Liberty Alone

I had never heard of the Stonewall riots until recently, but it seems they were a very important turning point. Fed up with harassment from the police and the state, some homosexuals took action in the only way open to them.

I’m afraid that things although may have improved a large amount, at least in major metropolitan areas, it seems police officers in Fort Worth think that raiding a gay bar for no reason and abusing its patrons is the way to celebrate the anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

Rumours are coming in that Lebanese Hezbollah (as opposed to the Iranian Hezbollah) are now on the streets in Tehran terrorising protestors and civilians (reports via Twitter).
It is not yet confirmed, but would not be surprising, the Lebanese Hezbollah as bankrolled by the Iranian Government and inspired by the Iranian Revolution, their paymasters may well call them in.

Will those who claimed ‘We’re all Hezbollah now’ and cheered them on still be supporting them?

I’m pretty sure much anti-market sentiment comes from a grave misunderstanding of the market.
People view the market as something to be controlled from outside, to be regulated from outside, by the government and bureaucrats. By third parties.

The reality is that a freed market will be regulated, but not by third parties. The regulation will be done by us, the market participants. Who do you trust more to regulate the market? Those freely engaging in exchange or some bureaucrat or politician who not only does not know anything about the exchange but who is also open to bribery (or open to bribing others through use of their power)?
I know who I’d prefer – those acting in the market.

Sheldon Richman makes this point in an article at the FEE: Regulation Red Herring. He doesn’t put it quite how I’d like, but it is a great article.

The concept can be developed further, and this is what Charles ‘RadGeek’ Johnson does in this post.
He poses the question

In a freed market, who will stop markets from running riot and doing crazy things? And who will stop the rich and powerful from running roughshod over everyone else?

And answers it We will.

He expands on Sheldon’s point. Sheldon focuses on one sort of order that emerges in the freed market, the spontaneous order which emerges from voluntary exchange. Charles adds another form – organisation:

In a freed market, if someone in the market exploits workers or chisels costumers, if she produces things that are degrading or dangerous or uses methods that are environmentally destructive, it’s vital to remember that you do not have to just “let the market take its course” — because the market is not something outside of us; we are market forces. And so a freed market includes not only individual buyers and sellers, looking to increase a bottom line, but also our shared projects, when people choose to work together, by means of conscious but non-coercive activism, alongside, indeed as a part of, the undesigned forms of spontaneous self-organization that emerge. We are “market forces,” and the regulating in a self-regulating market is done not only by us equilibrating our prices and bids, but also by deliberately working to shift the equilibrium point, by means of conscious entrepreneurial action — and one thing that libertarian principles clearly imply, even though actually-existing libertarians may not stress it often enough, is that entrepreneurship includes social entrepreneurship, working to achieve non-monetary social goals.

All power to the people!

Go read the whole thing.

What drew me to libertarianism was not some ego trip, or some sense of superiority or some sort of conservative nostalgia for a non-free past. No it was this love of freedom and desire for people to be free and to have control over their lives to improve it.
Even the vulgar-libertarian literature I’ve read was about improving people’s lives, although they missed the broader context of exploitation and fail to recognise the social entrepreneurship which is possible and important.

This is the real Left. It is real democracy. I might even go so far to say that its real socialism (not the sorry caricature which the authoritarians and social democrats present us).

The LPUK seems to single out the LibDems as a main target, using slurs like ‘Illiberal Anti-Democrats’ and using the name ‘Social Democrats’.

Funny that. You might even think they feel threatened…

No sign of it here.
Sunny Chiswick and on my way to lunch I walk past the Labour Party Constituency Office fully expecting them to have their placards up telling us to vote Labour, but there’s nothing (well, you can see them hidden round the back where they’ve been sitting since the Mayoral elections). Perhaps they don’t want to remind us to vote? Would a low turnout help Labour in their current state?

I walk past the Tory office on my way home, I wonder if they’ll have a sign up

After all, they’ve been stimulating the economy haven’t they?

Good for them is all I can say, and shame upon the school.

PUPILS walked out of classrooms in protest against Big Brother-styled CCTV cameras recording their lessons.

They were so angry with the installation of the equipment at Davenant Foundation School in Chester Road, Loughton, they refused to return until they received assurances it had been turned off.

Pupils Walk Out Of Lessons In Protest Against Big Brother Cameras

(h/t Cory Doctorow @ Boing Boing)

Truly scary.
We were told one of the candidates would be a continuation of Bush. Who knew it would be Obama?

The only difference is that Obama has charisma…

Obama mulls preventative detention.

Obama is increasingly looking shockingly bad on civil liberties and human rights.
I had hoped he’d be a bit better at least, but all his ‘change’ is shallow and he’s pursuing most of the things Bush wanted, this time with full compliance from the Democrats.

There is only one party in Washington, it just has two factions.

Anarchist communists believe in an egalitarian society, where people are no longer judged on differences in ability and are no more or less entitled to the benefits from our collective society. As long as it is not used to discriminate, we just don’t see difference as a problem.

Okay…
This is just so wrong headed. People are different, they have different talents and abilities. Thus we discriminate amongst them.
You don’t want a premiership footballer fixing your plumbing and I doubt your plumber would make a good premiership footballer so you discriminate between them.

Not only is this discrimination a basic fact, it is necessary for a functioning society. Discrimination between people based upon their ability is fundamental in the allocation of scarce resources.

It seems that in seeking to remove the unjust discrimination based upon insignificant matters (like the colour of a plumber or footballer’s skin) these people throw the baby out with the bathwater. Are they seriously claiming that it is wrong for me to choose a plumber in whose ability I have faith to fix my plumbing?

What on earth are society’s collective benefits? The usual reading would be an equal sharing of wealth. Given the usual railings of communists against wage labour, how can they support this replacing of the boss with the collective. No longer do you work for yourself, your effort goes into supporting others without any choice from yourself.
The individual must be subsumed into the collective and have no rights, except to take from others if they happen to have less. Your labour, your effort, belongs less to yourself than in today’s state capitalist society where the state demands tribute.
How this fits in with anarchism as a movement to reclaim the worker’s ownership of the product of their labour I don’t know.

It is quite correct to hope for, and work towards, a situation where nobody starves and nobody suffers, but removing all incentive to work, except to produce the minimum needed to survive yourself will not achieve that.

I do have time for some of the far left anarchists, but this sort of nonsense just makes them look like idiots. They’ve failed to realise that voluntary collectives (which may work and I support) do not scale.
Either that or whoever wrote this is incredibly bad as getting their ideas across…