This makes no sense, but that’s libertarians

Well, this is nice and loony. Holly Lisle quits the SFWA because taxation is evil:

SFWA moved from Massachusetts to California for the purpose of allowing SFWA to claim tax dollars to offer grants. I’m aware that there were other—good—reasons for the organization’s move, but this particular poison pill in the changes made to SFWA requires me to walk away and never look back.

[…]

“Giving” grants taken from tax dollars is nothing less than theft of taxpayer money. This action forces people who have no interest in the careers of writers receiving grants to support those writers’ work, no matter how distasteful, badly written, or objectionable they might find it.

The first thing I don’t understand about this, apart from the general libertarian looniness of thinking of taxes as theft, is why Lisle waited so long, as the SFWA members voted about this in 2011. Why wait fopur years to get indignant?

But she also seems to have misunderstood what exactly the SFWA gained from this: not direct grants from the government, but tax deductability of donations to the organisations as well as the ability to hand grants rather than loans to members in dire straights. Both are fairly standard for charities and I don’t understand why this would be a problem even for the most hardcore of libertarians. She should be glad the government misses out on money it could’ve claimed.

Somalia — finally a proper libertarian utopia

Global Research reports on the huge contract French mercenaries Secopex has signed with the Ethopian installed and America-backed Somalian “government”:

French military services firm, Secopex, has signed a contract with the U.S.-backed Somalia Transitional Federal Government (TFG) to purportedly boost security off the country’s coast. This is being done to control reported acts of piracy taking place in the region.

A statement issued by Pierre Marziali, CEO of the private security company, stated that the deal would “strengthen maritime business” off the coast of Somalia.

This deal has been estimated to be worth anywhere between 50 million to 100 million euros annually and is slated to be in effect for the next three years. The contract comes just two months after the seizure of a French luxury yacht by Somalis. During the ordeal, which resulted in a weeklong standoff, all 30 crewmembers were released without injury. Nonetheless, French Special Forces operating in the area attacked the Somalis, arresting six.

Marziali told the French Press Agency (AFP): “Our core business is primarily in the U.S. We will set up a unified coast guard, creating a comprehensive coast guard information system” as well as forming a special security detail to protect the U.S.-backed TFG president of Somalia, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed.

During Usenet discussions back in the nineties with hardcore libertarians, Somalia was sometimes used as the ultimate retort: “if you want to see libertarianism in action, move to Somalia”. And then some nuttier than usual libertarians started to take this argument seriously and actually started promoting Somalia as a libertarian utopia, showing how much could be achieved without a government. With the SOmalian government now outsourcing its army to French mercenaries, you could say the last missing piece of this utopia has now been added…

National Rock

So Northern Rock is to be nationalised, but as the Darling treasurer hurriedly explained, only as a temporary measure and only as a last resort; wouldn’t want to do anything that frightened business, now would we? The Tories immediately started howling about how this was all an embarassement and a prelude to a new winter of discontent, with the mass strikes and the power cuts and the dead piling up in the streets and all that, while Northern Rock shareholders immediately started making noises about sueing because of course no matter what happens they deserve their pound of flesh. For the rest of the financial sector, however much they may not like the dreaded n-word, they seem happy to let it happen and have the tax payer take responsibility for their failings.

For all the angst surrounding it, this nationalisation really is only business as usual, as over eleven years of New Labour it has always been willing to guarantee private profits with public money, although it’s usually done through less visible methods like private finance initiatives. Nationalisation happened only because Darling was unable to get rid of Norther Rock any other way, had spent too much money propping it up already to sweep the losses under the carpet and the crisis was too high profile to resolve through the usual sleight of hand. Not just the opposition and the voters were watching, so was the EU competition commissioner. Any hint of preferential treatment and the EU would’ve pounced. Since nobody was stupid enough to buy an almost bankrupt company with a multiple billion pound debt, nationalisation was the only option remaining.

But while nationalisation should not be seen as some huge blow for socialism, the mere fact that the government actually wants to go through with it is a significant break with the past. until now the profit principle, privetisation and marketisation as the solutions to all ills had been sacrosanct. To abandon them in the case of Northern Rocks means things are changing. It fits in a larger pan-European trend of abandonment of free market principles, as even the Dutch government has now admitted privetisation of public services has largely failed to bring the benefits that they promised it would. Plans to sell off Schiphol have been halted and the threatened liberalisation of public transport in the four biggest cities has fallen through. The finance minister has even gone so far as to say that privetisation of remaining state run companies would be stopped entirely, unless there were compelling reasons otherwise.

This u-turn is not to be explained by a change in ideology on the part of the British or Dutch governments, but simply because both can see the threatening recession looming at the horizon and both know that this recession is likely to be severe. Contrary to free market ideology, business has always relied on the government to shelter them through these storms.

Objectivists defend blacklisting

I was idly googling on Michael Italie, the sewing machine operator and SWP member who was fired from his job at Goodwill after he ran for mayor of Miami, when I came across this gem: The Importance of Blacklisting, hosted at the Objectivist Center.

In this article, one Roger Donway describes the case of Michael Italie and argues that Goodwill was in their right to fire him, that in fact this was a tactict objectivists should emulate. He argues that blacklisting is justified in defending “bourgeois standards”:

The central issue of the Goodwill case has nothing to do with the right of free speech or the right to run for office, for those rights were not touched. The central issue of the Goodwill case is nothing but the right of citizens to weaken their destroyers by refusing to fund them. Of course, when alumni and employers withdraw their money, Marxist professors and anti-capitalist employees will whine, “Don’t I have a right to my own opinion?” To which the proper answer is: “Yes. And I’ll be happy to debate your opinion, if I have time. Meanwhile, I decline to support those who attack the political-economic system that makes my support possible.”


[…]

Consequently, I believe that libertarians should openly align themselves with the philosophical advocates of bourgeois morality, whatever the cost in popularity may be. They should point out that a major virtue of abolishing government regulation and subsidies will be a greater need for rationality, personal responsibility, and productiveness; a greater need for prudence, sobriety, and thrift; a greater concern for one’s own reputation and a greater reliance on the reputations of others, with a corresponding esteem for those behaviors — patriotism and cultural assimilation, marriage and child- rearing, decorum in conduct, speech, and appearance–that are commonly thought to be indicators of personal solidity.

But libertarians should go further still. They should also urge plausible, non- political mechanisms –ostracism, boycott, and blacklist–that will impose severe costs on those who flout bourgeois standards.

In short, Dunway argues punishing people for their political beliefs by taking away their livelyhood is okay, that objectivists should in fact use this tactic to “defund the Left”. Pretty vile, if you ask me. It’s typical of a certain breed of Libertarian: quick to claim the moral high ground, though their deeds are anything but moral.