Should You Give a Damn About Your Reputation?

The last article in Issue 14 of The Voluntaryist is titled “Business Keeps Business Honest,” written by William Vandersteel, who at the time was an associate of the Institute for Humane Studies.

Mr. Vandersteel makes a very good case that our justice system interferes with one of the best ways we have of evaluating potential trade partners: reputation. He writes:

“Not only does our justice system serve little purpose in trade and commerce but its very presence is often counter productive, as is shown by the many businesses and industries that thrive as though our justice system did not exist.”

He shares examples in his article, one of which is the wholesale diamond industry and says mutual trust is often not really based on any real moral sense but on our own self-interest - people will be honest and desire a good reputation because it increases the chances of success.

Also, our justice system can keep people from being as vigilant as we should be in choosing business partners:

The fact is, business would thrive in the absence of our coercive justice system, but an enormous premium would be attached to the integrity of all participants. Before entering into any contract all parties would take great pains to ascertain the integrity of each participant, knowing full well that the performance of the contract rests solely on their reputation for honesty.

By the same token, individuals would strive always to act properly and with the highest integrity, knowing equally well that any blemish on their reputations would virtually bar them from participating in any future business ventures. All this leads to the inevitable conclusion that the very presence of a government
justice system, along with the coercive enforcement measures, invites fraud and crime and tempts individuals to substitute force for integrity.

So yeah we all want a good reputation. Well except for:



Wasn’t that fun? I was waiting for a post where I could listen to some Joan Jett! I love her attitude and style. Now, don’t think Joan doesn’t care about her reputation, I’m sure she’s really no different than the rest of us.

Heck, in rock and roll a “bad reputation” can actually be a good thing because that’s the way the marketing model is set up. But in the end it’s really all about selling music. If I didn’t like to bang my head and listen to the way she screams “ow,” I wouldn’t buy any of her stuff.

I also like how my husband plays out this reputation idea. He’s a self-employed computer consultant and sometimes businesses ask about contracts. He always tells them he doesn’t need one. “My contract is I’ll do the job and if you pay me, I’ll come back. If you don’t want me to come back, then don’t pay me. I’m willing to take responsibility for our first interaction and save all the hassles that go along with contracts.”

It’s all very informal and it works. (EDIT: I had a comment from Carl on this because he said it came across as if my husband didn't expect to get paid, unless the client wanted him to come back. Carl said he presumes my husband expects to get paid for his work - contract or not - but if there is disagreement or hassle, he simply concedes, doesn't worry about his loss, and moves on to the next client. To which my husband says, "exactly." Hope that clears up any confusion or misinterpretation.)

I really need to go now because I want to bang my head some more with Joan so let's end this post with Mr. Vandersteel's ending paragraph, which was great:

The United States Supreme Court once ruled in a sex-related case that behavior between consenting adults was none of the government's business. This ruling is correct in principle and should apply across the board. Trade is one form of behavior between consenting adults and, therefore, should also be none of the government's business.

Really Stepping Into It Now: Abortion

The subject of this post is abortion so go put on your protective gear. Just kidding. Really, no matter where you stand, I think you will agree that, as usual, Wendy McElroy has written an excellent piece, full of well reasoned arguments.

This article also made me wonder about something that I haven’t really thought much about before which you can read about at the end of this post. But first here’s an overview of her article, published in Issue 14, “What Does It Mean To Be An Individual?”

One of the first points Wendy hopes to make clear is the difference between “morality and rights, between the moral and the legal”:

Peaceful activities may be moral or immoral, but they never violate rights. Taking drugs, gambling, or lying to a friend may or may not be immoral, but they are not a violation of rights. In libertarianism, the purpose of law is to protect rights, not to enforce virtue as such; the law does not concern itself with the morality of an action but asks only if it is invasive.

Many people oppose abortion on moral grounds without considering it to be a violation of rights which should be addressed by law. I have no argument with this particular antiabortion position. My argument is with anti-abortionists who attempt to translate their personal moral convictions into laws restricting what I may do with my body. . . those who advocate mandatory motherhood.

Wendy takes the abortion issue down to the root of all rights issues, the concept of self-ownership. When do we actually become individuals? She points out that there are really only two objective possibilities: conception and birth.

She gives credit to the Libertarians for Life in that they don’t draw on the idea of a “potential” human being, but that an actual human being with individual rights occurs at conception.

However, Wendy draws her line at the other end and bases this on biological factors:

An essential characteristic — indeed, a prerequisite — of considering something to be an individual is that it be a discrete entity, a thing in and of itself. Until the point of birth, however, the fetus is not a separate entity; it is a biological aspect of the pregnant woman which possesses the capacity to become discreet. At birth, the fetus is biologically autonomous and is a self-owner with full individual rights. Although it cannot survive
without assistance, this does not affect its biological independence; it is simply the dependence that any helpless individual experiences.

Let's rephrase this argument; having a DNA encoding, which is all that is provably present at the point of conception when rights are assigned, is not sufficient grounds to claim individual rights.

What is missing? The missing piece is individuality...autonomy . . . a biologically discreet person. As long as the fetus is physically within the woman's body, nourished by the food she eats, sustained by the air she breathes, dependent upon her circulatory system, it cannot claim individual rights because it is not an individual. It is part of the woman's body and subject to her discretion.

Birth is the point at which the fetus becomes an actual human being. There is no point, other than conception, at which such a clear, objective change occurs in the status of the fetus. All other changes are a matter of degree rather than of kind and, thus are, inadequate for legal theory which demands a definable point of enforcement.

The enforcement aspect of any law against abortion, is another point she spends a lot of time on and you can read more about this for yourself. What I’d like to discuss now revolves around a trail my mind took when I read her phrase “mandatory motherhood.”

This made me think about the concept of “mandatory fatherhood” and how that does or does not play into the abortion debate. Nothing about fatherhood is addressed in this article. Should it be?

If the father wants an abortion and the woman refuses to have one, does the father have any responsibility once the baby is born? If so, then doesn’t that mean he is subject to “mandatory fatherhood” in such instances?

What about the reverse? If the father wants the baby but the woman wants an abortion, I guess he has no say at all since pregnancy requires the mother’s body, right? If I base this on the concept of self-ownership, I’d have to concede this because that would conflict with the self-ownership rights of the mother to her own body.

But I still can’t help but wonder whether the concept of parenthood is completely separate from the abortion issue. If Wendy uses “mandatory motherhood” in her piece, doesn’t that mean the concept of “mandatory fatherhood” also has to exist? And if so, doesn’t this affect the self-ownership of the man in instances where he wants the abortion but the woman doesn’t?

This article just made me think more about the distinct differences in the ability to become a father, a man must have the use of another person's body in order to become a father but to become a mother only requires a single sperm, not another individual's body.

I’m trying to figure out whether this is relevant and how it plays into the abortion discussion. What do you think?

An Intellectual Foundation for Liberty

Carl writes an article in Issue 14 about The Freedom School, an educational project started by Robert Lefevre. This article is a nice history of the struggles and successes Lefevre experienced during the 10 years the school was in existence in Colorado. Carl decided to write about the school because he thought it was time for a Freedom School II:

Now why does the author of this article believe that, 15 years after the demise of the Freedom School, it is time for Freedom School II? The answer to that question is largely premised on the view that education is the most moral and effective way to promote libertarian ideas. Politically speaking the last decade has been disastrous for libertarians because people were led to believe that electoral politics could change things around. No intellectual foundation was ever laid. Had the money spent on trying to win elections been spent on a Freedom School, the educational efforts would have resulted in many thousands of people becoming well informed and self-disciplined individualists. The political process will never accomplish this: nor will violent revolutionary attempts to alter the structure of government or society succeed, because attitudes and ideas have to be changed first. When the Freedom School was operating it contributed enormously to the comprehension that thousands of people had for the meaning, significance and implications of human liberty. "More persons were taught personal self-discipline, self-control, personal responsibility, and independence than at any other time in this century."

Well, we’re 10 years into a new century now and guess what? There is a Freedom School II. An online version anyway.

A fellow who goes by the name of Anthony Freeman is continuing Lefevre’s idea and offering a way to study online. (Anthony also has another site where you can learn more about his beliefs.)

In this computer age, there are many sites to visit for those who want to learn about the ideas of liberty, most notably mises.org which has loads of Lefevre-specific resources. But this Freedom School site, established in January, 2010 specifically claims a desire to continue Lefevre’s work with The Freedom School.

This Freedom School offers an organized curriculum, complete with study assignments, which is nice for those who want structure. No specified tuition is required, only donations, which means this learning project accessible to almost anyone who may be interested.

I hope people take advantage of this, because as Carl’s says in the article:

The existence and creation of an all-voluntary society depends on there being sufficient numbers of informed, thinking people who accept personal responsibility for their own existence and who refuse to resort to violence in any form. The person who convinces himself that voluntaryism is humane, moral and practical remains convinced forever. As LeFevre has written, "From this procedure there can be no backlash. More and more persons, self-motivated and self-controlled, simply stop engaging in the existing social devises which impose on others. They break their ties with the existing political structures; not by violence, not by trying to obtain majorities or using force, but by understanding and then thinking differently about the whole area of human relationship."

The Unintended Consequences of Political Action

Hey George Smith is back! We haven’t heard from him since Issue 6 and now in Issue 14, dated February 1985, he writes “An Introduction to Voluntaryist Strategy.”

Based on the second paragraph in this article, I believe the timing of this article directly relates to the 1984 presidential election. The Libertarian Party’s presidential vote totals plummeted from the previous election, so I’m sure the Voluntaryists hoped that this experience would lead libertarians to learn from this and take a closer look at non-political action.

So, Smith takes this opportunity to try and reach political libertarians by applying the theories and insights of free market economics to political action.

If you recall, Smith previously went into painstaking detail to give us an institutional analysis of the state in order to explain Voluntaryist principles. He believes this institutional analysis is vital to understanding why it makes no sense to use political action, because the state is “invasive per se.”

Smith shows us that political libertarians already clearly understand and use institutional analysis when it comes to economics and then makes this point:

"From our theory of the market there emerges a "strategy" of what to do. We respect justice in property titles and leave the market alone. Our theory "predicts" that this strategy will produce optimal results, but it cannot tell us precisely what these results will be. "Optimal," in this context, is a relative term. It means that the results of nonintervention will be better than any other alternative."

George wants us to see that this is the same thought process Voluntaryists use when analyzing the state itself. As a matter of fact, I could change a few words in the above paragraph to demonstrate this:

From our theory of the non-aggression principle there emerges a "strategy" of what to do. We respect peaceful voluntary interactions and leave individuals alone. Our theory "predicts" that this strategy will produce optimal results, but it cannot tell us precisely what these results will be. "Optimal," in this context, is a relative term. It means that the results of nonintervention will be better than any other alternative.

Although George warns that economic theory and strategic theory differ in some ways, there is an important lesson:

When developing "strategy" which involves complex institutions (the market in one case, the State in the other case), libertarians should ground their policy recommendations in theoretical insights concerning the relevant characteristics of the institution(s) involved.

This proposition seems uncontroversial in economics. Why it is ignored by political anarchists when it comes to strategy remains a mystery, at least to me.

It does seem like a mystery to me, but as I wrote this I started to wonder how much it has to do with how political anarchists apply the specific theory of unintended consequences.

See, at some point, all political libertarians came to understand how intervention in the free market creates negative unintended consequences.

Then some go on to consistently apply this same theory across the board and come to understand how government intervention in all aspects of our lives creates negative unintended consequences. They become political anarchists.

But there is one more application of the unintended consequence theory that they seem to ignore at this point, which is to apply this theory directly to their own behavior and actions.

I know that once I did, I reached the same conclusions as when I applied it in the first two instances. I came to understand how my political involvement was only helping to create the unintended consequence of adding legitimacy to the state.

So if political anarchists could just take one more step in the consistent application of the unintended consequence theory and analyze the consequences of their own actions, will they then begin to see the futility and danger in participating in politics?

The Dormant Seeds of Freedom

The final item I want to refer to from Issue 13 is a letter to the editor by a fellow named David Jacobson. The author of the letter is glad he found The Voluntaryist, glad to see the commitment to non-violence and closes his letter on an optimistic note:

Perhaps, just perhaps, there are many more people such as I, and you, who haven't allowed ourselves to be brainwashed into accepting a watered-down definition of freedom. Perhaps, just perhaps, many others also will reject the sordid notion that freedom is conditional upon the state. Perhaps, just perhaps, the dormant seeds of freedom will yet bloom. Perhaps we can live as human beings after all.

At the time this was published, I was still a product of brainwashing. Yet there was obviously a dormant seed of freedom, of an understanding that we don’t need a state, somewhere in my being.

But at the end of 1984, when this issue was published, my husband and I had a 15 month old and I was also 7 months pregnant with our second. We were busy. Surrounded by spit-up and diapers, there was no time to take a shower, let alone stop long enough to re-consider whether what I had learned about the dangers of life without a state were true or not.

But then again, there I was busy living a daily life without the state, a daily life of anarchy. And it worked. Sure, there was what one might call chaos in our lives, but it was good chaos, it was loving chaos, it was life.

We were perfectly fine. We needed no government authority mandating what diapers to use, when to begin solid foods, or explaining to us that our first born was failing the subject of mobility because instead of crawling, she moved about from a sitting position. (She would straighten her legs, dig her heels against the floor, and then slide her butt up to her heels. Repeating this motion over and over, she could go anywhere.)

Can you imagine what a state-licensed government expert would have done if we had a situation where the state controlled the mobility education of babies? They would have deemed her completely crawling disabled and put her on meds or on some program to try and force her to develop her mobility skills in the manner the state deemed proper.

But living in our state of anarchy, we simply watched with fascination and decided she was a genius because her method had lots of advantages. She could move about easily AND hold objects in her hand at the same time. She could hold two things if she wanted because both hands were free. She was fast too! Pure genius I tell you.

The dormant seed of freedom and the desire for independence is born in all of us. Under the right conditions, it will germinate and bloom.

The Roots of Big Love

It was oddly coincidental to read “The Second Relic of Barbarism: The Crusade against Mormon Polygamy, 1862-1890” because my daughter and I have been watching the HBO series Big Love.

This is a fictional story about a Mormon polygamist family, and we just finished with season one. Yeah, it’s an exaggerated soap opera but it does make references to the origins of Mormon polygamy so the background in this article helped me learn more about it.

In this article Carl explains the history of the government’s attack on the Mormons in Utah. Mormon religious practices weren’t really the problem, the problem was that they had a lot of power in the Utah territory and the government wanted the power. As noted in the article:

“The crusade against polygamy was in essence a crusade against Mormondom because the United States government perceived it as a powerful rival and competitor in the Utah territory. There was not enough room for two governments, when at least one of them wished to exercise monopolistic control. Even though only 2% of the Church membership practiced plural marriages during the era, polygamy was used as the major focus of attack. Time and again, authorities within the federal government made it plain that what they were really after was the power of the Mormon Church.”

Those in power merely made good use of the bigotry people had against those who chose to practice polygamy. As is usually the case in matters like this, the hypocrisy of the control freaks reeked. The Mormons caustically (and rightly) pointed out that the objection to polygamy was "not to a man's having more than one woman, but to his calling more than one woman his wife."

The libertarians spoke out against the government’s persecution of the Mormons and added that the state had no business interfering in marriage at all. In 1882 Lysander Spooner wrote an editorial in Liberty, where he said:

"If Congress were really waging an honest war against unchaste men, or even unchaste women, or even religious hypocrites and impostors, they would not need to go to Utah to find them. And the fact that they do go to Utah to find them—passing by hundred of thousands of vicious persons of both sexes at home, and the religious hypocrites that are not supposed to be very scarce anywhere—is the proof of their hypocrisy; and of their design to make political capital for themselves, by currying favor with bigots and hypocrites, rather than to promote chastity on the part of either men or women."

Also in Liberty, Gertrude Kelly (a female individualist anarchist I have heard of for the first time) said the Mormons "have a right to any system of marriage that suits them, that they maintain at their own cost, and that they do not force upon others."

Libertarians also pointed out that government legislation is not the moral way to go about changing people’s minds. Gertrude Kelly again:

"The Christian rushes to the ballot, and, if necessary to the bullet, to force his system down the Mormon's throat."

I like this lady.

You can read the details of the 30 year battle between the Mormons and the government in Issue 13.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go watch what happens to Bill Henrickson and his crew in Season 2!

Government Censoring of Pornography Degrades Women

In Issue13, Wendy McElroy helps us understand Voluntaryist philosophy using a very controversial issue: pornography. This piece, titled “Pornography Peril” is a transcript of Ms. McElroy’s presentation from a 1984 debate held in Madison, Wisconsin, where an anti-pornography ordinance was being proposed.

Her presentation is full of intelligent, clear thinking on an issue that is often discussed only in the emotional realm, which can lead to ignoring basic principles. Wendy makes clear from the outset that this discussion is not about our personal reactions to porn or what pornography may do to promote certain cultural views about women. It’s about using government to censor:

“The question under debate is: at what point are we justified in translating a personal reaction into a legal process which limits the material other people may hear or see? When is censorship justified? My opponent and other members of Women Against Pornography believe censorship is justified whenever pictures or movies debase and humiliate women, especially when those movies or magazines depict violence against women. I believe censorship is never justified. Under any circumstances.”

She also helps clarify the focus by accepting certain viewpoints that come up in all debates concerning pornography, such as how pornography is to be defined and whether there is a direct correlation to other behaviors.

Then, setting up the main point she says:

“So, what has all this assuming and conceding and forgetting left me with? On what grounds can I possibly oppose banning pornography? I oppose such a ban for one reason and one reason alone. Pornography is a voluntary activity.”

(Wendy adds that there certainly are cases where voluntary consent is not given, but points out that those are crimes worthy of restitution and of course laws already exist for those aggressive actions.)

What I find most interesting in this presentation is how she counters the argument that voluntary consent is not really possible because of cultural attitudes regarding women and sex. In other words, the women who participate are in essence coerced by societal pressures.

McElroy contends that this point is absolutely degrading to women because it asserts that women have no ability to work within societal pressures and make independent judgments before acting.

Cultural attitudes and pressures exist in many areas of our lives, not just around sex. So to say that cultural pressure affects a woman’s ability to make a decision to participate in pornography is to say that women are weak, that women are unable to think things through, to come to their own conclusions, to make their own decisions and then accept whatever consequences come with those decisions.

This viewpoint is saying that women need government protection because we are incapable of giving informed consent.

If a woman decides to participate in pornography, whether as a model, or selling it in her store, or buying it, or whatever, she must at least be respected as an individual capable of making her own decisions as she sees fit, for her own life.

The argument that women are damaged by societal pressure and therefore need extra protection, as if we are not strong enough to make our own decisions in these matters is not only ridiculous but dangerous. If women aren’t free to make decisions about their own lives in all areas, then who will decide?

The transcript contains much more, including voluntary actions you can take if you want to change degrading stereotypes of women. I trust that you are capable of reading, understanding and thoughtfully pondering her arguments.

Even if you’re a woman.