Freedom of Government the New Human Right
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Freedom of Government The New Human Right Contents Part I The State Chapter 1 – The love of power is the root of all evil Chapter 2 – Why people believe in power – but power not in people Chapter 3 – How the state is making us poorer Part II The Voluntary Society Chapter 4 – A world without power – what would it look like? Chapter 5 – Who owns the world? Chapter 6 – Why voluntary societies are likely to take good care of the environment Chapter 7 – Why democracy is not freedom of government Part III The Liberal Society Chapter 8 – Private law and private protection Chapter 9 – The free economy Part IV – The Friendly Society Chapter 10 – What can be done? 1 Foreword With this book I want to launch a new human right. Freedom of government. Just as all human beings, according to human rights philosophy, should have freedom of religion and freedom of opinion, all people should have freedom of government: the right to choose under which and what kind of government they want to live. I believe that recognition of freedom of government will, in the course of time, lead to a world populated with what I call friendly societies. Instead of 200 all-powerful states that own the earth we will have thousands of smaller societies that share it. Subjugation and repression will give way to cooperation and toleration. Instead of rulers and ruled, there will be citizens with equal rights. Peaceful people will be able to shape their lives together, on the basis of consensus, free from extortion, tyranny and war. Karel Beckman 2 Inspiration “Since no absolute value adheres to any single institution, why should not as many individuals have as many different institutions as they like instead of having all to use a single costume which half of them might not consider to their taste? If freedom of choice is considered an advantage economically, why not also politically?” Leopold Kohr, The Breakdown of Nations, 1957 “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [i.e. “to secure the rights” of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness” U.S. Declaration of Independence, 1776 “The right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state … means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied with. ….” Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism, 1927 “Every group, every nationality, should be allowed to secede from any nation-state and to join any other nation-state that agrees to have it. That simple reform would go a long way toward establishing nations by consent.” Murray Rothbard, Nations by Consent, 1994 “I do not think it would really be obligatory in a harmonious world that every community be a democracy, if only it remained of human-scale proportions. I could imagine each community going for its own singular form of governance … A s long as none of them tried to impose upon the others, the conditions for a stable, ecological world would be met; and as long as the citizens of each had a free right in the choice of government, and the free right to leave the community if that government palled, then the conditions of justice and freedom would be met.” Kirkpatrick Sale, Human Scale Revisited, 2017 “… creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another, without subordination or subjection… Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions…. And, being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us that may authorise us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another's uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours.” John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 1689 3 Part I – The State Chapter 1 The love of power is the root of all evil 1. The enemy in the room The question I explore in this book is: how can we make the world a good place to live in for every peaceful human being? My answer in a nutshell: we need to get rid of political power. This is my main thesis: that the root cause of most of the evils in the world is the fact that some people hold power over others. And conversely: that the root cause of all the good in the world is voluntary action and cooperation. This is not what most people believe. Ask a random group of people what they believe is the most important cause of the ills that persist in our world, and the resounding answer will be: capitalism! Or they will use a term with a similar meaning or connotation. Greed. Neoliberalism. Globalization. The (free) market. Commercialism. Privatization. Individualism. Materialism. Big Business. “The system”. I have at times collected quotes from newspapers and I can say without exaggeration that there is not a single evil in the world that has not been blamed on “capitalism” – from war, famine, unemployment and racism to pollution, overpopulation, crime and hospital waiting lists. I have even seen capitalism blamed for subsidies to football clubs and for the persecution of the Tibetan people by the Chinese state. Nor is there a single mainstream thinker – whether it’s a left, center, right, liberal, conservative, social-democrat, religious, nationalist or any other type – who does not, when speaking of “what is wrong with the world”, sooner or later come out with some variation on “it’s all the fault of the capitalist system”. (The fashionable term at this moment is “neoliberalism”.) Always, when some new book comes out, a new intellectual hits the pages of the “quality papers”, with a supposedly new vision of the “crisis” in our society, the answer turns out to be the same: capitalism is the root of all evil. However, there is something not very credible about all this blame gaming of capitalism. Because how is it possible that almost everybody in the world is opposed to capitalism, yet the capitalists seem to be able to rule the world forever? Take for example France. If there is one nation and one people that is always complaining about how evil “capitalism” is and blaming it for all the ills of their society, it is the French. 4 Yet how is it possible that capitalism seems to have such a hold over France when everyone there hates it so much? The truth is of course that France is not a “capitalist” society at all, nor are the other 200 nation states in the world today – not, that is to say, if capitalism means limited government, a “night watchman state”, a free market economy based on respect for private property and voluntary exchange. The truth is that France is a statist country. So are the rest of the nations of the world. They are all ruled by very powerful and very intrusive states. It is states and the people that run them who control all our natural resources, all weapons, all militaries and police forces, all courts, the monetary and financial systems, the borders, our economies. States make the laws, the countless rules and regulations, that everyone has to comply with and they enforce the laws and put you in prison if you don’t comply. It’s politicians and political leaders – not “capitalists” – who bomb defenseless populations, spy on people, silence, torture and murder dissidents, carry out cyberattacks, shut down newspapers and television stations, engage in trade wars, impose tariffs on goods, lock people up for behavior they disapprove of, censor unwelcome ideas, flood the world with paper money and keep interest rates to zero so that our savings are eroded and everything becomes more expensive all the time, build walls to keep people in or out, repress ethnic, religious and other minorities, run up huge debts, waste billions on boondoggles, demand bribes, seize the best land and most valuable resources, keep on expanding their militaries and developing ever more sophisticated, dangerous and deadly weapons. A Dutch comedian once said about Donald Trump: “In a world in which we leave everything to the market, the biggest merchant becomes King.” This is absurd. And I mean the first part of the statement. We don’t “leave everything to the market”! Do the French leave everything to the market? Do the Dutch leave everything to the market? Do the Swedes leave everything to the market? The Danes, the Italians, the Polish, the Bulgarians, the Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Saudis, the Iranians, the Nigerians, the South Africans, the Sudanese, the Ugandans, the Moroccans, the Turks, the Syrians, the Libyans, the Egyptians, the Argentinians, the Brazilians, the Venezuelans, the Guatemalans, the Mexicans, the Canadians – do any of these nations “leave everything to the market”? Well, what about the Americans? You got to be kidding. The United States is the most powerful state in the world today, with by far the largest military, 17 intelligence agencies, an all-powerful central bank, the largest government budget, the largest public debt, a Federal government that is the largest employer in the country, tariff walls, agricultural subsidies, laws that allow the government to spy on people, literally hundreds of thousands of pages of rules and regulations for everything under the sun.