Memeverse

Any way you slice it Fractional Reserve Banking system which is the prevalent banking system in the modern world, is a fraud and at that quite unsustainable in the long term, which is what plays a key role in the current economic destabilization we’re witnessing. It is what makes all our money effectively be worth nothing more than someone’s promise of debt, but you can watch more about that in an excellent documentary called Money as Debt (note though that I don’t agree with the solution the documentary suggests to the presented problem).

But the reason I’m writing this is an article which provides a fairly simple argument on why is Fractional Reserve Banking fradulent which effectively boils down to that no two persons can own the same thing or the same amount of money: “Fractional Reserve Banking Is Indeed Fraudulent”.

It’s a good article and I suggest reading it, but I have a couple of complaints which tie in to a recent discussion I’ve had on our IRC channel at #libervis (irc.freenode.net) about what constitutes property ownership.

Defining property ownership

The author, Laura Davidson, claims that property ownership is defined by the right to dispose of that which is owned. If you can’t dispose of the thing then you don’t really own it so it’s not your property. This is in a nutshell the definition my debater had on IRC as well, but as we discussed I finally reached the conclusion that while not entirely incorrect this definition is merely a subset of what property ownership implies, which is control. Being able to dispose of something is being able to exercise control, but few would deny that if you own something you can also use it in every which way you choose so long as it is possible with respect to the nature of the thing in question (as in, you can’t use a tricycle to travel through space at warp speeds).

This is also what allows ownership of ideas, but I will explain that in an upcoming article on Libervis.com. Suffice it to say that there are two elements in question: control and nature and to understand property we have to understand both concepts. Control cannot be applied to a thing in ways in which its nature does not allow. So a human cannot control another human if that human does not let it because that human is a controller of himself as well.

But this is a minor complaint as “right to dispose” off is still a subset of control.

Collective ownership

Secondly, I vehemently disagree with the notion of “collective ownership” which she seems to accept. I think it’s an utter self-contradiction and it requires such explaining away like this:

In the case of joint ownership by a couple or a group, individuals within the group do not have full rights of ownership individually. (They cannot logically each have an independent right to use or dispose of the property whenever and however they please.) They can have partial rights individually, but they can only have full rights of ownership collectively. Therefore it is the group, as a single entity, that has full rights of ownership.

This is stating an impossibility. An individual has partial rights, but can at the same time have full rights collectively? I’m sorry, but I think you can’t have both at once. The “entity” is non-existent. By the definition of a group it is a number of individuals not a single entity. I’ve written more about collective ownership here.

All this, however, doesn’t change her core argument about the fraud inherent in fractional reserve banking. If you deposit money to a bank and get a contractual guarantee to withdrawal of the same amount on demand then you didn’t make a loan (then the only contractual guarantee you would have is to withdrawal after a certain period of time) and you therefore contractually kept control over your money to yourself - continuing being an owner. A bank can’t own that money at the same time as you so it lending any of it to someone else is FRAUD.

But that happens every day.

In one of the best demonstrations of the nature of government, a very vocal liberty activist, a host of a US wide syndicated and worldwide listened libertarian talk show FreeTalkLive was arrested and sentenced to 90 days in prison for literally not sitting fast enough as the judge ordered him, like he would order a dog, to sit down. They managed to pin him 3 counts of contempt of court each worth 30 days in prison, amounting to 3 months. For not removing the couch he got only 3 days.

He is Ian Freeman, a voluntaryist, living in New Hampshire, working full time every day on the cause of liberty.

You can see exactly what happened here:

There’s more to the story, but you will hardly find anything that incriminates Ian any further than these contempt charges. The whole thing begins with something as trivial as a couch being put on his tenants lawn and someone filing a complaint that had the court order him to make the tenants remove the couch. He refused to do so until he was faced with the one who filed the complaint in the first place, as is his right. Instead he got trapped like this and was told the name of the complainer, Mikaela L. Engert, only after the first contempt charge made in the closed room where he was tried.

Many liberty activists believe it to be a planned move, that this was not about a couch at all, but about silencing an avid and effective liberty activist and making a scapegoat for the entire liberty movement in Keen New Hampshire, and I agree.

However, the arrest is having an opposite effect. More people are pledging to move to New Hampshire or accelerating their actual move. More people are getting involved and the New Hampshire liberty movement appears to be strengthening rather than weakening as a result of this display of tyranny. Here are some related links.

• Thank You Mr. Burke (Mr. Burke is the judge in question above)
• John Wayne Done Proud
• 93Days.com - Is 93 Days in Jail Just Punishment for an Old Couch and Sitting down too Slowly?
• JailedActivist.info

Also check out the Voluntaryist Planet (planet.doubleplushuman.com) for latest voluntaryist stories.

I’ll likely update the post with more links as I encounter them.

Human’s capability of imagination is at the same time an enormous blessing and an enormous curse. Just as it makes us creative and empowers our continuous advancement and evolution it could serve to doom ourselves out of existence.

The former refers to all of the inventions and technologies that humans have developed which couldn’t have been done without imagination. This is where cultural elements like science fiction play a role. You first have to imagine, envision, entertain the mind before you can make it real. However, in the process of making it real you have to deal with reality and separate the concepts which correspond to it from those which do not, which is done through the scientific process; examining empirical evidence (or lack of it) and logical consistency.

Unfortunately, this process is completely ignored when it comes to certain concepts and this is leading towards destruction.

One such concept is the concept of “government”. Another is a concept of “country”. Both in fact have no basis in reality whatsoever, yet millions upon millions of people hold them to be facts as hard as the concept of a rock you can hold in your hands. “Government” is viewed as an organization which is somehow special, noble, generally benevolent, serving the people and because of this endowed with a monopoly on violenent power, the power to initiate force to compell obedience to its sacred rules and to steal in order to pay for its noble job in a “country” or “society”.

This ridiculous idea goes back to ancient times when governments, then called kings or queens, have been considered as endowed with this noble role by the gods themselves. No further questioning was necessary when you imagine and believe as real the concept of god. You’ll readily imagine and believe as real any other concept which is supported by the one of god.

Today, god was replaced by the concepf of “the people”. It is “the people” which endow the government the right to govern by force, through an incredible yet on further examination fully self-contradictory process called “democracy”. Yet again, if people believe in such a thing as “the people” or “country” or “society” (which are often synonymous) they easily accept other false concepts based on it.

But none of it is real. None of it exists.

The collective does not exist without an individual. What is a “country”? Who are “the people”? What is a “society”? And ultimately what is “the government”? Do they really exist as what most individuals conceptualized them as?

No they don’t.

They are illusions.

“Country” implies that a land marked by some lines drawn on the map has some sort of a mysterious soul, a life of its own, something to be served and protected and something which is, through some strange elusive process linked with the people living on that piece of Earth. It’s hard to describe it when you try because it’s a complete and total delusion. It doesn’t really exist. When you hear politicians say things like “serve the country” or “protect this country” or “country first” what the hell are they referring to?

You may say “the people” or “society”, but that would be jumping from one illusion on to another. When you think these terms through it’s obvious they refer to groups of individuals. Why then are these terms being used as if they refer to something that is more than just groups of individuals, as if they have a soul of their own as if “the people” or “society” refers to something that is separate from the individuals?

There’s no answer except; to keep you deluded, to keep you sacrificing your own individual self in the name of these gods, gods called “the people”, “country”, “society” etc., to keep you subjected to violence and make you ask for more, because that’s the way it has to be. Something deep in you tells you that you don’t like it, making you always strive for lesser taxes, more freedom etc., but you don’t realize that you’re merely begging for the rape you’re being subjected to from being a little gentler.

You’re still being raped though.

And all because you believe in this religion called “the government”, this incredible delusion.

In reality, however, there are only individuals, nothing but individuals. Groups of individuals are still individuals, only ones interacting with each other. Once this is completely realized the idea that one has to sacrifice for this “greater whole” called “country” or “society” starts to look awkward and illogical, because.. what is this greater whole if there are only individuals? And how can sacrificing myself for this greater whole be better for all of us if everyone is being sacrificed at the same time? Isn’t it that at best this process only brings us back to where we started, except with a loss of time and energy? What’s the point, then?

There’s no point, except to enrich those who happen to be the beneficiaries of holding you in this mental delusion, those who happen to be the ones dictating who is to sacrifice how much, and being handsomely paid for this “noble” role given to them by the “the people” god, paid by that which you sacrificed or let them steal from you.

But that’s not quite what you believed was supposed to happen is it? Of course it isn’t. What you expected was not realistic, it was not possible. If there are only individuals and sacrificing all individuals for the so called greater good which only ends up being the good of the currently ruling elite doesn’t actually help the good of all, then the whole proposition falls flat on its face. The concept of government as a noble organization endowed by god or “the people” becomes invalid and impossible.

The only alternative that remains is for invididuals that are left standing once the clouds of delusion have been cleared away to take back control over their own self and be the god and government to themselves, as they truly are. Then the only form of order that can exist without destroying you and other individuals as a matter of norm emerges naturally.

If I piqued anyone’s interests with my previous entries maybe I can start this one with an open ended question. Do you think there can be such a thing as moral science?

To define it, it would be equal essentially to physical or biological science in that it would describe universal processes that go on in the world or within a specific set, like human beings.

A moral science would thus describe at the very least, a framework according to which to determine how ALL people form their morals and at most determine the actual morals that are universal to all people.

It is important to distinguish this from the imposition of ones morals on to others. This would not be the objective of moral science anymore than it is an objective of physical sciences to impose ones arbitrary idea of why objects attract each other on to all others to believe. It is about observing, hypothesizing and then testing the hypothesis.

Someone attempted to create such a scientific framework already. I’m not sure he’s the only one (probably not), but he’s the one who caught my attention. He is Stefan Molyneux and his theory is called “Universally Preferable Behavior“. I’ve read Part 1 where he explains most of his theory and I have to say it’s quite interesting. Stefan Molyneux is quite an unorthodox and somewhat controversial philosopher with a bit of a cult following. My assumption is that the latter is due to him being one of those easily impressive people with leadership qualities that tend to, intentionally or not, attract a little too much zeal from those impressed. I’m not a big fan of personallity cults, but it’s no reason to completely dismiss the man and his ideas. Often the best and most revolutionary ideas have been brought about by most controversial of persons.

But I’m not necessarily making up my mind about whether UPB is a valid moral science theory or not. By default I do subscribe, to an extent, to moral relativism if not because I believe that morals are always subjective and cannot be a part of predictable patterns, then because I don’t yet understand such patterns. Just because something hasn’t been discovered yet, doesn’t mean it wont be, and attempts like the UPB are thus worth paying attention to.

One thing I continue to believe as strongly as ever though is this. I can hardly go wrong if I adopt only a single moral principle, or just The Principle if you wish, a “prime directive” to use trek-speak: non-initiation of force. Whether one is a moral absolutist or a moral relativist if both can agree that at least we wont force each others beliefs and morals on to each other we can make tremendous proggress as we continue to journey through life and explore the world and our beliefs.

The begfest called elections is coming up in USA.

I’ll just say this. Don’t beg.

I’ll let Stefan Molyneux speak.

Warning: He is angry, not that I can blame him.

So, will you beg? Socialism or fascism, which is it?

Don’t dehumanize yourself like that.

I sometimes get into heated discussions with my (former) friend regarding my belief that all human action must be voluntary and that therefore we should have no coercive government (instead each individual should govern himself). We rarely agree on any point and never agree on our paradigms. Right now I even doubt whether he has a consistent paradigm due to his apparently absolutist relativist thinking, but I digress (and absolute relativism may be a good topic for some other entry).

One good thing that I take out of the recent debate is my curiosity about the issue of animal rights. Since my last blog entry effectively posits that rights are inherent in being what and who you are rather than something given by others it does not in principle discriminate between species. It applies to every thing and every one in the universe. In that entry my focus was on humans though and here I want to focus on animals.

The basic premise of the previous entry was that if one was capable of something one must have the right to exercise that something so long as it doesn’t deny another to exercise his own capabilities. To deny the existence of this right is to deny the existence of this capability and since it is what makes one what it is, it means to deny its existence as such.

According to this, an animal which is alive has the right to live. If it is capable of marking property as its own it has the right to property. If it is capable of barking, running, crying and doing anything else it can do, it has the right to do all these things. The logical conclusion would seem to be that if a human denies and violates any of these rights, even while professing to be a voluntaryist like me, is not being consistent OR is suffering from what my (former) friend called “specieism” (an equivalent to racism) where I believe only humans can have rights even when I see the evidence that others are capable of having rights too.

Then the only way to keep voluntaryism consistent with itself, without falling into specieism, is to either prove that a given animal is not capable of having a particular right which we habitually deny them.

Driven by that I started a discussion thread on one of the voluntaryist forums and also with a friend on IRC. I posed this as a potential threat to logical consistency of voluntaryism. What we concluded is something that I apparently overlooked. I even hinted at it in an above sentence where I mentioned being “capable of having rights”. It is the issue of demanding rights.

A human may exist as a human only so long as he can exercise what makes him human, including demand. If we look at history only those who cared about rights and demanded and defended them have ever been admitted to them. Otherwise their humanity was suppressed by other humans.

A definition of “demand” could be useful. According to wiktionary it corresponds to a need, desire, claim for something, an urgent request or an order. A demand for rights, that is the recognition and respect of self as such then corresponds to a need, desire, claim, request or order to be recognized as yourself.

Are animals, then, capable of demanding their rights? I think the answer depends on whether they recognize their own rights to begin with, recognizing their own capabilities and what makes them themselves. In other words, it seems to come back to the question of whether they are self-aware? If they are not even aware of themselves as what they are then they don’t even recognize their own rights as part of who they are and are thus incapable of demanding such recognition from others. This is why most animals also willfully aggress on other animals and why humans which fail to recognize their own rights also tend to fail respecting the rights of others. Such lack of recognition results in violence.

It is hard to answer this question with absolute certainty, but given what we can scientifically determine so far is that animals aren’t self aware in which case the capability of demanding rights is not a part of who they are and thus granting them to live or do anything that they are instinctually driven to is up to anyone in their vicinity, whether it is another animal or a human. This is what makes it possible for a human to own an animal and let it do some things while denying it to do others.

This is also consistent with the known and widespread belief (even among non-voluntaryists) that only sentient rights can have rights. I think I understand better now the basis of this claim. The emphasis is on can. Whether they can or can’t depends on whether they are sentient.

This said, every individual decides for himself what sights or acts does he prefers more or less and I would say I don’t like the sight of a human torturing animals. I therefore reserve the right to ostracise everyone who does this. Animals might not be capable of having rights, but I am capable of feeling disgusted when they are being hurt for no good reason and based on this disgust I can make or break my relationships with other humans, at least this way, through non-forceful action, sending a signal to them that I don’t approve.

And like with everything in the free market, the more people demand of others not to do something less people are likely to do it.

I believe that rights are not given nor earned. They are inherent in who we are and inseparable from it. If one stomps on the right of another, his humanity is violated because to be is to exercise what makes you human.

And what is it that makes you human? You are alive, self aware, capable of thinking and acting on your thoughts and thus capable of creating and acquiring. All of this together constitutes your being human and to deny you to use your life, self awareness and ability to think, create and acquire would be to deny your humanity, to deny you to BE human. Thus life, liberty and property are one and the same. Without life you perish. Without liberty you cannot exercise abilities that make you human. Without property, the result of these exercises, you have nothing to strive for, nothing to cherish, nothing to call home, nothing to call your own - the fruit of your labor.

No two beings can occupy the same space, digest the same piece of food or breed the same molecules of air, at the same time. That’s the very basis of property ownership, simply the need to occupy and consume a particular piece of the world in order to exist AS whatever you naturally are; a fish, plant, bacterium or.. a human.

Since as a human, you’re in addition to being alive also defined by being self aware and able to think and act human property ownership is expanded to accommodate for the exercise of these traits. So in addition to the food you’re digesting, air you are breeding, space you are occupying (your body) you also own everything else that is created or acquired by the work of your mind and body.

No two persons can own the same thing. If we pretend they do there is a conflict. Which one decides what to do with it? Which one uses it when both want to use it? Which one is responsible for it? Even when two persons agree to share something these impossibilities remain. They can only “time share” the use of a thing and “time share” the responsibility, at one time one can use it and be responsible for it and at another the other can. Effectively, it is never owned by both, never becomes “collective property”, rather ownership merely shifts from one person to the other in time according to their voluntary agreements.

Let’s take a challenging claim; that a given road is a public property. This claims that everyone living in a city where the road is located is the owner of that road at the same time. This also means that everything everyone in that city wants to do on or with that road they can do, all at the same time. So one can decide to drive a car on it as fast as he likes whereas another can decide to walk at the same place where the other guy is speeding a car. It also means that at the same time as those two are doing this, a third person can come and drill a hole in the middle of the road.

This obviously doesn’t fit reality and is in fact impossible. It is thus not surprising that when one claims a particular thing as “public property” it never really means that everyone can do anything they want with it. Instead there is a government which enforces rules of how it is going to be used. This government or moreover the head of the government (its president, for instance) contractually bound to his employers to propose and create the rules, is the actual singular owner of this so called “public property”.

Thus the conception of collective ownership or “public property” is a fallacy. It cannot and does not exist. Property by definition is always private and always belonging to a single individual. It is that person’s very extension, when acquired by voluntary consent of previous owners (through trade or gift etc.) or created by him or those whom agreed to create it for him. In all cases property is the result of thoughts and actions applied without violation of another’s right to think and act by himself.

Without property there can be no liberty. To deny ownership altogether is to deny ownership of self. This implies that someone else owns you and that thus someone else can decide what to do with you or what you should be, instead of you. You therefore have no liberty whatsoever.

If self ownership is admitted, but ownership of everything else is denied then your acts are not for you, but for someone else. What use is the admission of self ownership if nothing you do with yourself results in an enrichment of yourself, if every result you produce is for someone else to take without your consent. You are still a slave.

If self ownership and ownership of only some of the rest is admitted it is still not you who decides which of the results you produce are yours to keep and which are someone elses. Someone else can change the criteria at a whim. Because of this you’re still not in control of that which you yourself produce and remain a slave.

In short, life, liberty and property are human rights indivisible from each other and the process of being human. Violation of those is the violation of someone being human because one can’t be human without exercising that which makes him or her human.

I intended to do this a while ago, but a technical glitch and then some doubts I had later on prevented me from it. However, as I was discussing and thinking lately, while observing the happenings in the world, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that if there will be a last stand made for true freedom on this Earth, it will be in New Hampshire. I wont say New Hampshire, USA though, just New Hampshire.

I believe it is the Switzerland of the american continents, except so much better. It may be the only place in which the old american ideals of freedom, which have made USA a “promised land” for so many fleeing europeans, will still survive and persevere until the time comes for the world to see the true nature of governments and socialism (even if mixed with some perversion of capitalism) and the true value of having freedom. The Free State Project and the people of the free land we know as New Hampshire, are going to show the way.

I do not believe that humanity has much of a choice except these two: either learn to live and let live, learn to respect the freedom and sovereignty of another, learn to live in peace OR perish, because the ways of perpetual warfare (between gangs known as government or between government and “its” people), of perpetual theft (welfare state), of perpetual victimization, violation and fear of each other - cannot lead to long term survivability, let alone prosperity, as the number of humans grows and the Earth continues to be destroyed by the power mad coercionists and their willfully mindless minions.

So I pledged to move to New Hampshire, some time in the future. The pledge is fairly open ended. I have up to five years after 20 000 people sign the pledge to move, so I don’t feel too pressured to move very soon. There are plenty of obstacles, from getting a visa (at least while USA as a federation still exists) to psychological issues of separating myself from the rest of my family and the place I’ve known for most of my life to the purely financial issues (the costs of moving, starting over there etc.).

But being that the future is uncertain and that a lot of opportunities are something I either recognize or create myself I would not say that it is impossible to resolve these issues. If I thought that I wouldn’t sign up.

So New Hampshire is very likely a part of my future.

Let the torch of liberty…

…burn again.

Good morning to me.

Last night I’ve had a little merger happen in my head. It is between the concept of “self growth” and “self liberation”. I somehow saw them as parallel but separate processes yet they are not. I now believe that self improvement, self help or self growth, however you wanna call it, are in essence self liberation. And it’s a big industry because people yearn for someone to tell them how to succeed, but this desire to “succeed”, be it a specific desire for money, health or just general happiness is in fact rooted in a single thing: liberty - self liberation.

People buy self help books, seminars etc. because they want to be free, desperately.

But most of that material rarely brings them towards this state of freedom because most of it operates with the false assumptions about the world and about the prevalent social structures.

Funny thing, just as I tuned in to a trance station to listen to, it played a track which at one point had Morpheus from Matrix so eloquently say this:

“It is a world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”

And I laughed out loud! In a state that I am right now I am beginning to truly feel that I have escaped from this world - I am free. I no longer believe the lies, no longer see the illusion and no longer fear as much as I did, because I know it’s all not real. I know that I have the power. And now that I do I can continue to grow my liberty to the point at which I can LITERALLY bend the illusion most other people call reality. The Matrix analogy is perfect, because that’s exactly what happens. People freed from the world of lies become Neo’s and are capable of BENDING the reality in which other people live. Why can we bend reality? Because it’s actually NOT real. It’s reality to THEM, not us. We know how it works now and so we can manipulate it.

But I’ve learned, however, another incredible fact last night - that I’m actually only at the very beginning of my freedom journey. I somehow thought that I’m already pretty advanced, but then I realized - wait a second - I am barely pass the “pain” stage, and I still feel pain sometimes when I see how upside down and wrong the world is. And the pain stage is the first stage of the process of becoming free. That means I still have a way to go and it also means that the way I feel now is actually just scratching the surface of what’s coming.

You know people. Freedom rocks. You should try and discover it. The thing people will rarely tell you is that you don’t need to change the world to become free. You don’t need government to grant you freedom. The only one you need is YOU. You have freedom by nature! I wish I could describe how that feels.

If you wish to talk to me or wish me to give you some pointers join #libervis on irc.freenode.net. Ironically, “libervis” means “most freely” and today I feel most free than ever.

Be free.