In a series of Orwellian twists, the United States is pulling out (prematurely some say) “all” “combat” troops from Iraq but doubling down (for starters) on mercenaries.

The Obama Administration gets away with “fulfilling” Obama’s promise to end US combat operations in Iraq by removing the last (officially-labeled) combat brigade from the country, yet 50,000 troops will remain until (supposedly) 2011. These 50,000 troops make up 7 “Advise and Assist” Brigades, which are brigade combat teams like the one that just left but with special training, and 2 combat aviation brigades. “The troops are officially there to assist and advise the Iraqi government, but will carry weapons to defend themselves and will join Iraqi troops on missions if requested.”

After 2011, the “military” presence in Iraq is supposed to be “limited to several dozen to several hundred officers in an embassy office who would help the Iraqis purchase and field new American military equipment,” but military officers are saying that “5,000 to 10,000 troops might [still] be needed.”

Meanwhile, “the State Department is planning to more than double its private security guards, up to as many as 7,000.” Can we really still call security personnel ‘civilians’ or ‘private security’ anymore when they’re working for the state in foreign lands, particularly in a combat zone? They’re mercenaries, troops that are conveniently not part of the official US military. The NYT reporter couldn’t help calling them “a small army of contractors.”

The US is building military bases, fortified compounds, outposts, and the largest “embassy” in the world in Iraq. Iraqi politicians still haven’t been able to come to an agreement and form a government after the last elections, making Iraq vulnerable to a coup if the Iraqi military leadership get too frustrated by the ineffectual, in-fighting politicians. The US empire will not be completely out of there anytime soon.

But hey, “we” won…right?

~*~

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

In How to Mirror a Censored WordPress Blog, I discussed how the Mises Institute open-sourcing all of Mises.org and putting its entire literature and media library online as a set of torrents will help ensure the continued existence of this treasure trove of liberty in the event of a natural disaster or a future crackdown by the US government.

Here’s a practical example taking place before us. Some technologically and strategically-incompetent pundits are clamoring for the United States federal government to use its cyber capabilities to take out WikiLeaks before the organization puts online the remaining 15,000 documents of the leaked Afghan war logs.

Kevin Poulsen of Wired.com explains how a previous attempt to take down wikileaks.org has already failed in the past and how future attempts to take out WikiLeaks will fail as well.

In 2008, federal judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco ordered the WikiLeaks.org domain name seized as part of a lawsuit filed by Julius Baer Bank and Trust, a Swiss bank that suffered a leak of some of its internal documents. Two weeks later the judge admitted he’d acted hastily, and he had the site restored. “There are serious questions of prior restraint, possible violations of the First Amendment,” he said.

Even while the order was in effect, WikiLeaks lived on: supporters and free speech advocates distributed the internet IP address of the site, so it could be reached directly. Mirrors of the site were unaffected by the court order, and a copy of the entire WikiLeaks archive of leaked documents circulated freely on the Pirate Bay.

The U.S. government has other, less legal, options, of course — the “cyber” capabilities Thiessen alludes to. The Pentagon probably has the ability to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks against WikiLeaks’ public-facing servers. If it doesn’t, the Army could rent a formidable botnet from Russian hackers for less than the cost of a Humvee.

But that wouldn’t do much good either. WikiLeaks wrote its own insurance policy two weeks ago, when it posted a 1.4 GB file called insurance.aes256.

The file’s contents are encrypted, so there’s no way to know what’s in it. But, as we’ve previously reported, it’s more than 19 times the size of the Afghan war log — large enough to contain the entire Afghan database, as well as the other, larger classified databases said to be in WikiLeaks’ possession. Accused Army leaker Bradley Manning claimed to have provided WikiLeaks with a log of events in the Iraq war containing 500,000 entries from 2004 through 2009, as well as a database of 260,000 State Department cables to and from diplomatic posts around the globe.

Whatever the insurance file contains, Assange — appearing via Skype on a panel at the Frontline Club — reminded everyone Thursday that he could make it public at any time. “All we have to do is release the password to that material and it’s instantly available,” he said.

WikiLeaks is encouraging supporters to download the insurance file through the BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay. “Keep it safe,” reads a message greeting visitors to the WikiLeaks chat room. After two weeks, the insurance file is doubtless in the hands of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of netizens already.

We dipped into the torrent Friday to get a sense of WikiLeaks’ support in that effort. In a few minutes of downloading, we pulled bits and piece of insurance.aes256 from 61 seeders around the world. We ran the IP addresses through a geolocation service and turned it into a KML file to produce the Google Map at the top of this page [go to the Wired.com article or view it on Google Maps -- GAP]. The seeders are everywhere, from the U.S., to Iceland, Australia, Canada and Europe. They had all already grabbed the entire file, and are now just donating bandwidth to help WikiLeaks survive.

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

Yesterday, in All Your Tubes Are Belong to Googlizon, I blogged about the Google-Verizon proposal for regulating the internet and why libertarians should oppose both it and any net neutrality laws and regulations. Today, I came across a post on CrunchGear, a tech and gadgets site, by Nicholas Deleon, that criticizes the Tea Party for opposing net neutrality on the basis that it will violate the right of ISPs to free speech. I left a comment on his post, but I’ll reproduce it here.

I’m a libertarian, not a Tea Partier, but I’ll take a stab at explaining this.

Both free markets and the right to free speech are based on the right to private property. Net neutrality, insofar as it involves regulation, violates private property rights. That said, not every violation of the right to property is a violation of the right to free speech.

“But really, to expect the ISPs to do “right” by you is laughable. If it could, Comcast and the nation’s ISPs would offer 1 mbps (down, mind you) and call that SUPER FAST INTERNET, then charge you $100 per month for the privilege of using it.”

If they could? Maybe. Maybe not. But in a free market, they could not. Restrict competition through regulations, monopoly franchises, and whatnot, and then maybe they could.

“But to oppose Net Neutrality in order to defend the free speech of ISPs is pretty laughable.”

Umm… I don’t see in the letter where they defend the free speech of ISPs. I don’t see it in the quoted soundbite either. More likely the speaker was concerned about the free speech of users who could be prevented by net neutrality regulations from purchasing services that otherwise might have been available, services they could have used to express themselves more effectively.

In any case, the fundamental reason to oppose net neutrality laws or regulations is that they constitute a violation of property rights.

Then I realized I had made a small mistake, so I left a second comment:

Okay, I see that in the linked article on Radtke’s quote, the reporter writes:

“The free-speech objection to net neutrality has also gained some ground recently. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and AT&T began citing First Amendment objections to net neutrality in public discussions and in filings with the FCC this year.

“The free-speech argument holds that, by interfering with how phone and cable companies deliver Internet traffic, the government would be thwarting the free-speech rights of providers such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.”

This is the reporter’s interpretation, but let’s say it’s accurate. Is it not possible to imagine how net neutrality regulations could interfere with even the free speech of ISPs? And as “browse” at 1:58 pm UTC pointed out:

“The EFF has some great pieces on Net Neutrality. One of the issues is the Trojan Horse issue: whereby a more activist commissioner could abuse powers won in the aims of Net Neutrality to stifle free expression online. Even if they current FCC has no inclinations to regulate the Internet beyond Net Neutrality, regimes do change pretty frequently, and agendas change with them. If you look at it from that perspective, the argument you quoted above sounds a bit less crazy.”

In any case, as I mentioned in my previous comment, the fundamental reason to oppose net neutrality laws and regulations isn’t free speech but private property.

To wrap things up: That Nicholas finds the Tea Party’s free speech argument so laughable on its face betrays a leftist anti-corporate bias. Corporations are often not the good guys, such as when they seek government protection from competition. But at least corporations are not intrinsically evil. To turn to government as our savior, when it is government that is the primary enemy and source of man-made problems in the world, now that’s more than slightly misguided. In any event, Nicholas hardly gives the Tea Party a fair shake, focusing on their free speech argument as he does and not even bothering to give that a charitable interpretation or serious counterargument.

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

What you say!!!

There has been a lot wailing and gnashing of teeth recently over a joint announcement by Google and Verizon of a legislative-framework proposal they’ve been working on.

Now, I’ve seen this variously referred to as a backroom deal or pact, a secret treaty, or a set of regulations Google and Verizon are imposing on the internet. The FCC is shamefully abdicating its responsibility to regulate the internet! Nevermind that the D.C. Circuit court determined recently in the Comcast case that the FCC has no such regulatory authority over broadband internet; hence, the calls to disastrously reclassify broadband internet access in order to place it under the same regulatory rules as regular telephone service. Some are even intimating that Google and Verizon are trying to ‘own’ the internet. Net neutrality activists are up in arms about this proposal, viciously attacking Google for selling out and reversing its longstanding defense of net neutrality, and calling for people to stage a silly boycott of Google products and services. If you don’t join the herd, you get labeled a Google-Verizon apologist or it is insinuated that you are on their payroll (see comments on the CNET articles linked below, for example).

So what should libertarians make of all this?

As libertarians, we must of course oppose the Google-Verizon proposal and favor the abolition of the FCC and all internet regulation.

First, it is necessary to get a few facts straight. Larry Downes provides the best analysis I’ve yet seen in “Deconstructing the Google-Verizon Framework” at TechLiberation.com and “What the Google-Verizon proposal really says” at CNET. (There’s some overlap, but it’s worth reading both.) Also good and level-headed are Peter Suderman’s “No More Net Neutrality?” at Reason.com’s Hit & Run and Berin Szoka and Adam Thierer’s “Just say no to Ma Bell-era Net neutrality regulation” at CNET (though libertarians cannot agree with their claim that governments should step in “when . . . self-regulation fails”).

As Downes points out,

the Google-Verizon framework has absolutely no legal significance.  It’s not a treaty, accord, agreement, deal, pact, contract or business arrangement—all terms still being used to describe it.  It doesn’t bind anyone to do anything, including Google and Verizon.

Moreover, if Downes’s analysis is correct, there are very few significant differences between the Google-Verizon proposal and the FCC’s own Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) made way back in October of last year. So much for the “FCC is abdicating regulatory responsibility” nonsense (the authority for which it lacks, remember). Keep in mind this is just a proposal. We don’t know if the FCC or Congress will adopt any of its points. Google and Verizon cannot write or impose regulations without Congress and the FCC.

According to Downes, it is primarily for the very points on which the Google-Verizon and FCC proposals are identical or very very similar that Google and Verizon are being attacked. And, bizarrely, it is these points that net neutrality advocates usually support — and, notably, do support…when they come from the FCC. Odd how vague terms and turns of phrase get interpreted much more charitably when coming from a government bureaucracy than from a corporation.

Where the Google-Verizon proposal does differ significantly from the FCC proposal is where things get interesting. It does suggest the FCC not be granted any authority to regulate broadband internet access and only be granted the authority to enforce rules passed into law by Congress. Libertarians can get behind the first part of this at least. And one would think people of a democratic bent would approve of keeping regulatory control in the hands of a democratically-elected body rather than a technocratic, politically-appointed bureaucracy.  Unsurprisingly, the FCC is none too fond of this part of the proposal, insisting the only way net neutrality will be achieved is if Congress gives them more power and authority. Imagine that.

The proposal significantly departs from net neutrality by suggesting wireless broadband, i.e., mobile network, infrastructure is not mature enough yet to function reasonably well under its rules. This appears to be a compromise Google made with Verizon, long a staunch opponent of net neutrality, in order to come to an agreement on a middle-ground policy proposal before Congress or the FCC got it into their heads to do something drastic, like reclassifying broadband internet or otherwise granting the FCC broad regulatory authority to screw up the internet.

Another noted exception to net neutrality is the exclusion of ‘unlawful’ content from the non-discrimination rule. Libertarians can object to this that there is much that is unlawful, under positive law, in the US that should not be. But is this exception really that unusual? Don’t landlords often include such provisions in leases? Do we really imagine that governments won’t mind ISPs allowing ‘unlawful’ activity and content or that ISPs won’t mind bearing the risk of liability for what customers do on their networks? Instead of attacking Google and Verizon on this, net neutrality advocates ought to attack governments for unjust laws and get them repealed. Still, it would be heroic of Google and Verizon to defy governments on this.

The Google-Verizon and FCC proposals don’t seem all that radical, status-quo altering, or different to me. It seems much is being made ado about nothing and the claims of the death of Google’s commitment to net neutrality as well as the FCC’s exercising of its regulatory responsibility have been greatly exaggerated.  Surprise Surprise. The boring truth wouldn’t generate as many page views and as much anti-corporate political outrage.

But all this is really neither here nor there. Whether Google has sold out on net neutrality or not, whether Downes’s analysis is correct or not, whatever the correct interpretation of certain phrases in the Google-Verizon proposal that net neutrality advocates are criticizing – it shouldn’t have a significant impact on how libertarians ought to view what Google and Verizon are trying to do.  Google and Verizon are attempting regulatory capture. They are trying to get Congress and/or the FCC to regulate the internet in certain ways. This is understandable. It can be seen as defensive in a sense – to prevent regulation that will be harmful to their business. The proposal seeks to preserve the lack of net neutrality in wireless broadband, at least for now, effectively maintaining the status quo for Verizon. And it seeks to preserve, codify, and extend net neutrality in wired broadband, which benefits Google on personal computers.

Meanwhile, in a separate move, Google is apparently starting to co-locate portable data centers with Verizon’s network hubs to speed up its services for mobile users as well as save space for other traffic and probably save the two companies money. There’s nothing wrong with this at all, legally or morally, as it is a shrewd business decision that involves no aggression; and it will only benefit users.

While the Google-Verizon legislative-framework proposal may be defensive in a sense, self-defense against impending aggression (i.e., the threat or use of initiatory force) cannot justify aggression against innocent third parties. The proposal as a whole will involve just such ‘collateral damage’. Government regulation involves initiating force against people to prevent them from engaging in voluntary, mutually-agreeable transactions with their own property.  As libertarians, we must of course oppose this and favor the abolition of the FCC and all internet regulation. Depending on your point of view, the Google-Verizon proposal may be the best politically-realistic option on the table or there may be better alternatives (though it’s not the abominable betrayal many are making it out to be), but because it is a proposal for regulating the internet it is not something libertarians can actively support.

Against this position I have personally seen a number of different objections (in blockquotes below):

This is naive and reflexive. What you propose is dangerous, because voters and internet users do not have a voice in corporate decision-making (unless they own stock and exercise voting privileges). This is not hands-off government, this is hands in the pockets government.

This makes it sound as if voters have much of a voice in government decision-making. This, along with turning to government to solve perceived problems, particularly when it has to do with corporations, could be labeled naive and reflexive. As if government agents are disinterested and altruistic. Public Choice Economics 101. I don’t see the difference between hands-off government and hands-in-the-pockets government. In any case, either type is an oxymoron. Government is always putting its hands in other people’s pockets, often on behalf of big corporations. Why are people still surprised at regulatory capture? I’d be surprised not to see it.

Libertarian idealism is great in theory, but in practice it is co-opted by the interests of those who have risen to the top in business and now want to solidify those gains by making it difficult for others to take the same level playing field they enjoyed when they were smaller.

This is not libertarian ideals in practice. The only way the guys at the top in business can do this successfully is through the government. This is the very opposite of the libertarian ideal; it is not libertarianism in action. It is precisely why much corporate regulation is actually proposed by the big players in an industry once they’ve risen to the top, not by forward-thinking, altruistic politicians. What the objection actually describes is Republicanism, which pays lip service to liberty and free markets but in reality is corporatist. But the Democrats are corporatist too, in a different way. The existence of internet regulation and the FCC just serves to support the state-corporate plutocratic partnership.

Libertarians do not suggest regulatory capture as a solution. We suggest abolishing the FCC so that there is nothing for Google or any other corporation to capture and no political reason for them to feel they need to do so.

Google is great and I would love to see government stay out of a fair fight. This isn’t one, and you’re rooting against your own best interests, unless of course you own stock in Google or Verizon.

What is fair about a fight in which those with the best political connections — usually the wealthy and big corporations, mind you! — can employ the massive force of the government to impose their will on those who disagree? This generally is not good for the little guy. In fact, if this issue weren’t thrust into the political arena, it wouldn’t even be fair to call it a fight. Politicizing the issue and vying for control over the minds, bodies, and property of others against their will is what turns this into a fight. It is not in my best interest (properly conceived) to force others to let me use their property the way I want.  Government regulation of telecoms has also gone hand-in-hand with invasion of privacy, such as government snooping after ‘terrorists’ and whatnot. And do we really want to open the door to Hollywood, the RIAA,  indecency police, and Homeland Security influence on internet regulation?

Allowing Google and Verizon to write regulations for themselves is like letting the financial industry regulate itself. (How well has that worked for us?)

As I’ve pointed out, Google and Verizon cannot write regulations without Congress and the FCC. Moreover, the financial industry most certainly was not left to ‘regulate’ itself. It is shot through and through with government regulation, regulation that failed, that will continue to fail, that is in fact counter productive. Regulation is what screwed up the rating agencies, making them worse than useless. Government interference in the housing market and the money/credit supply is what created the housing bubble upon which the infamous credit default swaps were built. Regulatory capture happened and will continue to happen in the financial industry. It has and will continue to happen with the internet so long as the government seeks to regulate it.

Moreover, the politicians and bureaucrats are ignorant of the very things they are regulating. Regulators didn’t catch Enron. They didn’t catch Madoff’s scam and they ignored the guy who did. They didn’t understand credit default swaps. Does anyone really expect them to understand how the internet works, what business models work best, and what consumers really want? The late, and unlamented, former Senator Ted Stevens, famously referred to an email message as “an internet” and described the internet as a “series of tubes” (referenced in the post title). This man chaired the Senate commerce committee for years, overseeing a large overhaul of the telecommunications bill and ‘authoring’ S. 2686, the Communications, Consumer’s Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006.

Do telecoms understand the technology better than politicians and political appointees? Yes, they do. That’s precisely why they should not be allowed to police themselves.

What you say!!!

The illogic of this is mindboggling. I do not understand how “telecoms understand the technology better than politicians and political appointees” leads to “That’s precisely why they should not be allowed to police themselves.” Is this based on fear? I’m more afraid of politicians and political appointees. They have much more power and much less accountability. That makes their ignorance all the more worrisome. At least companies have to compete with one another for (voluntary) customers and revenue.

I think most people do not understand the extent to which the telecom and internet industries are regulated by governments already, leading to myriad problems, including distorted and decreased competition. Separate economy and state, and corporations would have far less power.

What I am advocating is defending the status quo. If the status quo must be defended by regulation, then I am for government regulation.

Why defend the status quo? What’s so special about it? Change can be good. Ask Obama. Seriously though, by what right can anyone use regulation to maintain the status quo?

Left alone, I’m afraid internet would go the way of television — mostly garbage for free and very dumbed down, the more you pay, the better. My other biggest concern is lack of access to information by people who are low income, or schools on limited budgets, etc.

The internet is for porn! Seriously though, I’m fond of Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of everything is crap. Still, there is a lot of great, free content on the internet. That would be the case even without net neutrality. And I see no reason why non-commercial sites like Wikipedia would slow to a crawl and become hard to use, as some have irresponsibly claimed.

Peter Suderman said it well:

And, of course, that’s the big picture here: allowing and encouraging a diversity of feature sets and service options for content providers and consumers. Neutrality advocates stress the concept of equality for a reason — the goal is to ensure a level of sameness amongst consumers. But when it comes to information-service markets, especially the growing world of mobile data access, not all plans, phones, and networks are created equal. But that’s as it should be, because not all consumer needs are the same. Those who want more should be able to pay for it. Those who don’t shouldn’t have to.

Broadband may be becoming so voluminous and cheap that we’ll effectively see net neutrality for most users by default. But if this turns out not to be the case, and traffic needs keep up with expanding supply, then we might not see net neutrality fully realized in all respects. If net neutrality is not what would arise in an unhampered market, then so be it. It won’t be the end of the world and the poor will not be more unable to access the internet (at reasonable speeds) than they already are. I expect they will be better off.

Free wifi with reasonable speeds is offered by a growing number of businesses, including coffee shops and restaurants. Even Sam’s Club will soon be offering free wifi to shoppers. Businesses have an incentive to do this as a loss leader, to get customers inside to sample and purchase their products and other services. Companies like Google want everyone to be online and having a good experience; it’s better for their bottom line.  Even Verizon benefits from providing customers a satisfying internet experience.

Tell Googlizon to do no evil, but do it for the right reasons.

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

About a month and a half ago, in Atlas Shrugged movie finally filming?!, Jacob Huebert updated us on the Atlas Shrugged movie. Now, thanks to Reason Magazine and Reason.tv, we are privileged to see behind-the-scenes footage and interviews.

I’ll admit I was leery of the current iteration of the project, but I am somewhat reassured to hear that Atlas Shrugged will be made into three movies, not one, which is more doable. I’m also reassured that the director and the actor playing Henry Rearden seem to have a decent handle on Ayn Rand’s vision and characters, though I was a bit disquieted by the director mispronouncing Rand’s first name.

From Reason.com’s Hit & Run blog (video below):

Many actors and producers have talked about adapting Ayn Rand’s classic Atlas Shrugged for the big screen, but 53 years after its publication no one has dared tackle the ambitious project—until now.

Reason.tv heads to the set of Atlas Shrugged Part One to offer viewers a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of this most anticipated film.

Director Paul Johansson (One Tree Hill) and Grant Bowler (Lost, True Blood, Ugly Betty), who plays Henry Rearden, discuss the perils, pressures, and pleasure involved in telling the epic tale of a society where the “men of the mind” go on strike and refuse to contribute to a collectivist world.

Produced by Ted Balaker and Hawk Jensen. Camera by Austin Bragg and Hawk Jensen. Production support by Sam Corcos.

Music: “Eu Nao Sabia” by Anamar available from Magnatune Records.

Approximately 5.3 minutes.

Go to Reason.tv downloadable HD, iPod, and audio versions of this and all our videos and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes live.

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

Clearly, in times of emergency, the internet, in order to be protected, must be destroyed.

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

A couple of days ago David mentioned on The Libertarian Standard that the Mises Institute providing its entire online media and literature library as a set of free torrents can be seen as part of a distributed or grassroots intellectual guerrilla resistance against the state.

This is just one aspect of the Mises Institute’s effort to be completely open source. All of the intellectual eggs of the Austro-Libertarian movement are no longer being kept in one basket. The more people who seed those torrents, the easier the burden on the Mises Institute.

But more importantly, should statist or natural disaster strike, the world won’t lose the vast wealth of information hosted by the Mises Institute. Indeed, not only will the information not be lost, but there will be no downtime in its worldwide online distribution. Should states decide to actively move against us, they’ll be in for one hell of a game of ‘whack-a-mole’. They’ll face the same problems the RIAA, Hollywood, and others are facing in their War on Piracy Copying.

Austro-Libertarianism has gone viral, folks.

All this is to set the context for another example of open source anti-state resistance that I recently discovered. WordPress is an open source website and blogging platform. It’s an easy to use, yet powerful, tool for getting our ideas online where people around the world can access them. It’s free, as in speech and beer. This site is powered by it. The Libertarian Standard is powered by it. The Mises Institute’s site is powered by it.

But some countries like China and Australia censor the internet, blocking access to unapproved sites like YouTube and Twitter, filtering or blocking or shutting down or otherwise regulating websites and blogs.

There are ways to get around this censorship, however. Here’s one: The good folks at Global Voices Advocacy, an organization defending free speech online, have heroically created a guide to mirroring a censored WordPress blog. It’s covered by a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, just like this site and The Libertarian Standard. Get it. Share it. Even if you don’t need it yet, someday you might. Others already do.

In the spirit of the Mises Institute’s torrented online library, I’m hosting the guide here as well.

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

A common retort that libertarians, even minarchists, hear when criticizing ‘their’ government is “If you don’t like it, then just leave.” Indeed, residency is perceived to be one piece of evidence (among others, like voting, paying taxes, etc.) for one’s implicit consent to the state and its rules. Just leave. As if there are better alternatives. Or, as if ‘their’ country being the least bad option somehow justifies its government. Just leave. They make it sound so simple, don’t they? If only it were. Unfortunately, states are not so keen on letting their slaves get away so easily, free and clear.

So, my wife is from India and she recently got her U.S. citizenship. She had a permanent greencard (which cost us a couple thousand dollars and much hassle over several years to acquire, by the way, even for the wife of a U.S. citizen), so why would she want U.S. citizenship? Well, for one thing, even with a permanent greencard she wouldn’t be able to leave the country for a protracted period of time, say to return to India for an extended visit, without more hassle and the risk of being barred re-entry and losing her permanent resident status. Because India has not yet passed a dual citizenship law (and doesn’t seem likely to do so anytime soon), she has to renounce her Indian citizenship. Okay, fine. She can get an oddly named OCI (Overseas Citizenship of India) lifetime visa to visit India whenever she wants, however long she wants. That doesn’t sound so bad. But India’s 1967 Passports Act doesn’t make renouncing Indian citizenship so easy.

Indians acquiring foreign citizenship are required to renounce their Indian citizenship, surrender their Indian passports, and acquire a “Surrender Certificate.” So my wife has to mail her Indian passport to the Indian Consulate in Chicago and pay $175 (plus $20 for mailing fees) for the certificate. She has 3 months from the time she acquired U.S. citizenship to do so. And she needs copied pages from her U.S. passport, which she can’t apply for until acquiring U.S. citizenship, as part of the paperwork. If she misses this 3 month deadline, additional penalties begin to accrue. Yes, I say “additional penalties” because she is already being unjustly penalized by having to pay $195 and face greater hassles entering and exiting India. I’m not sure what the additional penalties are, but suffice to say they would further increase the costs of leaving India and renouncing citizenship. There are also penalties for foreign citizens traveling to India under their Indian passport. The minimum penalty appears to be $250 for each such visit, but penalties of up to 5 years in prison and a fine of up to $1,250 are mentioned as well.

But, no, that’s not all. There are more fees and paperwork to apply for her OCI lifetime visa. $275 and another $275 for our American born daughter’s OCI visa, plus mailing fees of $21. She also needs five passport photos each of herself and our daughter. Passport photos run you $10 on average and, of course, you can only buy them in pairs, so we’re looking at another $60 there. Of course, I need my own visa, but mine is good for only 10 years and I can only stay for up to 6 months at a time. I forget how much it cost as I got it several years ago. The Indian Consulate in Chicago reports that for a family of four, including two children under 18, recently naturalized, this whole process (renunciation of Indian citizenship, “surrender certificate,” and OCI visa) would cost:

1. OCI fees: $1,100 ($275 x 4)
2. Surrender certificate fees: $700 ($175 X 4)
3. Mailing fees: $23

Plus the cost of all the passport photos, of course — another $120 — for a grand total of $1,943. Just leave, eh?

No doubt the statist will respond that when he said you should just leave, he didn’t mean you should be able to return for a visit, much less acquire effective permission for permanent residency. Even granting his point for the sake of argument, that only subtracts the temporary visa or OCI visa fees, plus photo expenses, from the penalties of renouncing Indian citizenship while increasing or adding others.

The United States doesn’t make it easy to leave either. I’m not sure about India, but it appears the U.S. State Department doesn’t like the idea of letting people go stateless (imagine that!) and will not be “reluctant” to allow (!) expatriation (renouncing citizenship or permanent residency) until you have attained citizenship or legal asylum in another country, which of course is usually an expensive and complicated process. The U.S. is notorious for being unusual among nation-states in taxing its own citizens’ (and permanent residents’) earnings abroad, so it comes as no surprise that it imposes an expatriation tax if you’re worth enough. Even more outrageous, the U.S. government taxes the earnings of expatriates and it is against the law to renounce citizenship in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes. So much for one of the main reasons for “just leaving.” It is apparently possible to be granted credits and/or exclusions, but even so there are conditions that must be met and the fact that you have to file tax returns is outrageous. As the last link indicates, there are of course hefty penalties for filing expatriation and tax forms late or not at all. $10,000 for not filing expatriation Form 8854. The recent Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act signed by Bush in May 2006 is apparently a mixed bag and even applies retroactively to January 1, 2006 (isn’t that unconstitutional? naturally, the SCOTUS would side with the state itself on this one). The Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax Act of 2008, also under Bush, also appears to expand and increase taxes on expatriates in order to offset increased benefits to military ‘service’ members. To make matters worse, the U.S. under Obama has recently instituted capital controls hidden (naturally) in the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (HIRE; H.R. 2487).

I’m not a lawyer and am no expert on these issues — state laws, especially tax laws, can be quite complicated — so feel free to correct me or elaborate on any particulars.

What is clear is that it’s not so easy to just leave after all. Moreover, even when it’s possible, returning even for a limited time, much less an extended stay, is not so easy or cheap. There are other problems with leaving the country as well. It is not so easy to leave friends and family behind, find a job in another country, learn a new language and culture, move all your stuff, and so on. There are also U.S. tax penalties for cashing out of retirement plans early. There are probably more that I’m forgetting at the moment or have never heard of. All told, there is a hefty price to pay for leaving. Why should we have to pay such a price just because we don’t recognize the legitimacy of the state or certain of its rules?

But all this about the difficulty of “just leaving” is really neither here nor there. The difficulties undermine the statist’s position but they do not strike at the root. “If you don’t like it, then just leave” is not really an argument. “Just leave” just does not follow from “If you don’t like it.” Why should we have to leave? Why can’t we stay and complain? Seek to change things? Why should we be subject to laws, regulations, and actions to which we have not consented and that we consider to be unjust while we remain here?

“Well,” the amateur or professional social contract theorist will reply, “this land is our land. If you remain here, you are demonstrating implicit consent to the state and its laws.” Of course, this too does not follow at all. There can be many reasons why I might remain in a country other than consent to its state and its rules. Lysander Spooner long ago exploded social contract theory and the implicit consent justification of the state. There is also the fact that the alleged implicit consent is directly contradicted and trumped by explicit denial of consent.

But what I want to point out here is an even greater logical problem for this line of ‘argument’. As the theory goes, a state is justified if and to the extent that it has the consent of its people. Now, no state anywhere in history has ever had the unanimous, explicit consent of its people. So social contract theorists have had to settle for implicit consent and do not usually insist that it be unanimous. Nevermind that a majority consenting to or approving something does not in and of itself make that thing right, much less justified to impose on those who do not consent to or approve it. Social contract theorists will often make ‘reasonable man’-type arguments, putting forth conditions and propositions to which they think a ‘reasonable man’ would consent. Quite naturally there is much reasonable disagreement among even social contract theorists as to what constitutes a ‘reasonable man’.

As I mentioned at the start of this post, however, they will also often point to particular practices as evidence of implicit consent: e.g, voting, paying taxes, and our focus for this post, residency. The notion that residence demonstrates implicit consent unintentionally reveals that what we are dealing with here is actually a viciously circular argument. Behind the command “If you don’t like it, then just leave” is the hidden implication that society or the state has a prior claim to your land and property, indeed to all the land, property, and individuals in a given geographic area. The statist might respond to the obvious objection “Why should I have to leave?” with the claim that by coming or staying here you have consented to the state and its laws, but notice that this too relies upon the hidden and unargued for premise that society or the state has a prior claim to all the land, property, and individuals in a given geographic area. Why should we believe this? While common or public (i.e., jointly-held private) property is not necessarily precluded by libertarianism, it is quite a collectivist stretch to claim that ‘society as a whole’ owns (or owned prior to parceling it out) all the land in a given geographic area; here we must part company even with Locke. To say that the state owns (or owned prior to parceling it out) all the land in a given geographic area is to assume prematurely that the state is legitimate, that it could justly own anything, so it will hardly do to attempt to show that the state is justified by pointing to ‘evidence’ that presupposes that the state is justified.

Just leave? Sorry, try again.

Update: My brother-in-law, who just got his US citizenship, has informed me that the Indian Government recently decided not to charge the extra $175 for renouncing Indian citizenship, but only for people who got their US citizenship before June 1, 2010. Those lucky individuals who beat the cutoff will only be charged $20, unless they are even luckier and somehow already happen to have a “Cancelled” stamp on their Indian passport. See the text in red at the bottom of this page on the Chicago Indian Consulate’s website.

[Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.]

First of all, I found the title of the movie to be redundant from the get-go. The action scenes are mostly way over the top. The gore insanely so. Swords and other blades slice through body parts, even cutting men in half at the waist, as if they were hot knives slicing through butter. Ninja stars fly from hands like they are being fired from a machine gun. They even have chemtrails. Blood fountains and splatters by the bucket load. Our ninja hero takes dozens of lethal wounds, losing gallons of blood, and not only lives to tell about it but keeps on fighting. There is a bit of super-speed blurred movement and mind-over-body self-healing, so the movie is something of a fantasy action thriller. We’re treated to the cliché of the hero being down for the count, about to be killed, when someone he cares about is attacked and suddenly he discovers renewed vitality and determination and, inexplicably, an unbelievable (that’s saying a lot for this movie) leap in skill level.

For all that, I found the movie entertaining. The action scenes are well-done and stylish. And I particularly liked the parkour-inspired sequences. The plot is interesting and tightly executed. The story even has a couple of elements of interest to libertarians. There are a number of ninja clans that kidnap orphan children and train them to be assassins, indoctrinating them with the belief that the lives of individuals are valueless compared to that of the clan, which is one big family to which they owe unquestioning and unwavering loyalty and obedience. The ninja clans apparently act as secret private contractors for governments around the world, assassinating targets for 100 lbs. of gold. Our ninja hero is one particularly promising pupil of the Ozunu clan. He buys into the propaganda at first, but falls for a pretty young girl, a fellow trainee, who does not. She attempts to escape, and is recaptured and executed in front of all the ninjas-in-training as an example. When he is later faced with killing another girl, whom he is told has similarly betrayed the clan, as the final requirement of becoming a full member of the clan, he refuses and is nearly killed. The bulk of the movie is about his quest for revenge against the Ozunu clan with the help of a female government agent.

Though it is a classic revenge tale, the negative portrayal of coercive and aggressive collectivism is a nice touch. The notion that the individual should be subservient to and acquires his value and ultimate end from The Collective, whatever it be named (the Family, the Clan, the Tribe, the Race, the Nation or State), is an insidious sickness. It that permeates the communitarian classical republicanism of Rome (as I explain in my working paper “Roman Virtue, Liberty, and Imperialism: The Murder-Suicide of Classical Civilization” (pdf)), which, along with classical liberalism, with which it is in tension due to the conflict with the latter’s inherent individualism, was one of the major influences on the so-called Founding Fathers of the United States of America. It is also inherent in nationalism and, of course, the modern collectivist political movements of our age. At the risk of being redundant, a truly libertarian and civilized society exists for each and every individual’s own well-being – not the other way round.

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

A 10-year-old boy is taking a stand for “liberty and justice for all,” refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance until gays and lesbians enjoy equal rights. Good for him. But this will be best achieved by getting the state out of marriage entirely. Let people define marriage how they will. Barring that, the second best option so long as the state monopolizes the definition and the legal system is to insist that the state has no right to limit marriage to opposite-sex unions, thus denying homosexuals equal legal rights, tax benefits, etc., within its auspices.

The state can never bring “liberty and justice for all” so it is incoherent, though a good rhetorical device, to make one’s pledging allegiance to it contingent on its doing so. Pledging allegiance is itself morally suspect insofar as it carries connotations of feudalism, and morally bankrupt insofar as allegiance is pledged to the state. I think it is no accident that the Pledge was not created until after the Civil War, in 1892, roughly a hundred years after the signing of the Constitution and not long before the US government’s first overseas imperial war. Nor that its creator, Francis Bellamy, was a statist-socialist intent on promoting nationalism in public indoctrination camps schools. (Incidentally, as an aside, the phrase “under God” wasn’t added to the Pledge until 1954, and “in God we trust” wasn’t the official US motto until 1956.)

I got a package in today. For the second time in two weeks, the third time since we’ve lived in Nebraska, and the fourth time I can remember while living in an apartment, the postman did not even bother making a first attempt at delivering the package to my door. I managed to get to the post office in time to pick up the package, barely. When I complained, for the second time in two weeks, some older lady working in the next stall mentioned that they don’t deliver to apartments. WTF!?! They don’t deliver packages – or is it just packages requiring signatures (as my three in NE have been) – to apartments? Since when? I remarked: “Why do you even bother putting the package on the truck then?” But what else could I do? They’re a government monopoly. So with that I just took my package and left. Wasted half an hour of my day because they can’t deliver to your door and make more than one attempt like the private companies. Now they want to take an extra day off from work and they’re raising rates again in a couple weeks.

At least one science fiction author has a pretty sound grasp of economic theory and history, and of the current financial crisis.

Ludwig von Mises over half a century ago proved, beyond a shadow of doubt, that a little intervention in one sector of the economy creates an incentive for a lot of intervention in ever larger sections of the economy; and the government must forswear either the goals it has set as policy or the means selected to pursue them to resist, if ever, that incentive, and suffer the humiliation and financial loss of reversing long-standing policy. (A nice summary of his argument can be read here: http://mises.org/midroad.asp. A complete study of the underlying logic and epistemology can be read here: http://mises.org/resources/3250.)

Read the rest. He even mentions Bastiat.

There are two things he says that jumped out at me that I must disagree with, however.

Sadly, one cannot run a free market republic in a land where the citizens are ignorant of the basic scientific laws governing the market relations.

I agree wholeheartedly with this, except for the part about running a republic. We don’t need anyone to be running any kind of republic. The state itself is an evil. We shouldn’t settle for a free market republic. And no free market republic could ever remain free market for long anyway.

The other point of disagreement is that he seems to blame the financial crisis on the wealth-transferring “Dems,” as in Democrats I assume, but the Republicans are guilty of wealth transfer from Main Street to Wall Street too. Precious few Republican politicians give more than lip service to the free market. McCain is no small government, free market man.

In recent news, Apple has joined the military-industrial complex. Get ready to say hello to the new iMissile. No offense, fanboys and girls.

It’s my first LOLcat. Like it?

(I added just the Apple logo and the text, someone else had already put the cat in.)

Bad news, folks. Fox is attempting to use IP laws to kill Warner’s upcoming Watchmen movie. No, they’re not trying to get a share of the profits as is common practice. They’re actually trying to block it. Bastards.

This is the paper I presented at ASC, chapter 5 of my dissertation.
After much too much procrastination the rough draft is finally
finished and it’s uploaded to my website. I’m sure it’s in need of
revision so constructive comments, suggestions and criticisms are
welcome.