Posted to examiner
May 27, 2013
By Robert Taylor, Sunset District Libertarian Examiner
The language of budget cuts, austerity, and sequestration seem to dominate the media’s landscape these days, instilling fear into Americans of vital government services being cut and chaos ensuing if governments aren’t allowed to spend and borrow infinitely. Conservatives decry supposed cuts to the military-industrial-complex, and liberals bemoan that without government welfare transfer programs, there would be social Darwinism. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) even blamed the Benghazi scandal on — wait for it — budget cuts and the sequester.
Leaving aside the details on whether the U.S. budget is actually shrinking, one needs to look no further than the city of Detroit to find the spontaneous order, civic cooperation, and peaceful market forces that take over when government simply isn’t around.
Detroit is absolutely bankrupt . The city faces a cash shortfall of more than $100 million by June 30. Long-term liabilities, including pensions, exceed $14 billion. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder wants to bail out Detroit’s city government even further. Thanks to the financial situation of Detroit, emergency services like police and fire departments are being severely cut short. 911 is only taking calls during business hours. Homes have been abandoned making parts of the city look like a ghost town.
If our public servants are right and wouldn’t dare lie and try to scare us, then chaos, anarchy and lawlessness should reign in Detroit now, right? Well, not exactly.
Please read the rest of the article here .
Robert Taylor is a college student living in the beautiful Sunset District of San Francisco, overlooking Golden Gate Park. He is a defender of liberty, free markets, peace, and localism.
Actually, most of the large corporations have abandoned Detroit, and the small business and informal sectors are proportionately larger now.
Present day Detroit is a good example of rapacious, predatory corporatist capitalism.
I believe DeCoster agrees with Kinsella. She isn’t suing Taylor for plagiarism, she’s just calling him out for it.
@32 De Coster writes there: “I do believe that the unfettered market is a great vehicle for driving out and ruining the reputation of copycats and fakes.”
Good luck with that, Karen.
I can’t tell if she agrees with her hero Rothbard that stamping “copyright” on something can create a moral/legal obligation on third parties to not copy it. It seems more likely that she agrees with Kinsella, who denies copyright (ownership of expression) because expression is not scarce/rivalrous and so cannot be property.
Kinsella is very close to right, but his analysis misses something closely related to expression that is indeed rivalrous and thus can be property.
And then there’s this:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/138297.html#more-138297
Sometimes, there are LP candidates who say and write some very false, wacky and/or hateful stuff. IPR generally does not reprint it here.
Detroit is not an example of “market anarchism,” making this headline certainly false. The article is generally not wacky, but I would say the headline is.
Of course, I’m just a reader, commenter, and long time L. Others may be able to justify such hyperbole, but I can’t.
Not at all.
Agreed.
That would vastly expand IPR subject matter. Just about any action of government is an example of injustice or mismanagement in the eyes of one alt party/ideology or another. If there’s an overwhelming concensus that we should change what we cover, I’ll go with it, but no such decision has been made.
Anyway, there’s no need to frantically paddle to justify the article’s republication here. Jill already gave a workable justification, unfortunately she just hadn’t included it in the article to begin with or we wouldn’t have had this tangent.
this will probably make Paulie choke… but…
The title was the one given by the original author. To use anything other then that is what would have required justification.
The potential bankruptcy of Detroit and its bailout by the state of Michigan is a relevant example of the failure of the two dominant parties and the highlighting of these failures is relevant to the promoting the minor parties and independent candidates.
Politics doesn’t exist in a vacuum…. if the dominant parties were functioning in good faith for the benefit of voters then we wouldn’t need other choices. But the democrats and republicans are controlled by a relatively small group of people that manipulate the voters into this Republican or Democratic mentality rather then examining additional alternatives.
Stories that push for alternative political ideas help open doors for alternative parties.
Overall this is a story that should be here.
Nice stretch, but the “independent” part refers specifically to independent candidates. The cover Jill mentioned in the comments was actually much more to the point. Had she put that in the article the question would never have been raised.
Site editors don’t generally do that here. Each person posting IPR articles does their own excerpting. Unless that was what you meant by site editor.
Well, the article is about people acting independently on political problems, like the shortage of police in a city bankrupted by Communist Democrats.
A competent site editor, however, would have excerpted from that meat of the article; rather than the author’s wordy, overlong, meandering introduction.
Either one of you is welcome to submit an essay, as long as you make some connection to the LP or some alt party or independent candidate explicit. If it’s not explicit in the subject matter, it could be a personal connection of that author. If that connection is not widely known it should be added as a note to the article.
tlr, thanks.
Actually, P’s main point is that such an article from me or Taylor may well be interesting, but seems off-IPR-message.
Robert,
I believe your point has been made.
Now…how about writing another essay that makes the main point without mentioning anarchy? You had some involvement with the LP at least in the past, so it should meet IPR criteria.
I believe your point has been made.
22 p: I wouldn’t have a problem with that headline if it was my article.
me: Yes, YOU would not perhaps because when you see the term “market anarchism,” you take that to mean a PART of the market is untouched by government.
Whether non-anarchists (statists, for lack of a better term) see the word “anarchist,” they think – best case – Gilligan’s Island. (Although some may see the Skipper as a kind of benign despot.)
I wouldn’t have a problem with that headline if it was my article.
I should also clarify again, if I haven’t already, that just because something is not necessarily IPR article material does not imply that it is any less interesting or any less worthy of being shared elsewhere.
However, IPR has a focus on alternative parties and independent candidates, and that is not anything new. We can smuggle in issue discussions, because people involved with alt parties frequently comment on issues, but if the connection to an alt party or independent candidate is not immediately obvious, it should be added as a note to IPR articles.
I can certainly understand wanting to take a break, and I frequently want to take one myself, but I hope that the existence of this site focus is not what is driving Jill away.
P, thanks for asking. “Detroiters Demonstrate How the People Provide Their Own Services When Government Fails”
You make a good point that the head was a p/u.
I’m just a Johnny-One-Note, trying to offer the LM a way out of what I perceive to be a deontological and dysfunctional morass.
If Detroit really is anarchism in action, or if most readers read the word “anarchy” to mean something other than “no government,” never mind me!
Since Jill’s not here for awhile:
It’s ALL good. 😉
Yep, that works. It would help to append info like that for IPR purposes.
If he was not an LP member/supporter, for IPR purposes, yes. There are many libertarians who have nothing to do with the LP, many socialists who have nothing to do with any of the socialist parties, and so on. Having an ideology that is something like one of the many alternative parties is not in itself sufficient to justify an IPR article.
I am not necessarily opposed to changing that, but if we do, we should decide on that as a group.
I’m willing to listen to majority opinion on this.
I can agree that Detroit does not have full blown anarchy, but I do think the article bears out the main thesis, and I don’t think anyone reading seriously thought Detroit has no government entities ineffectively trying to provide “services.” Not that I think it’s my place to retitle the essay, but what headline would you give it?
(FYI: By republishing the headline as we did IPR is not saying that we necessarily agree with the author, only that that is what he said).
17 JP: What, you’re kidding, right?
me: Nope. Truth just is. How you want to judge it is on you. You can take hostages who agree with you that one thing is “positive” and another “negative.”
It’s all good and it is what it is are very consistent with Originalist L thought. Lao Tzu would find that the more useful, helpful approach, I suspect.
Or then there’s Jesus, who said the truth will set you free.
Arguing with what is seems like a drag to me, but it may work for you.
Ta for now. Happy trails!
RC @ 15: ‘ Truth can never be negative.”
What, you’re kidding, right? Are you Peter Pan? Truth includes ugliness everywhere:
“I’m breaking up with you” may be a true statement for two people, but is usually a negativefor one of them.
“Millions of Jews killed in the Holocaust”–seems negative to me.
That’s why I hate that stupid phrase: “It’s all good”.
No, everything isn’t all good.
With this, I bid adieu. I’m outta here.
BH @ 2: “If war is the health of the state, then disinformation is the health of the anti-state.”
No, it isn’t. Truth is the health of the anti-state. Disinformation is a method used by the state, often to build public support for wars.
As to P’s questioning of whether this article is IPR appropriate, I see his point. It’s not about 3rd party politics; this one is a policy piece. It’s more Reason than IPR, at least historically.
How any of these critiques are “negative,” I just can’t imagine. Truth can never be negative.
My best to you. Come back when you feel ready. We’ll keep your spot warm!
I think I will, NF. It’s time.
Take a break, Jill. It worked for me.
Paulie, the article was written by a columnist called the Sunset District Libertarian Examiner. I found him on the new LP news source which shall remain nameless. He listed his party affiliation as Libertarian on his FB account, and he is a member of the San Francisco Libertarians. I did do some research, and was of the opinion that those were sufficient credentials. In addition, I knew this subject matter was of interest to some our readers.
Is this really less worthy of an article than, say, what a state vice-chair did on Memorial Day Eve?
My other option is to overlook new voices, or send some kind of questionaire to new article writers to verify they’re registered to a third party. Then we’d lose some timeliness of articles, although that wouldn’t have been an issue here.
Maybe it’s time for me to do something else with my time, and let others take over posting articles. The negativity here on IPR is starting to spill over into other areas of my life.
more…
I noted this distortion from abolitionist anarchists before. Any time there’s a transaction that has no direct government involvement, they label it “anarchy in action.”
While I too celebrate capitalist acts among consenting adults, virtually if not every transaction that happens in a civil society happen in the context of the rule of law, which for time immemorial has involved a state of some kind. So, even a simple lemonade stand transaction happens within the institution of the rule of law and therefore an “archy.”
I would concede, though, that a transaction on Gilligan’s Island is in fact “market anarchism.” 😉
8 p, you may not be “interested,” but you COULD agree that the headline is misleading.
As a fellow advocate for providing as many/most/nearly all/(possibly) all traditionally-government-provided services privately, I find this headline and word usage DAMAGING to the cause of enhanced liberty.
Self-marginalizing hucksterism (or possibly illiteracy) hurts the case. Honest, forthright, truthful counters to burgeoning statism just might help the case.
I’m not particularly interested in fixing other people’s headlines. I don’t think anyone was suggesting that Detroit works fully without government, only that many services that many people incorrectly assume can only be provided by government are, in fact, in the real world today being privately provided with better quality at a lower price.
6 p, SOME services.
Perhaps this dictionary def. doesn’t apply in your mind, P:
a- or ( before a vowel ) an- 1
— prefix
not; without; opposite to: atonal ; asocial
Does it?
Is anyone in Detroit receiving Social Security checks? Has the Detroit police department arrested anyone recently?
If so, then the “an” doesn’t apply, as I read the word “anarchy.” If my reading is incorrect, pls skool me, m’du….
This is not to say that services aren’t performed without government. They, of course, are. I, of course, favor maximizing private over government services.
But even MORE important than that to me is to recognize truth as best I can. Being delusional seems contra-indicated in all things.
My guess is you recognize that Detroit is not an anarchy now. If correct, then you’d naturally recognize that this headline is false.
Fix it! The truth will always set you free!
It’s not to say that “market anarchy” is not desireable…it may well be. But clearly Detroit is not a “market anarchy,” not even close to one.
A government gang still claims Detroit, but has been ineffective at delivering the “services” people often think only government can provide. Private companies have stepped forward to deliver those services better and cheaper than monopoly government generally does. See the rest of the article for details.
HEADLINE: …Market Anarchy…
Me: Sorry, has Detroit seceded? Is there NO government there?
If not, this headline is false. Why repeat falseness on IPR?
There are many different issues that are argued in comments and many different articles that could be put up to address them, but that has not been the standard for inclusion as an IPR article. That’s not to say it should be removed, it’s already here and already has comments. And for all I know he may be LP, but there’s nothing that says he is, and we should generally speaking do the research to find that someone has a party connection before posting an article, and make it obvious in the article what that connection is if it is not already widely known or obvious. That’s been the rule for years; if we change it we should make that decision as a group.
Paulie @1:
Well, it may not technically be germane to this website, but it is certainly relevant to one of the arguments constantly made by certain people here.
You know, the one that goes something like: “OMG!!! Don’t you crazy anarchists know that without coercive, monopoly government the sky would literally fall, and the entire universe would spontaneously implode???”
911 is only taking calls during business hours
If war is the health of the state, then disinformation is the health of the anti-state.
The actual truth:
http://bangordailynews.com/2012/01/12/news/nation/detroit-imposes-business-hours-at-police-precincts/
A possible source for this disinformation:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread915433/pg1
Good article, but if Robert Taylor has an LP (as opposed to small l) connection, I’m not seeing it mentioned. Did I miss something?