Of all 36 ways to get out of trouble, the best way is...to leave. — Chinese proverb.
SocialismThe wrongdoing of an isolated act of aggression by an individual is easily identifiable. However, when the same action is systematically carried out on a large scale by an organized group in a position of domination, then the evil may be masked with a semblance of morality.
In order to reduce resistance, aggressions are often justified as necessary means to achieve a goal that is allegedly more important than any individual.
The more they "love" these abstractions (world, community, nature, etc…), the more they hate real individual human beings. — Nick Szabo.
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. — H.L. Mencken.
Nonetheless, no goal justifies any infringement of rights. Respecting individuals and their
freedom is always the paramount good and the most important end.
As the old medical doctrine says: First, do not harm.
Socialism is the political system that abolishes private property.
Socialist ideology is rooted in the state ownership of the means of production.
In pure socialism, also known as communism, all goods are owned by the state,
as any good can be considered a means of production.
The distinctions between democratic socialism, socialism, and communism lie in degrees rather
than fundamental principles.
If a State is defined as the organized group with a monopoly of violence over a certain territory, and considering a mafia as an organized armed group extracting income through violence, one could argue that under socialism, the State is a sofisticated mafia that justifies its criminal activity as good and necessary.
If politics is the art and science of managing centralized coercion, then socialism is the increasing
of political inequality. It is the empowerment of a bureaucratic elite that exercises control over
all economic activities.
An extreme concentration of power is required to systematically violate private property, so
hyperstatism, absolutism and despotism are inherent to socialism, as it can never be anything other than a hierarchical
technocratic system.
Fallacious definition
Socialism is sometimes erroneously defined as the political system striving for wealth equality. However, any political system should be defined by the actions it implements rather than the ideals that inspired it.
All pure socialist experiments, including the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Pol Pot's Cambodia,
North Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, resulted in a misallocation of resources, turning
economies
into humanitarian disasters; and while the political class thrived through confiscation, the majority of people were impoverished.
These experiments, instead of redistributing wealth, redistributed poverty, creating extreme inequality
in living standards between civilians and politicians that tend to redirect people's discontent towards
scapegoats who are vilified.
What belongs to everybody belongs to nobody; or rather to the few who exercise the property right in the name of "everybody".
Thus, all regimes that initially claim to be real socialism end up being labeled as
"not real socialism."
Politically, the term "social" is often used to justify large-scale, coercive actions attempting to replicate systems that have been demonstrated to work only in small and homogeneous communities based on trust.
"We and we alone have the best social welfare measures" was said by the Propaganda Minister of
National Socialist
German Workers' Party, Joseph Goebbels in 1944.
If we understand “social” to refer to voluntary human interactions, then socialism can be considered the most anti-social political system. Its core ideology involves forcibly replacing voluntary interactions with mandated obedience.
Rights inequality
Socialist ideology often uses the concept of wealth equality to institutionalize the
greed for others' goods by appealing to the instinct of envy, by
wrongfully associating natural economic inequality with poverty and portraying the
economy as a static zero-sum game where all wealth comes at the expense of someone else.
Such theories fail to acknowledge the expansion and dynamism of free economic systems that create
and mobilize prosperity.
Not all equality is desirable; forced wealth equality is certainly not, as it implies rights inequality.
There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. — Friederich Hayek.
In a civilized and peaceful society, the only equality pursued is the equality of rights.
A society that puts economic equality ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. - Milton Friedman.
The main source of material inequality is one's own being. Economic value naturally differs among
people as
different preferences and choices imply unequal economic outcomes.
Human beings are not even equal to themselves on
different days, and they are conditioned by externalities like the place, time and community in
which they
are born.
From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the Law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time. - Friederich Hayek.
If there is not equality of outcomes among people born to the same parents and raised under the same roof, why should equality of outcomes be expected when conditions are not nearly so comparable?. — Thomas Sowell.
Diversity is something to be celebrated with tolerance.
The corruption of Law
Well-organized aggressors corrupt the term "Law" by inventing alleged laws that go against human
rights.
They set up legislation to codify injustice by establishing their own will in the form of written
mandates, norms, decrees, statutes, bills, rules of conduct, and so on.
Therefore, violating certain rights will simply consist of applying corrupt legislation.
Lex injusta non est lex (Unjust law is not law). — San Agustín de Hipona.
Justice is codified through a simple norm: any aggression against rights is wrong.
Therefore, the immensity of any regulation tends to imply the existence of rules contrary to
Justice.
As the representation of Justice by a girl with blinded eyes suggests, Law applies equally to all
regardless of particular circumstances.
Human rights are universal.
On the contrary, legislation frequently consists of norms that apply to particular subjects, such as privileges.
Good people disobey bad "laws".
One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. — Martin Luther King Jr.
In any case, it is important to note that there is no government of laws, but rather a government of people.
As Mao Zedong used to say, "Power comes from the muzzle of a gun".
Any norm can be interpreted and amended in multiple ways. Legislation is made, executed and
sanctioned by a dominating group of people that tends to not make any norm that harms them.
And in cases where such a rule exists, they may change or breach it.
War is mass murder.
It is the health of the state, as it provides fertile ground for the growth and entrenchment of state power.
The narrative of national security may persuade citizens to accept surveillance, censorship, and suppression of dissent
During wartime, governments often expand bureaucracies, curtail civil liberties, and increase taxation and control of the economy, normalizing state intervention.
Beyond ethics, aggression against private property impedes economic development by hindering economic calculation and disincentivizing wealth creation.
A central entity will never be able to approach the level of knowledge that is acquired in a decentralized manner.
The price system makes possible to communicate the combined knowledge from people each of whom possessed only a portion of it. Based on that divided knowledge people coordinate the utilization of resources, producing a solution. — F.A. Hayek.
State aggressions against services and voluntary exchanges are referred to as economic interventions.
Intervened economies use mandates where free economies rely on coordination through knowledge.
Like any aggression, economic interventions benefit specific individuals at the expense of others who
are harmed.
Very often, these interventions result in long-term consequences that are the opposite of the intended goals.
Price Controls
Forbidding certain services from being offered at lower prices than a determined threshold results in:
further shortages and deterioration of the intervened services. Quality providers are specially harmed, while costs associated with abusing consumption dissapear.
Converserly, forcing services to be offered at higer prices results in a purchaing power decrease of any consumer that lowers demand, creating a surplus of offer. It also results in the elimination of the main competitive advantage of weak providers.
An example is the minimum wage laws, which forcefully increases the service of the less skilled and experienced unemployed workers, who bear the worst consequences of the
artificial surplus of labor that has been created.
Unemployment results from intervention and its legislative rigidities.
There will always be as much work to be done as there are unfulfilled desires.
Political propaganda often argues that intervened prices are "fair" rates; however, the only fair rates are those mutually agreed upon by the two consenting parties involved in the exchange.
Protectionism
Protectionism consists of a set of government interventions that favor certain businesses by imposing restrictions on their competitors. It hinders cooperation by prohibiting the implementation of competitive advantages.
Competition is the ultimate form of cooperation. — Antonio Escohotado.
We compete to be better cooperators, and we cooperate to be better competitors.
Competition between service providers ensures service quality, lowers prices, and promotes job quality while increasing wages.
Mercantilism:
It is a form of protectionism that imposes restrictions on foreign companies. It particularly harms foreign producers and it reduces purchasing power of domestic residents.
What "economic protection" teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war. — Henry George.
Denying the possibility of voluntary exchange is prohibiting the only peaceful means of acquiring
other people's goods.
When goods don't cross borders, soldiers will. — Frederich Bastiat.
Political clientelism or corporativism:
It is a form of protectionism that favors large established companies by imposing restrictions on competitors without political ties. This leads to the hypertrophy of the favored corporations and the consolidation of monopolies and oligopolies.
Intellectual Property
Intellectual "property" legislation aims to create intellectual monopolies,
by forbidding the reproduction of knowledge and forcing to treat easily
reproducible concepts as if they were scarce physical goods, violating actual property rights.
This hinders competition and a slowdowns progress, since emulation of
success is an essential part of economic development.
Violence against vices
Interventionism is also employed to coercively punish the providers of services satisfying the demand for what may be considered risky or not virtuous, such as vices.
Vices are acts where one trades short-term joy for potentially self-inflicted long-term negative consequences.
Those providers are then pursued as criminals, nevertheless, the alleged crimes they commit have no victims.
Treating peaceful voluntary exchanges as crimes leads to the formation of gangs and mafias around the
prohibited service.
The increase in profits caused by the shortage of supply due to prohibition attracts
real criminals who are already accustomed to the high cost of illegal activities:
the threat of incarceration.
If two adults enter into a voluntary agreement in which they both hope to improve their situation, why should a third person be legitimized to prevent such an exchange through the use of violence?
Not everything immoral should be illegal.
Violent interference against the peaceful actions of others is unethical, even if the aggressor believes it is for the welfare of the people he aggreds.
Interventionist spiral
An interventionist spiral occurs when the solution to the problems created by interventions is considered to be more intervention.
The perpetuation of any intervention may encourage the misconception that certain services are impossible without such intermediation.
Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a British economist was asked by the director of bread production in the Russian City of St. Petersburgs: "Please understand that we are keen to move towards a market system, but we need to understand how such a system works. Tell me, for example, who is in charge of the supply of bread to the population of London?" Soviet mind was astonished by the notion that the economy could operate without a planner to coordinate it. — Christian Niemietz.
Hyper-regulation tends to create economies of scale in complying with regulations, thereby raising barriers to entry for small innovators while consolidating oligopolies and monopolies.
Taxes
Nowadays, from the so-called welfare states, petty theft is combated, but resisting the constant confiscation of income and savings is branded as fraud.
If stealing is the taking of another's property without consent, then income taxes
are a recurrent theft.
Extortion is that theft that occurs by threatening the owner to surrender his or her
belongings in order to avoid potential harm.
Thus, income taxes consist of extortions to obtain private information to be used in
further extortions to confiscate economic value.
Preparing your accounts for the taxman is, in essence, no different from tidying yourself up for burglars.
There have always been, and there will always be, alternatives to each function performed by the state.