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The Non-Existent Difference Between National Socialism and Democratic Socialism

The Non-Existent Difference Between National Socialism and Democratic Socialism

by | Jun 3, 2023 | ,

Summary: National Socialism and Democratic Socialism both advocate institutionalized violence by the state against peaceful people only differing in rhetoric.

The most popular self described Democratic Socialists in America today are Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Although Americans account for roughly 5% of the global population, these candidates focus primarily on American well-being at the expense of the other 95% of human beings.

Is it because Americans are the poorest people on Earth in need of the most help? Hardly, most Americans today have access to products and services the wealthiest people in history never had access to.

Surely if they opposed Nationalism and supported Democracy, they would spend more time drafting policy proposals for the 1.3 billion Chinese, 1.2 billion Indians, and 1.2 billion Africans. Their actions (along with every single American Democratic Socialist I have ever met) display the reality that they too care mostly about their own “nation” and are therefore Nationalists.

Nothing wrong with that, but the sanctimonious dismissal Democratic Socialists have of people who are proud of their country drives me up the wall. They tell us loving your country is wrong, except if you live in Ukraine as of 2022. They tell us you cannot take pride in your ancestors accomplishments, but must forever pay for their sins via reparations and harassment by academics. They tell us imperialism is bad and also all 330 million Americans must obey Washington D.C., everyone who supports secession is Benito Mussolini.

Both National and Democratic Socialists support the following:

  • The existence of a state apparatus which has a legal monopoly on the right to initiate violence against peaceful people (aka government supremacy)
  • The state monopolizing the money supply (central bank)
  • State compulsory education
  • State regulation of economic activity between consenting adults
  • Anti-Trust laws
  • Commercial and Occupational licensing
  • Higher taxes on “the rich”
  • Tariffs
  • Immigration restrictions
  • Both constantly vilify “the banks and big business” (See National Socialist 25 Point Program)
  • Taxation, the right of the state to coercively collect its funding in a manner which no other group has the right to do
  • State Police (which is why “Defund the Police” was clearly a scam, they know the state needs police to enforce regulations and taxes which they impose on us.)
  • State Military apparatus (not something every country has, private security is cheaper and more reliable, the state itself is an expropriating property protector.)
  • Both constantly obsess over race and explicitly judge people by skin color

There are two ways to achieve your ends in life. Either through mutually beneficial voluntary exchanges, or acts of violence and threats thereof. Both types of socialists seek to coercively control hundreds of millions of strangers under the guise of “helping”.

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A Response to My Memorial Day Critics

by | Jun 2, 2023 | ,

My article against Memorial Day drew a lot of ire and attention. This should not have been surprising; I was making a controversial statement. What did surprise me, however, was that many critics were self-described libertarians or former libertarians. There were many rebukes, but few dealt with the content of my article, either saying that it was just simply wrong or attacking my character, neither of which were sufficient. I stand by my article, but I think that in light of the criticism, the argument needs to be stated one more time with feeling.

It is not honorable to sacrifice yourself for the state. Likewise, we should not honor those sacrifices. To dance around that fact is to accept a minimal state or reject libertarianism entirely. A consistent libertarian will be against a holiday which honors these sacrifices as well as being against federal holidays in general.

As noted in the article, the way Memorial Day started was spontaneous and as a day of prayer for peace. War was shown for what it was, an evil, whereas today, Memorial Day has been co-opted.

Critics replied that it’s a time to honor those that gave the “ultimate sacrifice.” The ultimate sacrifice for what? Sacrificing to the state, to special interests, to pointless wars, and to the whims of bureaucrats, is not honorable, whether they knew what they were doing or not. Unfortunately, many say that the soldiers died protecting our freedom and liberty. Every libertarian should recognize this is just not the case.

The “ultimate sacrifice,” whether done in good faith or not, is vicious. Attacking Memorial Day is not about attacking the soldiers who were tricked, but about attacking the culture that led to these soldiers laying down their lives.

Not honoring them may be painful, but it will be worse for the military state. Anger over the dead will be less satiated. Anger can be directed at the state instead of being transformed into solemnity or redirected at those enemies of the U.S. who dare attack our values.

Furthermore, the young men who become enchanted by patriotic events during Memorial Day and other militaristic traditions will be discouraged from enlisting. The horrors of war may be emphasized at events, but the nobility of those that suffered those horrors are pronounced even more.

That is one reason why I said that it is “like Valhalla” (notice how I used “like” because I did not mean Memorial Day was literally Valhalla; some people didn’t understand that). Traditions like Memorial Day immortalize and reward the fallen soldier. Ironically, those who criticized the use of “Valhalla” would be mortified to see that “Valhalla” was explicitly and frequently referenced on Memorial Day posts on Twitter. Check for yourself if you don’t believe me.

There are definitely good Memorial Day events. Libertarians have done much to salvage this holiday which has given opportunities to emphasize the death and destruction that follows war-making. I fully acknowledge that, but to think that libertarians are controlling the narrative during this national holiday is delusional. The vast majority of Americans make it about honorable sacrifice and protecting American values of freedom and democracy.

I am not against showing sympathy for the fallen; however, I am against honoring the kind of sacrifice that Memorial Day celebrates and praises, a vicious sacrifice. To pretend otherwise is to be blind to the reality that is in your face every Memorial Day. The sacrifice that Memorial Day celebrates should not be honored or encouraged in any way.

Ignoring Political Gossip & Sticking to Principle

Ignoring Political Gossip & Sticking to Principle

by | Jun 1, 2023 | ,

In the private sector, firms must attract voluntary customers or they fail; and if they fail, investors lose their money, and managers and employees lose their jobs. The possibility of failure, therefore, is a powerful incentive to find out what customers want and to deliver it efficiently. But in the government sector, failures are not punished, they are rewarded. If a government agency is set up to deal with a problem and the problem gets worse, the agency is rewarded with more money and more staff — because, after all, its task is now bigger. An agency that fails year after year, that does not simply fail to solve the problem but actually makes it worse, will be rewarded with an ever increasing budget.

– David Boaz, Liberating Schools: Education in the Inner City (1991, Cato Institute).

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The Myth of “Hyper-Rugged-Isolationist-Individualism”

The Myth of “Hyper-Rugged-Isolationist-Individualism”

by | May 30, 2023 |

Myth #1: Libertarians believe that each individual is an isolated, hermetically sealed atom, acting in a vacuum without influencing each other.

 

This is a common charge, but a highly puzzling one. In a lifetime of reading libertarian and classical-liberal literature, I have not come across a single theorist or writer who holds anything like this position.

 

The only possible exception is the fanatical Max Stirner, a mid-19th-century German individualist who, however, has had minimal influence upon libertarianism in his time and since. Moreover, Stirner’s explicit “might makes right” philosophy and his repudiation of all moral principles including individual rights as “spooks in the head,” scarcely qualifies him as a libertarian in any sense. Apart from Stirner, however, there is no body of opinion even remotely resembling this common indictment.

 

Libertarians are methodological and political individualists, to be sure. They believe that only individuals think, value, act, and choose. They believe that each individual has the right to own his own body, free of coercive interference. But no individualist denies that people are influencing each other all the time in their goals, values, pursuits, and occupations.

 

As F.A. Hayek pointed out in his notable article, “The Non Sequitur of the ‘Dependence Effect,'” [2] John Kenneth Galbraith’s assault upon free-market economics in his best-selling The Affluent Society rested on this proposition: economics assumes that every individual arrives at his scale of values totally on his own, without being subject to influence by anyone else. On the contrary, as Hayek replied, everyone knows that most people do not originate their own values, but are influenced to adopt them by other people.

 

No individualist or libertarian denies that people influence each other all the time, and surely there is nothing wrong with this inevitable process. What libertarians are opposed to is not voluntary persuasion, but the coercive imposition of values by the use of force and police power. Libertarians are in no way opposed to the voluntary cooperation and collaboration between individuals: only to the compulsory pseudo-“cooperation” imposed by the state.

– Murray N. Rothbard, Ph.D., Myth and Truth About Libertarianism

The Lesson From Germany and Korea

The Lesson From Germany and Korea

by | May 28, 2023 | ,

Institutions are, of course, in some sense the products of culture. But, because they formalize a set of norms, institutions are often the things that keep a culture honest, determining how far it is conducive to good behaviour rather than bad. To illustrate the point, the twentieth century ran a series of experiments, imposing quite different institutions on two sets of Germans (in West and East), two sets of Koreans (in North and South) and two sets of Chinese (inside and outside the People’s Republic). The results were very striking and the lesson crystal clear. If you take the same people, with more or less the same culture, and impose communist institutions on one group and capitalist institutions on another, almost immediately there will be a divergence in the way they behave.

 

Many historians today would agree that there were few really profound differences between the eastern and western ends of Eurasia in the 1500s. Both regions were early adopters of agriculture, market-based exchange and urban-centred state structures. But there was one crucial institutional difference. In China a monolithic empire had been consolidated, while Europe remained politically fragmented. In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond explained why Eurasia had advanced ahead of the rest of the world. But not until his essay ‘How to Get Rich’ (1999) did he offer an answer to the question of why one end of Eurasia forged so far ahead of the other. The answer was that, in the plains of Eastern Eurasia, monolithic Oriental empires stifled innovation, while in mountainous, river-divided Western Eurasia, multiple monarchies and city-states engaged in creative competition and communication.

– Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest

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Occupational Licensing Increases Prices and Deprives People of Options

Occupational Licensing Increases Prices and Deprives People of Options

by | May 25, 2023 |

When you shop online, vendors usually give you a bunch of different ways to sort your options.  Take Amazon:

sort.jpg

 

One popular sorting option – especially for customers with low income – is “Price: Low to High.”  You’ve probably used it yourself many times.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that people who use this option automatically buy the very cheapest item.  Everyone knows that the cheapest tends to be low-quality.  But starting with the cheapest options is still a great rule of thumb.  If the cheapest option has stellar reviews, you can just buy the cheapest.  If the cheapest has less-than-stellar reviews, you can scroll down the page to quickly discover how much extra you have to pay to get the quality you want.

So what?  Well, imagine that the next time you click on the “Price: Low to High” option, a do-gooder pops up on your screen and starts the following dialog:

Do-Gooder: Sorry, Sorting by Price: Low to High has just been banned.  You’re going to have to sort your options some other way.

You: Banned?  Why?

Do-Gooder: People who use this option tend to buy sub-standard products.  We need to protect them.

You: You aren’t “protecting” anyone.  You’re just making it harder for people to find attractive deals.

Do-Gooder: These deals may seem attractive, but they’re not.  You buy cheap, you get cheap.

You: But everyone already knows this!  People buy the cheap stuff because they value their money more than higher quality.

Do-Gooder: Aha, so you’re one of those dogmatic market fundamentalists.  <sarcasm>Let everyone buy whatever they want, and let competition take care of them.</sarcasm>  Give me a break.

You: It’s not “dogmatic market fundamentalism.” It’s common sense.  Sometimes extra quality isn’t worth it.  And sometimes the cheap options are actually high-quality.

Do-Gooder: Yes, sometimes the cheap options are fine.  But sometimes they aren’t.  What do you propose to do about it?

You: Well, I personally won’t do anything about it.  But the market uses reputation to protect people.  Vendors who sell junk get bad reviews – and bad reviews hurt sales.

Do-Gooder: But what about people who don’t read reviews?

You: Sooner or later, they’ll get burned.  Then maybe they’ll start reading reviews before they buy.

Do-Gooder: <sarcasm>Very compassionate.</sarcasm>

You: Why should everyone have to suffer to protect a few irresponsible people?

Do-Gooder: Well, in that case, why don’t we just get rid of occupational licensing?  If reputation works so well, why license plumbers or electricians?  Or doctors for that matter?!

You: Well, we don’t want people to hire bad plumbers, electricians, or doctors.

Do-Gooder: Gee, now you sound like me.  Whatever happened to “You aren’t ‘protecting’ anyone.  You’re just making it harder for people to find attractive deals”?

You: The unlicensed deals may seem attractive, but they’re not.  You buy cheap, you get cheap.

Do-Gooder: Deja vu!  Whatever happened to, “But everyone already knows this!  People buy the cheap stuff because they value their money more than higher quality.”?

You: I see where this is going, and I don’t like it.  This conversation is over.  [Click. Browser window closes.]

HT: Inspired by Dan Klein’s excellent lecture on occupational licensing.

This article was originally featured at Econlib.org and is republished with permission.

Democratic Socialist Turns Libertarian! #PorcFest2023

Democratic Socialist Turns Libertarian! #PorcFest2023

by | May 24, 2023 |

Once you accept the principle of government, namely that there must be a judicial monopoly and the power to tax, once you accept this principle incorrectly as a just principle, then any idea or any notion of restraining or limiting government power and safeguarding individual liberty and property becomes illusory. Rather, under monopolistic auspices, the price of justice and protection will continually rise, and the quality of justice and protection will continually fall. A tax-funded protection agency is a contradiction in terms. That is, it is an expropriating property protector.

– Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Ph.D., Economy, Society, and History (2021, Mises Institute), p. 174.

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