen stulna medel, men att ge tillbaka pengarna till staten innebär inte att pengarna kommer de ursprungliga ägarna till godo, utan snarare att staten har råd att djävlas ännu mer med dem. Man gör dem en björntjänst genom att betala tillbaka studieskulderna (eller vilka andra skulder man kan tänkas ha till statsapparaten, som t.ex. obetalda tv-licenser).

Om det är rätt eller fel att taga emot bidrag från staten och dess underavdelningar är ett ämne som går att diskutera, men har man en gång tagit emot pengarna bör man inte betala tillbaka dem. Som utlandssvensk är det enkelt att undvika, och jag avser inte betala varken mina CSN-skulder eller mina obetalda TV-licenser, och jag uppmanar alla andra emigranter att göra likaledes.

Detta resonemang kan även appliceras på norrmän bosatta i Sverige, o.s.v.

Min bror Nils har postat en youtube-video där Stefan Molyneux kritiserar Ron Paul och hans anhängare, och minarkism. Han jämför minarkismen med alkoholism, en inte särskilt dum liknelse faktiskt. Precis som en alkoholist måste hålla sig undan helt och hållet från alkohol, så måste staten avskaffas - en minarkistisk stat kommer att expandera, se bara på experimentet USA. Jag har sagt det förr, och jag säger det igen: grundlagsfäderna roterar i sina gravar. Se videon här.

“My political beliefs lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) – or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy … Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses; and who has the power to sack his Vizier (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers.”

JRR Tolkien (1892-1973)

Via Jørn Baltzersens blogg Wilson Revolution Unplugged.

I don’t doubt that government is helping big business at the expense of small business. I know many examples of that myself. One example is when IKEA decided to establish themselves in my old hometown, Karlstad. The city of Karlstad sold the ground to IKEA for 1 million SEK (which was way below “market value”).

Other Swedish municipalities have been paying wages for big business employees for years when they’ve established themselves there, as a thanks for “creating jobs” in the area.Does small business get the same treatment?

No.And the result of this discrimination in favor of big business? In Hagfors, Sweden, there was a call center. The company didn’t have to pay wages for the employees, the local Arbetsförmedling (government’s employment agency of Sweden) did that for them for three years.

Guess what? After three years, the call center was shut down.So there is no question of whether government and big business are in the same boat (”Staten och kapitalet sitter i samma båt”, for those of you who understand Swedish and have heard Ebba Grön).

But there is another question: In Anarchy, there will still be institutions, and there would be no (coercive) limits of how big a company can grow, right?So there would still be big business, although they would now have to be more efficient than the competition. Right?

Anarchy means a society without coercion. It means responsibility for one’s own actions. Being an anarchist means claiming the right to govern yourself, and respecting other individuals right to govern themselves.

Anarchy does not mean chaos.

I have been a libertarian/market anarchist since the spring of 2001, when I was 23 years old. Back then, I was active in Moderata Ungdomsförbundet, the youth organization of Sweden’s conservative party, Moderata samlingspartiet.

I then believed that anarchy could evolve from political reforms, i.e. that politicians (that is, the right politicians), would eventually make themselves unnecessary by deregulating society, selling or handing out government property into private hands, and more or less abolishing the state through a legislative act of parliament.

I was wrong. I spent eight years (1995-2003), being active in party politics. Someone might call this a waste of time. I would not go that far. Granted, trying to persuade people to vote for Moderata samlingspartiet, and trying to recruit new members was a waste of time. But my activism in youth politics also exposed me to libertarianism/anarchism and it exposed me to libertarians (both minarchists and anarchists). It gave me ideological input, and I had interesting discussions with many libertarians and others.

However, on the issue of whether anarchy can be declared by an act of parliament, I eventually realized that it is naïve to think so. That is for a simple reason. Party politics attracts people who seek power, and for those people, power goes before principles. Those active in party politics who are not power freaks are not interested in positions, and in a way, they serve as useful idiots for the power freaks (I was a useful idiot).

Political parties are, in a way, supplying opinions and politics on a market. This market is different from other markets, though, because there is a limit, which is the same as the number of seats available in the governing bodies. This means that parties will assume popular opinions, rather than challenging them. This tendency will effect all political parties who gain power. Some examples of this is the Swedish Moderata samlingspartiet, British Labour Party, Republican Party (US), and recently also the British Conservative Party.

As long as a party is a small movement, it can stand firmly by its principles. But when it gains support and thereby power, it starts to attract power freaks, and, as mentioned above, they care less for principles and more for power. If they notice that their ideas (in case they have any) are not well enough by the voters, they will modify, or change, their message in order to attract more support and gain more power.* Sweden’s new prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, is a master of this art.

Parliament will never give us anarchy, because the power freaks want to keep their power.

*This point was made by David D. Friedman in “Machinery of Freedom”, where he predicted what now has happened to the Libertarian Party (US).

Who benefits from the state?

A usual defense of the state goes something like this: managed correctly, the state is a good. It protects the poor, the homeless, the sick, the mentally insane, etc, from the rich, the ruthless, the evildoers.

There is a problem with this analysis. First of all, compare this defense with reality. In reality, there are poor, homeless, sick and mentally insane people not taken care of in rich “decent” countries like Sweden, Norway, Germany and the United States. Rich corporations receive protection from governments against cheaper competition. EU, Japan and US subsidies to their farmers is a good example.

On one hand, EU is subsidizing Danish sugar producers (who actually don’t produce, they just cost a lot of money). EU is, at the same time, heavily taxing (through customs rules) sugar from the Caribbean, making sure Caribbean sugar grovers cannot compete with European ones. Is this helping the poor? But, alright, maybe the Danish sugar “producers” are poor Danes, and therefore need government assistance?

No. They are not. In my old home town, the town sold land way below market price to IKEA, when they decided to establish themselves there. This is common in Sweden. Big corporations, like IKEA, Volvo, etc, are allowed to buy land cheap (sometimes they get it for free, in exchange for “creating jobs”), and at the same time, small businesses are harassed by the taxation agency, and are not getting a brake. The Scandinavian welfare state is subsidizing big business at the expense of small business, and EU is subsidizing EU farmers at the expense of third world farmers.

The state is giving to rich, at the expense of the poor. It may seem confusing, since there are progressive taxes (and I am not fond of them), making “the rich” pay more than “the poor” in taxes.

However, by hampering competition in the job market, government is holding wages down. This point may be more important in countries like the US and the UK than in Sweden and Norway (if I have understood the situation correctly).

There is a simple reason why government always benefits the rich (at least in the long run). The rich have more money, and easier access to government. Outright bribes may not be that common (at least not in Scandinavia, although that happens to), but my previous examples with IKEA, Volvo, etc, is a good example, when local government is benefitting the rich (big corporation) at the expense of the poor (small firm).

The only solution to this problem is to abolish government.

Which are the libertarian principles? The word libertarianism comes from the the English word liberty. Principled libertarianism is usually based on the Lockean trinity of rights: the right to life, liberty and property, and many libertarians also refer to the non-aggression principle (NAP), which means that you are not allowed to initiate use of force against others. You are, however, according to the NAP, allowed to use force to defend yourself and others, and in case of restitution.

Which are the anarchist principles? The word anarchism comes from the ancient Greek words an arkos, which means “no ruler”. From what I understand, the basic anarchist principles are that no force and no fraud should be allowed.

Both libertarian and anarchist principles leads to the same conclusion: the right of individuals to make agreements, based on their own free will.

The effects of this simple conclusion are not easily understood, neither by those who call themselves anarchist, nor by those who call themselves libertarians. Many anarchists fail to understand that the right to make agreements means that there will capitalistic forms of production in an anarchy, i.e. firms, bosses and employees. At the same time, many libertarians fail to see that said right means that the state is an illegal institution that must be abolished, and that without state regulations of the market, there would be more competition from small firms against bigger corporations, more competition for labor, and that that in turn would drive wages up.

The way I see it, libertarians must be anarchists, and anarchists must be libertarians.