November 12, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SPECIAL TIMES EDITION BLANKETS U.S. CITIES, PROCLAIMS END TO WAR

• PDF: http://www.nytimes-se.com/pdf
• For video updates: http://www.nytimes-se.com/video
• Contact: mailto:writers@nytimes-se.com

Early this morning, commuters nationwide were delighted to find out that while they were sleeping, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had come to an end.

If, that is, they happened to read a “special edition” of today’s New York Times.

In an elaborate operation six months in the planning, 1.2 million papers were printed at six different presses and driven to prearranged pickup locations, where thousands of volunteers stood ready to pass them out on the street.

Articles in the paper announce dozens of new initiatives including the establishment of national health care, the abolition of corporate lobbying, a maximum wage for C.E.O.s, and, of course, the end of the war.

The paper, an exact replica of The New York Times, includes International, National, New York, and Business sections, as well as editorials, corrections, and a number of advertisements, including a recall notice for all cars that run on gasoline. There is also a timeline describing the gains brought about by eight months of progressive support and pressure, culminating in President Obama’s “Yes we REALLY can” speech. (The paper is post-dated July 4, 2009.)

“It’s all about how at this point, we need to push harder than ever,” said Bertha Suttner, one of the newspaper’s writers. “We’ve got to make sure Obama and all the other Democrats do what we elected them to do. After eight, or maybe twenty-eight years of hell, we need to start imagining heaven.”

Not all readers reacted favorably. “The thing I disagree with is how they did it,” said Stuart Carlyle, who received a paper in Grand Central Station while commuting to his Wall Street brokerage. “I’m all for freedom of speech, but they should have started their own paper.”

Is Ms. Suttner claiming Carter wasn’t hell? What about LBJ?  I’m not so sure I can be “all for freedom of speech” for individuals who have no desire to extend me freedom of speech (pretty sure they support campaign regulation), or freedom of association (CEO pay, lobbying), or freedom from aggression by the majority (mandatory national healthcare.) The Yes Men are state socialists / anti-big business. They aren’t concerned with individual freedoms. They don’t bother reading history. They likely have little understanding of economics or how these plans of theirs would work in theory or practice. They have an incredibly shallow view of the world and it’s problems, ignore human tendency, and prescribe solutions equally as shallow and ignorant. Their proposed solutions however are far worse then the existing problems.

The one thing I hope comes from acts like this is that the participants get so worked up that when Obama fails to deliver their faith in their all powerful god Government will be diminished. Unlikely, but possible. Maybe if more bridges are built between the anarcho-capitalist and anarcho-socialists these state socialist types can be more easily convinced.

UPDATE:

Since their servers aren’t very responsive here are the PDFs: Without spreads | With spreads

http://oxlib.blogspot.com/…

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“There is, of course, some truth in the statement that there’s a difference between criminals and states. But the difference is actually one that makes states look even worse than plain criminals.”

So declared Professor Hans Hermann Hoppe, retired economist at the University of Nevada, LV, and Distinguished Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, in his address to the society on Thursday, 23rd October.

Speaking on the subject, ‘What is Exploitaiton? Who Exploits Whom?,’ Professor Hoppe argued that Marxist class-analysis was essentially true in its nominal conclusions, but that fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of exploitative activities had produced the correct conclusions by faulty reasoning, causing them to be misapplied to voluntary free-market exchange. Marxism is correct, however, in recognising the exploitative character of the state, which prospers only by expropriating legitimate property owners and interfering in private exchange. The state is exploitative, then, in that every act of the state cannot occur without making some people - the taxpayer, the conscript &c - worse off, contrary to the mutual benefit of both parties in voluntary exchange.

Refuting the claims of Hobbes and Rousseau, Hoppe rejects the state as a necessary evil, explaining its origins as equivalent to those of criminal gangs and the mafia, who monopolise ‘protection’ not for the benefit of those being protected, but for the enrichment of the protectors. Discussing how the state has evolved from its primitive origins into a largely acquiesced institution, he draws on the thought of French essayist Étienne de La Boétie, pointing out the central place of education and custom that permitted the perpetuation of the state;

“It is true that in the beginning men submit under constraint and by force; but those who come after them obey without regret and perform willingly what their predecessors had done because they had to. This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they are born … the powerful influence of custom is in no respect more compelling than in this, namely, habituation to subjection”

Discours de la servitude volontaire, Étienne de La Boétie, p. 60

In further consolidating its control by monopolising the supply of currency and prosecuting as counterfeiters those who engage in equivalent activities, the state makes itself a party to all transactions, facilitating further exploitative rent seeking. The role, too, of the intellectuals is considered, with Hoppe sharing Robert Nozick’s analysis of the sybmiotic relationship between anti-capitalist intellectuals and the state.

Returning to Marxist rhetoric, Hoppe concludes by arguing for the development of a “clear class consciousness,” not based on narrow, misleading criteria of income, but a coalition of the exploited - that is, the productive agents who are net losers from the state. Perhaps an appropriate statement of the unity of the exploited could go something like this;

“I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

John Galt, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

I’ve been told that Penn Gillette tonight was on Glenn Beck’s show and while talking about the size of government Beck said he needed to have Penn on again so they may further discuss things and Gillete said something to the effect: “Sure, you argue minarchism and I’ll argue anarcho-capitalism.” Not every day you hear that kind of dialog on primetime TV. If I run across the video I’ll post it.