That’s right: loathe. I loathe to read news reports about privatization and the bills that are introduced to privatize more sectors and tasks the governments of the world have wrested from our rightful patrimony. Oh, how visceral my reaction has become to the word privatization!

Wait a minute…

Why—I trust you are asking yourself—would a philosophical anarchist, whose political philosophy is based on self-ownership and private property as its logical extension, be opposed to privatization? Do not private property and privatization share the same state of being? You are perceptive. In short, I am in favor of true privatization; similarly, I am opposed vehemently to what every politician, almost every news outlet, and most people call “privatization.” Let me explain.

In the ownership of property, let us consider two possibilities. (There are more than two possibilities, but I mean to simplify this explanation, allowing you to extrapolate to other situations.) The road to my house may be owned either by me—because I have traded for or homesteaded it—or by everybody in the surrounding geographical region—because we all are taxed for its construction and upkeep.

1. If I own the road, it is privatized—truly privatized—and I have the natural right to decide how and for what it can be used by whom. I can allow sick children to fry eggs on it on a hot day; I can charge skateboarders to build ramps on it for their enjoyment; I can build a fence around it and admire it as a monument to my greatness; I can do anything with it, including nothing. (I have the right to do so; the moral uses of this road may prompt me to do otherwise, but nobody has the right to force me to use it ni any manner.)

2. If everyone owns the road via taxation, it is not privatized; rather, it is owned communally. Someone—perhaps myself, perhaps another person, perhaps a committee of persons—is given stewardship to decide for what and how it can be used by whom. We see this around the world, for example, with public roads: everybody is taxed for their construction and upkeep, and politicians are given stewardship over their use, from driving to cycling to pedestrian crossing to parking to parades to block parties.

True privatization of a communally owned road would involve the transfer from stewardship to ownership. The steward would donate or sell the road as he or she sees fit. Let us say, in this example, I have purchased the road to my house from the steward, thus transferring from situation #2 to #1 above.

The more commonly practiced form of privatization—the one championed by politicians, described by most news outlets, and called to mind by most people—does not follow the aforementioned example. Rather, the steward maintains control and the taxpayers maintain ownership over the property, and the individual or corporation leases or is given temporary, secondary stewardship over the property. In the case of false privatization, the politicians, in effect, hire people to do their dirty work. This is why the word privatization is so tainted in my mind.

Let us see how this false privatization works in reality. Many localities offer waste (trash, garbage) pickup, which in most instances is “privatized.” The municipal government maintains stewardship over the waste pickup, leasing the collection of waste, the charging of customers, and the other duties of the business to an otherwise private individual or corporation. In such a situation, the “private” individual or corporation is hired to do the work the politician-steward finds too expensive, too politically dangerous, or impracticable for him- or herself to fulfill. This is but one example of common false privatization; a few other examples include the distribution of utilities such as water and electricity, the maintenance and management of parking meters, the maintenance and guards for prisons, and the execution of certain military operations.

This false privatization is so beloved by politicians because it allows them to claim to have done more than they actually do. For the cost of drawing up a contract (and sometimes even the revenue of selling the privilege), a politician can claim waste collection, utilities, parking meters, and every other “privatized” benefit under his or her accomplishments. What a public-relations boon to the politician! All for getting someone else to do the dirty work.

I wish the true nature of privatization were better understood (hence this post) and executed writ large until every person were his or her own owner and every property would revert to the status of private or unclaimed. I wish the false notion of privatization were consigned to the dustbin of history as the political trick it is. Then we can finally be rid of the state and the leech on individuals and society that it is. Escrasez l’etat!

One oft-repeated defense of the state and its involuntary government is its supposed necessity to fight against discrimination. Such examples in the USA include the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1994, which mandates accommodations for workers, customers, and all people with certain disabilities, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which mandates equal protection and access for every person no matter his or her race.

As happens so often, legislators and judges provide solutions for problems they themselves had caused! In the case of the Civil Rights Act, for example, legislators were in part overturning provisions the same government had allowed and even mandated under “Jim Crow” legislation and Plessy v. Ferguson, among others.

Suffer me one personal anecdote to illustrate this. A former coworker had been in the Army; during a leave, there were many soldiers boarding a train to the Midwest to spend some time back home. So many, in fact, there were more soldiers than seats, and many had taken to sitting on their duffel bags in the aisles. My coworker and a friend had decided to try their luck in another car, and to their surprise there were only two people already on the last car; they spread out in the seats and felt a little sorry for the guys who packed themselves in like sardines in the other cars. Just before the train was to depart, the conductor kicked them off the nigh empty car, informing them, “This is the colored car; you have to move to another car.” Their protestations along with those of the black soldiers notwithstanding, they rode to Chicago on their duffel bags in one of the cramped cars. This was all because of separate-but-equal laws in force at the time, i.e., the state enforcing racial segregation against the wills of people.

I write this post not to argue the absence of sexual, racial, religious, and countless other bases for prejudice and discrimination; I am very aware these exist. I write this post to provide anecdotes that illustrate the means employed by individual people acting with wills unconstrained by the state to decrease the power, duration, and effectiveness of acts based on irrational prejudice.

In these first two examples, people engaged in serving the public are punished for failing to serve all of the public by discriminating against some customers: story 1 and story 2.

In this final story a customer is punished for discriminating against an employee who falls into a prejudiced group.

Herein the free actions of people are working to reduce prejudice and discrimination in the world. May we never again give any state the power to . Ecrasez l’etat!

The members of the House of Representatives and Senate have colluded with the president of the USA to pass a bill to kick the can down the road towards the “fiscal cliff.” (N.B. I worked with a different and farther-reaching definition of the fiscal cliff when I wrote about it my pre-election series.) They have staved off another manufactured “disaster” for a few months largely by increasing taxes on most citizens in the USA.

I am still reading over summaries of what is included in the several-hundred-page bill, but initial calculations show my own take-home pay will be reduced by about $63 per month, over $750 per year. If you are working in the USA, you can calculate your own reduction here. Keep in mind I have a below average income—calculations for the average worker in the USA hover around $75,000 per year—and at times could use every dollar I can bring home.

The popular talk of raising taxes on the top earners usually leaves out discussion about the expiration of the payroll tax cut. This affects the top earners, yes, but it also affects every person who works in the USA or has his or her earnings subject to taxation by the USA government. This translates to fewer items I might purchase (stimulate the economy, anyone?), putting away my own savings (deferred purchasing for a rainy day or retirement), and less financial incentive to work.

I suppose the good news is the decreasing value of the US dollar; every dollar taxed away from me is worth less and less…

Ecrasez l’etat!

This is one in an occasional series about how government agents cause or heighten animosity among people in society. See the previous parts.

The government wants you to have LESS, not more, information about where your food originates and the processed used to prepare it. Since I can do no better than this blogger, I link simply to her write-up.

When it comes to ending a government program to which most people have become accustomed and many have become dependent, there is sure to be popular backlash against ending or curtailing it. In this post I shall use the example of Social Security because it is well known around the world, even if some of its inner workings remain a mystery.

The basic apparatus of Social Security works like this: everyone who works pays into a fund, from which people who are older, disabled, and the like are paid a sum. Because it involves no real savings, the first beneficiaries did not pay into the fund but did collect from it. The next generation of beneficiaries both paid into the fund and collected from it, which has been going on even to the present day. The argument for its continuation nowadays seems to boil down to the personal level: I worked to pay into the fund for many decades; I should be able to draw from it. That seems reasonable on its face.

The problem arises when we look one level deeper. How is the fund supplied? (You have a leg up in this post: I gave the answer just a paragraph ago.) Current workers pay into it. The benefits of Social Security come at the expense of current workers’ deferred savings and purchases.

Let us imagine a similar scenario to highlight the injustice in such a system. Imagine you save a sum of money each month for six months to buy a nice television for yourself. You had foregone other savings and purchases you could have made, including dining out, investing for retirement, new shoes, and on and on. All those took second place to the promise of a television at the end of six months. If a burglar were to steal your television and escape without getting caught, what recourse would you have? You could make a claim on your insurance, live without a television, save up for another six months for another, or steal somebody else’s television. Let us imagine you are upset enough to steal a television, and you pull off the perfect heist (just as your burglar had done), thus restoring in kind the possessions that had been yours.

If the seedy underbelly of theft is not your cup of tea, you could remove yourself from the dirty business and hire someone to steal a television for you. Alternatively, you could vote for a politician to collect a little bit in taxes from everybody until your television were restored, thus saving you the effort of stealing a television or saving up for one.

The aforementioned situation is similar to the proposed end of Social Security. What of the people who receive the benefits? They could live off their savings and charitable donations, continue to work, or simply vote for politicians who will continue to collect a little bit in taxes from everybody until they can receive a check. This saves them from having to do the dirty work of stealing from people by voting for a middleman.

Many problems arise from this situation. Those currently drawing on Social Security were forced to pay for the previous generation’s benefits, so a sense of entitlement is natural. In addition, the money they were forced to pay throughout their working lives was not left to them to gain their own security, including save for retirement or a disabling injury, buy medical care to improve their health, or pay off a mortgage to have a place to live rent-free in the future. Another problem is the pervasive view that this system is a charitable one: people who may not be able to live on their savings or utility (i.e., cannot work) are benefitting from a small bit of money from many people.

Unfortunately, the charitable aspect of this system is very diminished. It is not an act of charity for me to hold a gun to your head, saying, “Give me three dollars so I can pool your money with your neighbors’ to buy some food for the hungry family down the street.” The threat of the initiation of force reduces or eliminates any charitable aspect to that act. In addition, it sows discord: “Why didn’t the family just ask me for money or go to the food bank downtown to which I donate?” “Why did this guy have to hold a gun to my head? I would have given even more voluntarily, but now this degenerate might hold his gun to my head at any time in the future, so I should hoard some money for such instances.” “I cannot afford to donate right now; I need to save every dollar I can to bring my aunt into this country.” This is exactly the problem with Social Security.

I am not against safety nets and charity; rather, it is precisely because I do favor them I do not favor politicians standing in for burglars to take everyone’s money, all the while taking a cut (salary and benefits). Then they have the gall to parade around as if they have done good in the world, when all they have done is stolen, sown discord, and made everybody less charitable. And voters continue to pull the levers for them, thinking they are doing good.

What a sad legacy has the modern state left this world.

This is Part 15 of a series of 15 posts in which I explain, from the point of view of an anarchist living in the USA, some of the poorest but pervasive implicit reasons by which people favor voting.

If you plan to vote this November for any election that shapes politics at the national level—president, senator, representative—please take a moment to consider for what you are voting. It is my contention your vote will impart the message, “I enjoy having candidates speak to me in platitudes.”

Many decry the low level of political discourse in the USA; however, this blog believes it to be a symptom caused by voters themselves. People who offer detailed explanations to problems are routinely dismissed as boring or overly wonky, as someone with whom the voter would not want to “have a beer.” Thus, platitudes and chants of “USA! USA!”

Voting for a politician who appeals to broad swaths of people based on platitudes and overly simplistic ideas will only encourage him or her—and others in the future—to continue to debase political discourse.

My suggestion is to withhold your vote rather than for someone who speaks in platitudes. If everyone were to join me in withholding his or her vote, we would remove legitimacy from this government, allowing us to “alter or abolish it” per the Declaration of Independence. Ecrasez l’etat!