EXISTENCE IS IDENTITY

Since the wake of the statist failure to manage the damage recently inflicted after hurricane Katrina in the South, the Rothbardians at the Mises Institute seem to have accelerated their production of articles praising the alleged virtues of Anarchism! See here, here, and here.

In light of the unbelievable chaos and savagery that ensued from the destruction, it baffles me that anyone can, with a straight face, still sing odes to systematic lawlessness. Did they not see the amazing speed at which the city of New Orleans descended into primordial barbarism after the breakdown of Law and Order?! Society, properly defined, literally ceased to exist for a moment. [N.B.: remember that not every concentration of human population within which interaction occurs can be called a “society,” otherwise a battlefield would qualify as a “society”, too.]

Anarchists are missing one important part of the lessons to be drawn from the passage of Katrina: the impracticability, i.e., the inevitable deadliness, of both Statism and Anarchism—in whatever form they may come … e.g.: totalitarian socialism, fascism, mild welfare statism, anarchistic communism, anarcho-capitalism, etc …

This shouldn’t be puzzling when one understands that the statist and the anarchist are fundamentally the same person—and not the antagonists they are usually thought to be; politically, both originate from the same root: the exceptation of ill-defined perfection from the state, i.e., the satisfaction of their every whim.

Their only difference lies in this: the totalitarian knowing that the irrational whims of different men are irreconcilable, proposes, through the power of the Omnipotent State, to beat mercilessly into submission—or extinction—everyone who disagrees with him, and hence bring about Utopia.

The anarchist however is a special case: the irreconcilable whims and conflicts are essentially his own, for he explictly wants to both preserve the structure of civil society and collect such benefits as the security of his own person, yet on his way to work, he wants to ride through Times Square inside an Abrams Battle Tank, and personally own nuclear weapons—the result of which is to strike terror into the hearts of everyone else. The existence of a state being incompatible with desires the implementation of which lead to societal disintegration, he automatically cries that the state is an intrinsic evil, and the cause of all human ills.

[SIDENOTE: To those who buy into the anarchistic fallacy and proclaim that the state is indeed inherently evil, but it is necessary nonetheless, I submit that the state is indeed necessary, but it need not be evil—as long as it keeps to its proper function: the protection of individual rights.]

But so much for that.

There is one thing that I wish to protest … Certainly, it is a good thing to have an institute celebrating, honoring, and promoting the name and works of such an intellectual giant as Ludwig von Mises, but I for one, find fault with the unpermitted use of that great name—and the authority it comes with—as a platform for promoting false ideas that Mises himself explicitly rejected as the naive junk that they are. Mises, as an advocate of republican government, would no more have lent his name to the advancement of “anarcho-capitalism”, than he would lend it to the advacement of anarchistic communism. The frauds engineering this abomination should just cultivate some decency and go ahead with the erection of a Murray Rothbard Institute—where their ideas rightfully belong.

... It had to be said.

Since the New York Times started blaming inflation itself on oil companies for their selfishness in charging too much for their products, I knew something like this had to come sooner or later: Hawaii has just earned the title of first state to re-inaugurate the institution of oil-price controls in the United States—The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Surrounded by ocean, with just two refineries to make its fuel, Hawaii pays the nation’s highest prices for gas.

The state’s drivers spend an average of $2.84 for a gallon of regular—less in the big cities, far more on outlying islands. California might seem to be setting a price record almost every day, but that state’s average is still 4 cents lower than Hawaii’s.

Tired of those chronically high costs, Hawaii will begin limiting the wholesale price of gasoline next week, the first such effort in the United States. The price cap won’t cover retail sales, so gas station owners will still be able to charge drivers whatever they like. But wholesalers will see their prices set by the state.

The price caps would not force wholesalers and refiners to sell below market costs but seek to prevent gouging—which many Hawaiians blame for their prices. [Emphasis mine—ed.]

Controls will start taking effect on September 1st … and so much for refusing to learn from History—even when it is so recent. No, I’m not talking about the inevitable long lines and shortages that resulted from the oil price controls of the 1970s; I’m speaking of the ones that are happening in china right now!

But as long as people continue to believe that—not Big Brother and the Nature Cult—but Big Oil is the one that causes not only shortages, but inflation itself, by charging high prices for oil products [e.g.: “gouging”] ... I believe they perfectly deserve (at least partly) the living hell that Governor Linda Lingle has the potential of making them endure.

It is important to note however, that the present Hawaiian price cap scheme is not exactly the same as that of the 1970s imposed by the federal government—which imposed price limits on virtually all oil products, form the producer to the consumer level. Hawaii so far however, intends to impose controls only on the whole sale price of oil—so here the result will be a temprary dislocation of the resulting shortage from the consumer, to the supplier’s [e.g: gaz stations’] level, while causing sky-rocketting prices at the consumers’ level due to the reduction of supply … i.e., the very thing that the whole scheme had the intention of preventing in the first place.

But Politicians are stubborn. Having been warned of the above tendencies of price controls, California State Senator, Joseph Dunn, responded thusly:

Price caps are not a solution to a dysfunctional market. However, they are a damage-control measure until solutions are developed. If they’re necessary to prevent the bleeding of consumers, then I would support price caps as a temporary measure while we develop real solutions.

You ought to have noticed the big presumption in that statement: that free markets are inherently “dyscfunctional,” and that statist intervention is needed to do necessary “damage control.” What our dear senator is trying to disguise is the fact that it is the state, through its policies of monetary inflation and incessant pandering to enviro-freaks, that caused any so-called “dysfunction” of the free market—and contrary to his delusions, price controls are not “damage-control measures,” but rather, they are highly efficacious, damage-causing and chaos-creating measures.

Why damage and chaos? Because what price controls essentially do is the following: to suspend one of the cardinal Laws of the free market—Supply and Demand—not to replace it with another Law, but only to replace it with nothing, i.e., with arbitrary bureaucratic whim, i.e., chaos. This, coupled with the fact that price controls prevent the rational exertion of economic calculation, and commodity allocation … well, only damage can ensue when investors are deprived of the means of tracking their investments, and when goods and services start being over-abundant where they are un-needed, and severely scarce where they are most needed.

But I repeat once again: politicians happen to be very stubborn. Of course, the solution to present gaz problems in the U.S is laissez-faire, i.e., that the government gets the hell out of the economy, as it ought to do. But just to reassure you once again, Governor Linda Lingle—a republican—has vowed not to repeal the coming price controls until they cause significant harm.

So, untill then, let us seat back and watch that failed, immoral experiment be repeated once again. The result might just make your representatives want ot refrain from engaging in the same self-destructive activity.

What makes men voluntarily submit to tyranny is a puzzling phenomenon, and I don’t believe the mere threat of physical force—though and important focator—is a full and adequate explanation. For if it were, we would never have revolutions and mass revolts against barbarism.

The mere presence of a threat of physical injury cannot withstand or restrain a man’s firm conviction of his inviolate right to his own liberty. This fact is expressed rather eloquently in Patrick Henry’s timeless words during the American Revolution:

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

What is principally needed to keep an individual under perpetual servitude, is a way of thinking—a philosophy, or an ideology. A man needs to be morally and intellectually subdued before he can be effectively and perpetually subdued—physically. He must be convinced that he’s utterly worthless—or at least, that someone/thing else is intrinsically more valuable than himself—in order for him to submit to servitude … and to do it voluntarily. This is so because ultimately, thought must determine action. [See here for longer elaboration].

This is how religions recruit believers [e.g.: Christianity through the doctrine of “Original Sin” and the invention of a Salvation-providing OmniMaximus Deity], and this is also essentially how tyrants enslave an entire people and hope for their rule to endure. Barbarism too, requires an intellectual and moral foundation.

This is has been true throughout history—from the “Divine Right of Kings” of the Middle Ages to the Shintoist Japanese Emperors, through the deification of Russian Tsars and Nazi Fuhrers.

The notion of “Divine Emperors” might sound peculiar in our day, yet it is still existant in some parts of the world—and the present, dire conditions of North Korea provide a perfect, contemporary illustration. Ian Buruma, of the NEW YORKER, reports:

All tyrants are alike, no doubt, but tyranny comes in different forms, and the North Korean variety is an extraordinarily vicious blend of Western and East Asian influences … The political component, a mixture of Stalinism and strict neo-Confucianism (with its stress on obedience to authority), is perhaps less complicated than the religious aspects. The Kims’ [the Imperial Family of North Korea] behavior recalls that of such Roman despots as Nero and Caligula, who revelled in their power.

[...]

They [the Kims] ... are worshipped as divinities, in a peculiarly Korean mixture of native animism and pseudo-Christianity … At the Party Congress of 1980, when Kim Jong Il [heir and son of Kim Il Sung], then still the young dauphin, was elected to the five-person presidium of the politburo, the Party Newspaper, in a pre-Christmas editorial, offered the Kims as a replacement for the Father and Son in the Holy Trinity [Korea used to be one of the most Christianized countries of Asia before the arrival of Communism—ed]. “People of the world, if you are looking for miracles, come to Korea!” it went on. “Christians, do not go to Jerusalem. Come rather to Korea! Do not believe in God. Believe in the great man.” After the son’s ascent to the presidium, the newspaper reported, there was “an explosion of our people’s joy, looking up at the star of guidance shining together with the benevolent sun.”

[...]

Animism is perhaps an even more important ingredient than Christianity in the spiritual and ideological mélange of Kim worship. Kim Jong Il was born in 1941 or 1942 in Siberia, where his father served in the Soviet Army. But the myth is very different: in North Korea’s official histories he was born in a log cabin on Mt. Paektu, the country’s most sacred mountain, the place where the Korean people’s divine ancestor, the son of a sky god and a bear, was born, more than four thousand years ago. Kim Jong Il, the reincarnation of the divine bear-man, as it were, could not have come into this world on a more auspicious spot. Before his sacred birth, a double rainbow was seen, and the sky was lit up by a shining star.

What of the practical consequences of this type of mystical belief? The Christian Science Monitor reports:

In Pyongyang [North Korea], the rules are very specific about how physically to handle the Kim image.

No one is permitted to point casually at a portrait of Kim Jong Il or his father, Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea. If you find yourself holding a book with a picture of a Kim on the cover, you’d best carry it with two hands, face up, in a dignified manner. And no thumb or fingers are ever allowed to touch or cover Kim’s face.

The image and name of the Kims are deeply ingrained as the sacred goods of North Korea, and a special etiquette has evolved in dealing with them. Rules exist for handling, carrying, hanging, and even disposing of Kim faces and portraits. There are also rituals for their printed names.

It is all part of a culture of propaganda designed to ensure permanent collective devotion among the North Korean people. No portrait of Dear Leader [the son,] or Great Leader [the father,] is to be folded. No newspaper issued on the birthday of Kim Jong Il or his father, when the photo is likely to be a full page, should be covered or used to wrap anything. Once a newspaper with a major photo of Kim is old or worn out, it may not be tossed out, but must be brought to a special collection point where the image is properly discarded.

A few years ago, prior to a special festival attended by many foreigners, a special 100-note currency was issued, using the Kim Il Sung face.

But it was quickly withdrawn from circulation after it was discovered that foreigners were casually folding the bills and putting them in wallets placed next to the derrière.

In writing about Kim, the name or character may not be casually deleted. In fact, the editing of journals and books mostly still takes place on paper. Journalists and writers must not remove Kim’s name from a sentence by crossing it out. Instead, The name must be circled, and only then removed.

And in published material, direct quotes by Kim or his father should always appear in a manner similar to how many Bible publishers treat the words of New Testament figures—in bold or illuminated type.

Why the existence of tyranny demands constant and perpetual propaganda shouldn’t be hard to understand now.

It seems that the New York Times Marxist will never cease to surprise. One of their latest grunts ... editorials, I mean, is in praise of Fidel Castro himself—on occasion of his 79th birthday. The article begins:

HAVANA (AP)—Cuba honored President Fidel Castro’s 79th birthday Saturday, revisiting his nearly five decades in power on the communist island with tributes in state-run newspapers and documentaries.

Dozens of Cuban children danced and cut an enormous blue-and-white cake for Castro—the world’s longest-ruling head of government—while front pages bore his photo and loving words.

‘’We celebrate as your own, with the affection and immense admiration that children feel for the most noble, wise and brave father,’’ a letter to the ‘’Comandante’’ said on the front page of the Communist Party daily Granma.

Signed ‘’your people,’’ the letter called the president the ‘’dearly loved Fidel’’ and highlighted his ‘’special sensitivity for others’’ and ‘’guerrilla spirit of just ideals.’‘

Just after midnight Friday, those attending a youth congress in Caracas, Venezuela, sang ‘’Happy Birthday’’ to Castro, who sent a message of thanks and said he was watching the gathering on television.

The Cuban leader is an active 79. He maintains a busy schedule—including frequent speeches that can stretch to six or seven hours—and has shown no interest in retiring.

I don’t suppose much commentary is needed here. If all our information about the living conditions of the Cuban people under Castro’s iron fist came from the New York Times, We in America should be envying the Cuban paradise. This newspaper doesn’t even feign to show any aversion to the idea of a state-run media—which incidentally, is why only praises of Castro are published … regardless of the fact that said praises may be, not genuine and true, but false and coerced.

A documentary shown in an Old Havana theater Saturday displayed some of Castro’s most impassioned public speeches, from his assumption of power in early 1959, through the Cuban Missile Crisis and fall of the Berlin Wall, to more recent remarks justifying socialism against the threats of capitalist superpowers like the United States. [Emphasis added—ed].

Whoever knows what that emphasized part is supposed to mean?! But maybe that’s it purpose: to mean nothing and anything—as long as socialism is the victim, and capitalism the irredeemable culprit. As to the United States being charachterized as “capitalist” ... well … that’s just blatant intellectual fraud.

The praises continue:

Though Castro clearly ages throughout Rebeca Chavez’s [documentary,] ‘’Momentos con Fidel,’’ or ‘’Moments with Fidel,’’ he also maintains his characteristic intensity throughout the decades, walking briskly, and pounding tables and wagging his finger when speaking.

‘’This revolution will leave indelible footprints in the history of the world,’’ the leader said on May Day, 2004 [See example of said footprints here—ed] . Earlier, a younger Castro says, ‘’They can hate us, but they also must admire us. We never bow down.’‘

His battles have been many, and with the arrival of his 79th birthday came yet another victory—this time in the form of a U.S. appeals court decision that ordered a new trial in the high-profile case of five alleged Cuban spies.

[...]

The ruling gave Castro a boost as Cubans face tough domestic problems, including a housing crisis and an antiquated electrical grid that caused frequent and stifling power outages earlier this summer. [Ah! So Cuba isn’t a Paradise on Earth after all … I wonder why?—ed]

Despite some public dissatisfaction, there was little doubt that Castro remains firmly in control of the last communist state in the Americas and one of only five in the world

Gee! And who thought the NYT could possibly be anti-American? We envious capitalists “can hate” Cuba, but we “must admire” those great communists because they “never bow down” to our alleged “threats” and aggressions. Yeah … one could say exactly the same thing about IslamoFascists—who “never bow down” to the point of self-destruction … because the West has allegedly brought “mischief” into their land. Maybe we ought to start admiring them, too. I wonder how the editors at New York Marxist would like that idea …

This one is a little late, but it’s worth noting nonetheless. Sky News reports:

Drinks companies have been ordered to use uglier men in their advertising campaigns.

The [British] Advertising Standards Authority believes “balding” and “paunchy” men would be less likely to encourage women to drink to achieve social success.

The new advertising code stresses that links must not be made between alcohol and seduction.

Yeah … I am out of words for the moment. On with the story …

One company, Lambrini, seems to have been the first to violate these new guidelines—How, you ask?

[By producing] a poster [that’s “billboard” for you Americans who refuse to speak British—ed] which showed three women “hooking” a slim, young man in a parody of a fairground game.

And the British Nanny State (aka: the Advertisng Standards Authority) responded to the ad thusly:

We would advise that the man in the picture should be unattractive – i.e., overweight, middle-aged, balding etc.

In its current form we consider that the ad is in danger of implying that the drink may bring sexual/social success, because the man in question looks quite attractive and desirable to the girls.

If the man was clearly unattractive, we think that this implication would be removed from the ad.

Well, I’ve got to say: this definitely shows what bureaucrats think of the IQ of the masses. Somehow though, I suspect their judgement is quite reasonable.

As to Lambrini’s owner, John Halewood, he babbled this in defense of his ad:

[T]he Authority should not be in the business of defining who was and was not unattractive enough to star in ads.

It makes some very understandable rulings to encourage sensible drinking but we’re not sure they’re qualified to decide for the nation who’s sexy and who’s not.

Sexual attraction is happily one of the few things in life that can’t be governed.

Observe that this individual, this business owner, demonstrates absolutely no knowledge of the principle of Property Rights! He takes as irreducible and immutable the principle that the state has the inalienable right to coercively interfere with the lives and property of its citizens—but in this case, because, and only because, [allegedly] sexual attraction is a mere matter of whim, and standards of beauty are arbitrary, the state should refrain from imposing rigid rules which everyone must follow.

Such is all he has to offer in defense of his own property! Such is all he has to say to incompetent thugs who deem themselves qualified to compel him to act in blatant contradiction to his reason: to make advertisement look not appealing and attractive—which ought to be their proper purpose—but to make them look disgusting and repulsive, i.e., in contradiction to all sanity.

Why businessmen need Philosophy—and fast—cannot be more obvious.