Axioms of Liberty

what do prisons really do to the human spirit?

does punishment actually achieve the outcomes so desired by those that institute it?

It is said that without governments we should not have those institutions, enlightening, educational and public, that are needful for all. But why should we suppose this? Why think that non-official people could not arrange their life themselves as well as government people arrange it, not for themselves, but for others?

we learn today about a lesser known sub division of anarchy , Anarco-communism . we also go into the flawed logic in its assumptions and reasonings at the end of the episode.

The first proclaims the sovereignty of the State, the second recognizes no sort of sovereign. One wishes all monopolies to be held by the State the other wishes the abolition of all monopolies. One wishes the governed class to become the governing class; the other wishes the disappearance of classes.

Every logical and sincere theory of the State is essentially founded on the principle of authority—that is to say on the eminently theological, metaphysical and political idea that the masses, always incapable of governing themselves, must submit at all times to the benevolent yoke of a wisdom and a justice, which in one way or another, is imposed on them from above. But imposed in the name of what and by whom? Authority recognized and respected as such by the masses can have only three possible sources—force, religion, or the action of a superior intelligence; and this supreme intelligence is always represented by minorities.

Government, strictly and scientifically speaking is a coercive force; a man, while governed with his own consent, is not governed at all.

we again perceive that even in its most equitable form it is impossible for government to dissociate itself from evil; & further, that, unless the right to ignore the State is recognized, its acts must be essentially criminal.

we begin reading Michael Malice's book the anarchists handbook

For the State it is indispensable that nobody have an

own will if one had, the State would have to exclude (lock up, banish, etc.) this one; if all had, they would do away with the State. The State is not thinkable without lordship and servitude (subjection); for the State must will to be the lord of all that it embraces, and this will is called the “will of the State.”

The State practices “violence,” the individual must

not do so. The State’s behavior is violence, and it calls its violence “law”; that of the individual, “crime.” Crime, then—so the individual’s violence is called; and only by crime does he overcome the State’s violence when he thinks that the State is not above him, but he is above the State.

The monopoly problem as a special problem of markets requiring state action to be resolved does not exist In fact, only when the state enters the scene does a real, nonillusory problem of monopoly and monopoly prices emerge.