Government Denies Knowledge

“Well, imagine that someone proposed that the key to establishing social justice and restraining corporate greed was to establish a very large corporation, much larger than any corporation hitherto known. A corporation that held a monopoly on some extremely important market within our society, and used its monopoly in that market to extend its control into other markets, hired men with guns to force customers to buy its product at whatever price it chose, and periodically bombed the employees and customers of corporations in other countries. By what theory would we predict that this corporation, above all others, could be trusted to serve our interests and to protect us both from criminals and from all the other corporations? If someone proposed to establish a corporation like this, would your worries be assured the moment you learned that every adult would be issued one share of stock in this corporation, entitling them to vote for members of the board of directors? If it would not, is the governmental system really so different from that scenario as to explain why we may trust a national government to selflessly serve and protect the rest of society?”

–Robert Taylor

 

In one episode of The Simpsons, a comet is headed straight for Springfield. A bill was introduced in Congress to help save Springfield from destruction, but at the last second, someone tacked on another bill to give money to “support the perverted arts”. Naturally, the bill failed, prompting this classic quote from Kent Brockman:

In the context of the show, this was clearly a joke. However, I intend to show that, indeed, “democracy simply doesn’t work.”

Furthermore, I intend to show that not only does democracy not work, but that it is inherently utopian. For the purpose of this essay, a belief system is considered utopian if it requires a change in human nature without proposing a mechanism by which that change can take place. Wherever applicable, I have included scenes from The Simpsons that either buttress this view, or are merely relevant and entertaining.

As an anarchist, I support the abolition of all government. Most people consider this a “radical” view (true, in that it differs from the mainstream view considerably), and would label it as utopian. Most people consider democracy to be a form of government that has some problems, but is generally good.

There are a number of reasons that most people think that democracy “works”. In the limited space of this blog post, I will address some of the most common ones. While democracy may be a vastly preferable system to a totalitarian state, the main reasons we are taught that democracy is a good system are based off of utopian assumptions. There is more than enough evidence to show that, in practice, democracy can never work the way its proponents intend.

I will address the following methods by which proponents of democracy claim that liberty can be maintained through limiting the power of government:

• People have a say in their government’s decisions by exercising their right to vote
• Activism can help change the system for the better
• The media can keep tabs on what the government is doing and keep the populace informed
• Public education leads to an informed populace
• Constitutional limits prevent government overreach
• Checks and balances ensure that power is decentralized

My intention is not to say that these are bad things and should be done away with (they should, but only in the context of removing government entirely). Surely, they have prevented some amount of potential abuse of government power.

However, these methods are insufficient, and they do not perform anywhere nearly as well as proponents of democratic government believe.

 

People have a say in their government’s decisions by exercising their right to vote

Pro-Democracy: Most people are aware of their interests and vote in favor of their interests. Therefore, elected leaders in a democracy are those individuals who best serve the interests of the majority of the citizenry.

The most obvious and basic critique of this viewpoint is that the majority has the power to abuse the minority. That is how, for example, laws against gay marriage can exist in a democratic state, even to this day.

It’s also how such repugnant laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act and the Jim Crow laws could exist.

But it isn’t just minorities either; nonvoters end up without any form of representation whatsoever in government decision-making.

This includes women who couldn’t vote until 1920, with the passage of the 19^th Amendment to the constitution. For more than half of America’s history, 50% of the population automatically fell into this category.

“But women CAN vote now, so problem solved,” you say.

But it isn’t just women. Both convicted felons and people under the age of 18 are not allowed to vote, either. These groups are just as affected by public policies as everyone else (and in the convict’s case, likely moreso), yet they have no voting rights over these policies.

Children of age 17 are qualitatively the same as adults of age 18, yet one can vote and the other can’t. And felons can be victims of unjust laws, but still be denied the vote. Consider, say, drug laws. Someone caught selling marijuana can no longer vote, even though the legal status of these drugs is under serious debate.

What about foreigners? They are affected by state policies, such as immigration laws, travel restrictions, trade policies, and most notably, war. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who died as a direct consequence of the US invasion had no say in the decision to go to war.

Finally, your vote makes no difference on the outcome of an election. This is mathematically obvious, yet somehow the myth that “your vote counts” persists.

No, your vote does not count. In order for your vote to determine anything, the outcome of the election (excluding yourself) would need to either be a tie, or have a one vote difference, with your vote being for the candidate who was losing (thus making it a tie).

The chances of this happening in a national election are negligible, and for other elections, still miniscule. For instance, take a look at this list of close elections throughout the world. There were a handful of ties or elections determined by a single vote, but nearly all of these were more local elections within sparsely populated Canadian territories. Every one of these elections had less than 40,000 total votes cast, most with well under 10,000. Consider that Wyoming had over 422,000 eligible voters during the 2012 presidential election, and this is the state with the lowest number.

Keep in mind that population growth makes the odds of your vote mattering decrease during every election cycle.

PD: An individual vote may not matter, but the voters as a whole have a huge amount of power.

While this may be true, it is not relevant to any given voter’s rational decision-making. This point will be addressed more thoroughly in the next section. For now, it is worth noting that, as an individual, you may have the power to sway a handful of votes, but rarely a significant amount.

Even so, the most robust of modern research on the topic has concluded that even mass groups of voters have a minimal effect on public policy. Rather, it is interest groups and powerful business interests that control policy outcomes. How else would incumbents win in Congressional elections over 90% of the time, even in a year like 2010 where people were particularly unsatisfied with their representatives?

PD: It costs you nothing to vote, so a rational individual will still vote for whoever serves their best interests. The probability of your vote mattering may be small, but it is positive, so there is still a positive expected return.

This is simply not true. There are considerable costs to voting in your best interest.

The act of voting itself requires taking time out of your day to make it to the polling station. In and of itself, this cost surely outweighs the very low expected benefit of voting.

But this is the least of the costs. In order to vote in your best interests, you must become an informed voter. This means familiarizing yourself with all the candidates and their voting records, plus understanding the actual content of the bills that they have voted on.

Not only that, but you must understand how these bills affect you personally. This requires and understanding of economics, foreign policy, dozens of different industries, etc. And you must make a concerted effort to eliminate any emotional biases you have surrounding each and every one of these issues. This is no small task.

Empirically, we see that political knowledge is abysmally weak. For instance, a 2006 survey found that only 42 percent of Americans can even name the three branches of the federal government.

Not only are voters ignorant, but they are also irrational.  Considerable biases affect voter perception, causing individuals to vote against their best interests. For instance, protectionist economic policies hurt everyone, yet all democracies have them (and are supported by large groups of people), despite hundreds of years of economists warning about their negative effects.

Worse yet, politicians are aware that their constituency is not well informed. Therefore, they know that they can freely vote on mere whims and give specious arguments to support their decision, without being held accountable. Hell, they don’t even have to familiarize themselves with the bills that they are voting on! Bills are often hundreds or thousands of pages long, released hours before the vote, and have various insertions and deletions done at the last second.

Furthermore, rent-seeking makes it even less rational for your average voter to become informed. Most bills will benefit a few people or organizations to a large degree, at the expense of many people to a much smaller degree.

You, as a voter, have almost no incentive to educate yourself and others or try to influence the election for mild savings. The large businesses who benefit can afford to spend millions of dollars lobbying for these policies that will give them even more money. And you wouldn’t need to familiarize yourself with and influence the vote on just one issue, but many.

An example here would be instructive. Consider the sufficiently bland subject of excessive federal reimbursement for anti-anemia drugs. A massive industry lobbying effort (over $8 million since 2009) has prompted a huge bipartisan coalition in Congress to reverse their previous decision and reduce their planned cuts in this corporate subsidy. All at taxpayer expense, of course.

That’s a fairly obscure issue, so imagine familiarizing yourself not just with that, but with thousands of proposed policies. Corporate welfare made up $100 billion in the 2012 federal budget, but each individual issue only costs you a small amount of money by itself.

Utopian Analysis: Voters would need to become completely irrational in order to make voting an appropriate means of people securing their best interests. Of course, once you assume people to be irrational, then the whole exercise of voting becomes silly.

 

Activism can help change the system for the better

PD: In a democracy, the public is active, and people can send letters to their representatives or otherwise put pressure on them to act responsibly and in the public interest.

It is generally not in an individual’s best interest to be an activist. We’ve gone over part of this in the previous section, since it is generally not in a given person’s interest to become informed. But it goes beyond that when it comes to activism.

I will readily acknowledge that activism can and does sometimes work. Gandhi and the civil rights movement come to mind. But these cases only happen (and only occasionally) in the most egregious cases of mass abuse by government. In everyday cases of government abuse, it is utopian to think that people will put in this kind of effort.

Even the most conscientious activist, devoting 100% of their time to monitoring government activities, could only familiarize himself with a tiny fraction of government activity.

It’s not just the problem of becoming informed; there are significant additional costs and risks to activism.

For instance, voicing your political views can be dangerous at work or for social reasons. People tend not to want to rock the boat in these areas, and most people don’t have the stomach to have their potentially unpopular political views known to their colleagues or acquaintances.

But the real risks come from the way governments, even democratic ones, look at activists. In America, practicing civil disobedience can get you labeled as a terrorist.

There is a rich history of democratic government spying on activists, right through today. Department of Homeland Security policy involves the day to day spying on activists, and the NSA has been spying on prominent Muslim-Americans since at least 2002. Anyone who visits the WikiLeaks website is getting their data captured by the NSA as well.

And then, of course, there is COINTELPRO, the secret FBI program that involved spying on and infiltrating political organizations between 1956 and 1971. If you’ve never heard of this, go read the linked Wikipedia article and tell me with a straight face that you still trust this government. It didn’t even take ten years after the constitution before the US passed the Alien and Sedition acts to punish dissent.

It’s not just illegal and unjustified surveillance; the odds are extra against activists’ success.

For instance, the GCHQ (Britain’s version of the NSA) has been manipulating public debate by hacking online polls to change their results, directing traffic to specific sites, and censoring “extremist” content. You can be sure that the NSA is engaging in similar activities.

More and more, government is criminalizing whistleblowing, with the Obama administration prosecuting five cases under the Espionage Act, more than all previous presidents combined.

Some of the most disturbing government behavior in this area is how they are deliberately destroying the reputations of activists online. This includes posting fake material and attributing it to the activist, pretending to be a victim of the person whose reputation they want to destroy, and posting “negative information” on various forums.

Despite high awareness of these abuses since Edward Snowden’s leaks over a year ago, things haven’t improved. The most important reforms have been completely ignored.

Utopian Analysis: The vast majority of people will not subject themselves to the extreme costs, both in informing themselves properly, as well as the risks of privacy violations or having their reputation destroyed, in order to have an almost non-existent chance of influencing government policy. While a handful of people will still choose to be activists, the odds are stacked heavily against them.

 

The media can keep tabs on what the government is doing and keep the populace informed

PD: We don’t need to do all the work of watching government ourselves. We can delegate this responsibility to the media, who will then alert and inform the public of government transgressions.

At least on the face of it, this sounds somewhat plausible. And in fact, the media has helped uncover many abuses (in recent years, this is primarily due to the influence of alternative media, however).

But while the media can and does sometimes help in this effort, there are systemic reasons why it doesn’t work this way in general.

Before going any further, it is worth noting right off the bat that in 2014, the US ranked 46^th in the world in terms of press freedom in Reporters Without Borders’s annual index. I would have expected a bit higher in “the land of the free”.

We must remember that the media, like any business, caters to the desires of their consumers. There is nothing wrong with this per se, but it does cause significant problems with the “pro-democracy” idea above.

For the reasons outlined in earlier sections of this post, most people are not willing to invest the time to educate themselves about issues. Therefore, much of the news is about entertainment, not information. People tend to be more interested in the latest celebrity gossip than the intricacies of a recent Supreme Court case, so that is what the media will tend to focus on.

Regardless of how great some reporters might be, if people don’t want to educate themselves, then the media simply will not do the work for them. And when important issues are being covered, it is easier for the journalist to accept a government spokesman’s account rather than doing serious investigation of any complex issues. It’s even easier (and cheaper) to post opinion pieces and interviews, which are making up a larger and larger share of media time.

But there are more “dark and sinister” reasons to be skeptical that the media can help patrol against government abuses.

Government officials may become angered by overly critical pieces and have the power of coercion to respond (picture Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg, the detention of David Miranda, etc.). If you reveal something too close to the heart of the National Security State, you will be punished. Consider James Risen, who is being coerced by the federal government for refusing to reveal a source for a book he wrote exposing the CIA.

The fact is, potential government sources are highly unlikely to provide information to journalists known to be critical of the government. And who can blame them? People tend not to like publicizing their own failures or being made to look bad.

Since government controls access to critical sources and information, this is a significant point. The government restricts physical access to sources, selectively provides information that highlights the administration’s successes rather than failures, and prescreens reporters’ questions or only allows scripted ones.

It doesn’t help that the major news networks are owned by the same few organizations. In fact, six giant conglomerates control over 90% of what you watch, read, and listen to. These corporate giants have their own agenda, and are deeply in bed with the government. Surely, media “objectivity” is affected when the Federal government is one of the largest advertisers.

A number of prominent journalists have exposed examples of media corruption, often being fired or otherwise suffering consequences in the process. These include withholding negative information about both corporate sponsors as well as government corruption and abuse.

In my opinion the most glaring recent example of the media not informing the populace of important information was with Iceland’s “pots and pans” revolution in 2009-10. The mainstream media in the US was completely silent about this event, and yet it was among the most important world events at the time. This was a peaceful revolution where the government was overthrown, and the fraudulent banksters were thrown in jail. Maybe, just maybe, this was because they didn’t want to give Americans any ideas?

Finally, I’d like to point out that there is overt government manipulation of the media. Most people refuse to believe things like this, because it is so depressing in a lot of ways. For starters, there is well documented collusion between the New York Times and the CIA. This isn’t too surprising, however, since they regularly push fabricated evidence in attempts to promote warfare and militarism.

The CIA isn’t just working with the NYT; there is a deliberate campaign to manipulate the media in general. Operation Mockingbird, which began in the 1950s, involved (among other things) recruiting journalists to push the CIA’s version of “news”. You can be sure similar work is being done today.

PD: Because of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the government must give out information to anyone who wants it.

The FOIA is certainly a positive thing, and to some extent, it does help foster transparency in government. However, it is far from a panacea.

The FOIA is one of the most ignored laws on the books, sometimes not respected at all, other times taking years to fulfill the request (legally must be within 20 days). The Department of Justice claims to release almost 95% of requests, but those numbers are a bit fuzzy. There are legitimate reasons why not all documents are released in a timely manner, including the cost of providing these documents and the sheer volume of requests. In any case, it isn’t as though you can receive any document you want.

In fact, more and more, the US is citing national security as an excuse to censor or reject FOIA requests. In 2013, the Obama administration censored or rejected more requests than it granted outright. Some of these denials are surely legitimate, but it’s hard to believe that there are so many more security threats now than there have been in the past. This is a disturbing trend.

But the scariest thing is that some agencies, notably the powerful and secretive Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), are exempt from FOIA requests. Nobody knows who works for them or what their credentials are, but the majority of federal regulations are altered by them, without oversight, and often without explanation. Sounds pretty shady to me.

Utopian Analysis: While the media can expose some government excess (and the alternative media is increasingly promising), there are structural reasons why we can never rely on the media to keep us informed. So long as people don’t want to be informed, the media won’t provide it for them. And so long as government controls access to the most important information regarding its own excesses, it has no reason to share. The occasional brilliant journalism that we do see is the exception, not the rule.

 

Public education leads to an informed populace

PD: Public education leads to an informed populace of independent thinkers who will hold their government accountable.

On the contrary, public education leads to conformity, stifles dissent, and teaches children to obey authority.

At this point, many people will accuse me of going off the deep end or being a “conspiracy theorist” (as if that actually meant something), but this is NOT a controversial point. It is merely forgotten history.

The idea of public schooling grew out of a desire to create more malleable, easy to control citizens. The intention was to homogenize students and create obedient workers.

I will not go into the history of public schooling here, but for a fascinating and fairly short exposition (6-7 pages), I highly recommend you check this out: The Origins of the Prussian System. If you want far more detail, here is an archive of articles by John Taylor Gatto, an award winning teacher who has studied this extensively.

The father of public education in America, Horace Mann, observed the Prussian system of education and gave it a glowing review before bringing it back to America. But even supporters of public schooling didn’t beat around the bush regarding its purpose. Take this, from William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education (1889-1906):

“[Ideally] ninety-nine [students] out of one hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.” (as quoted by Gatto, 2010, p. 13)

And things haven’t changed. While the rhetoric may be about “equal opportunity” and the like, dissenters are still punished. Consider these high school students who were suspended for political activism on campus.

The system of public education is necessarily propagandistic, regardless of the intention. Bringing government into it means standardization, and one size fits all policies.

For instance, required certifications for teaching means that the authority figures are fairly homogenous as well, not just the students. Creative or unorthodox teaching styles are discouraged, as is experimentation. Teachers are no longer wise mentors, but rather bureaucrats who are required to teach within a specified curriculum (and to standardized tests).

The government also gets involved in library and curriculum selection, which helps them frame the debate that takes place within the halls of the school. Do you think the government is really going to choose materials that threaten them? Could you ever see this article being referenced in a public school classroom?

While private schools could, in theory, provide some counterbalance, the sheer cost of sending your child to one is prohibitive. That, and the US government still has control over the curriculum for private schools.

Common standards have a stifling effect on knowledge and learning. But that isn’t stopping the government’s push to adopt Common Core, a national set of standards. While proponents may claim that it is about improving education, a look at one of the Common Core exercises that was released tells a different story. Some of the great things that these standards are going to teach America’s children include that “The wants of an individual are less important than the well-being of the nation,” and that “The commands of government officials must be obeyed by all.”

It’s not just Common Core; schools are already being used to craft obedient citizens. Consider this example of 3^rd grade homework, where we learn, among other things, that “good citizens do not argue”. Or this 4^th grade homework that teaches that government is like family.

You could argue that these are isolated instances. And perhaps they are. But the very structure of the classroom is designed to foster obedience to authority from a young age.

When a student wants the teacher’s attention they must raise their hand and wait to be called upon. Attendance is compulsory, often enforced by taking roll call in the morning. Children are seated in rows (isolated), silenced, and made to perform rote tasks and busy work. Assignments are mandatory. The children must be seated when the bell rings, or else get in trouble. Speaking of which, there are disciplinarians and punishments for breaking what are often arbitrary rules. There are specially designated times for lunch and recess, so students can’t just eat when they are hungry. The student must ask to go to the bathroom. One county has even mandated see through book bags, and biosensors are being developed to detect whether children are paying attention or not.

There are some rational reasons for some of these policies, of course, but it’s not like there aren’t other successful models of education, such as democratic schools, where students choose whether they want to attend and what they learn.

Even if you choose to not believe that the intention of public education is to create obedient, one-size-fits-all students, you can see that this is necessarily the effect. This mass of citizens, conditioned to obey, is very unlikely to start any kind of revolution, certainly not one every twenty years as Thomas Jefferson suggested.

PD: Higher education is different. Students are more mature and are taught many different viewpoints.

University-age students are surely more mature and open minded than elementary school students. As such, they are more capable of free thought.

Despite that potential, higher education, rather than leading to independent thinking, has some of the strictest rules against independent thought! Whatever rebellious ideas students may have largely get funneled into supporting the establishment, rather than fighting it.

It is well known that college professors tend to be more liberal. Students may believe they are fighting authority by being liberal (and when they are being anti-war, they are), but almost all support big government. The radicals are the socialists, who support even bigger government.

The preponderance of liberal/progressive ideals on campus is self-reinforcing. According to this study, even after taking into account merit and numerous other factors, more conservative professors tend to teach at lower quality institutions. This hardly fosters debate and the free flow of ideas.

In fact, students and faculty who take the “wrong” stance often get punished. Take the unfortunate ordeals that Professors Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Walter Block have had to go through because people have misinterpreted their views. And then here are a few absurd examples of liberalism gone wild on campus. Particularly silly is the student who was found guilty of racial harassment without a hearing, because he was reading a book with a picture of the KKK on the cover. Never mind that a major point of the book was to celebrate the defeat of the KKK. All that matters is that some people got offended!

Perhaps even worse than the stifling of ideas and academic freedom on campus is the crippling debt that young people are put in when they graduate. Saddled with debt, these young adults become dependent on the system itself, and are far less likely to practice any form of dissent.

In 2012, 71 percent of graduates had debt, an average level of $29,400. This debt cannot be discharged, and it is increasingly difficult for college graduates to find decent work (if any) these days. This basically turns people into debt slaves. I won’t dwell on the point here, as it has been sufficiently covered elsewhere. For those of you who want more information, here are some disturbing statistics about college loans, and here is an infographic describing the history if this scam.

Utopian Analysis: A government with the power to determine the curriculum, the rules of education, the qualifications for teachers, and so on, will never find it rational to teach children to think for themselves, because this diminishes the government’s power.

 

Constitutional limits prevent government overreach

“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”

-Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority

PD: A written constitution, strictly limiting the functions of the state, can limit state powers and make it easier to monitor.

While the US constitution is a radical document, and contains within it many ideals of liberty, it cannot effectively limit the power of the state. Just because a constitution exists does not mean that it will be followed. There would need to be an adequate mechanism in place for ensuring compliance with the constitution, and that simply does not exist.

There was a valiant effort on the part of the framers of the constitution to build in safeguards. But somehow, even these brilliant men could not see the obvious: No other organization has the power to coerce the government. Therefore, the government is responsible for enforcing its own compliance to the document.

PD: The courts/judiciary will nullify unconstitutional laws.

Sure, that is what they are supposed to do. And in many cases, they do! Certainly, in early America, the courts performed this job better than they do now.

But what is to stop a court official from merely judging the way that they feel is right, regardless of the constitution? Who watches the watcher?

The answer, of course, is no one. Judicial activism, or declining to uphold the constitution in favor of ruling how the judge believes proper, is quite common these days.

The size of government would be vastly curtailed if the courts were to actually do their job and follow the constitution. The 9^th and 10^th Amendments delineate the scope of lawful government activities. Anything that is not in the constitution is not an “enumerated power”, and is not lawful for the Federal government to be involved in. Take a look at Article 1, Section 8 of the constitution, and see what kinds of things are allowed. The whole section is short enough to include in full here:

“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;—And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

That’s it. If you can’t find it in here, then the Federal government isn’t allowed to do it. This rules out the vast majority of law on the books today.

However, through the use of absurd, specious reasoning, the government can create whatever justification is necessary to consider a given law or regulation constitutional. Consider the case of Wickard vs. Filburn in 1942 (a big shoutout to Professor Michael Huemer for this example, as well as much of the inspiration for this post – read his book, it’s fantastic).

The Roosevelt administration had been continuing with its fascist New Deal policies, and had just passed a law that limited the amount of wheat that farmers could grow, in order to increase the price. Roscoe Filburn was growing wheat to be used to feed the livestock on his own farm. He exceeded the amount that the law allowed him to grow, and the Department of Agriculture fined him. He sued, arguing that there was no constitutional authority for the government to determine how much wheat he could grow on his own farm.

For those of you keeping score at home, go back up a few paragraphs, and try to see where the constitution allows the federal government to restrict the amount of wheat you can grow. Right, it doesn’t.

And yet, the court unanimously decided that the law was legal and justified under the clause: “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” According to them, because he grew wheat to feed his livestock, he would buy less from other farmers. This lowers the price of wheat, having an effect on commerce, which may cross state borders.

This justification is laughable. But it happened, and it’s clearly not the only one.

It would be impossible for me to list all of the laws that are in direct violation of the constitution, because that would involve listing out nearly all of the laws in general. But I think a few of the particularly egregious are worth pointing out here.

With Executive Order 9066 in 1942, FDR mandated that Japanese-Americans be interned in camps, an order which the Supreme Court upheld.

In the Dred Scott decision in 1857, the Supreme Court ruled that African Americans, slave or free, were not American citizens and could not sue in federal court.

More recently, the USA PATRIOT Act, which gives the federal government sweeping powers of surveillance over American citizens, is a clear violation of the 4^th Amendment. It shouldn’t take a constitutional scholar to see this.

Then there is the REAL ID Act, passed in 2005 but not implemented, which involves national requirements for driver’s licenses as identification. This is not an enumerated power, and is clearly something only the States can do.

Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition programs, and invasive police body cavity searches are all in violation of the 8^th Amendment, which is supposed to prevent “cruel and unusual punishment”.

And then there are drone killings. According to the best legal scholars at the White House, it is perfectly constitutional and legal to assassinate American citizens living abroad if they are considered a terrorist threat, even if they haven’t actually done anything. This clearly violates their 5^th Amendment right to due process.

The president cannot declare war on a foreign country without congressional approval, and yet that is precisely what Obama did in Libya.

The Federal Reserve is unconstitutional because the constitution says the US government ought to punish counterfeiting, not institutionalize it. Section 10 of the constitution says that only gold and silver coin can be legal tender.

And what about when federal investigators secretly seized two months’ worth of Associated Press phone records? Was this not a 1^st Amendment violation?

Again, there are a nearly limitless supply of other examples, but these are some of the more egregious.

PD: Many people believe the constitution is too restrictive anyways. We need to interpret it anew regularly.

Perhaps. But in that case, you can’t expect the constitution to have any weight in terms of limiting the powers of government, by definition.

The government also has the power to amend the constitution, even in ways that nullify itself. If the same organization whose power is supposed to be checked by the constitution has the power to amend it, government abuse has an easy method of justifying itself.

Consider the 18^th Amendment, prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcohol. It took a separate amendment, because obviously it is not one of the enumerated powers. But, as nearly everyone today would agree, prohibition was unjust! How quickly people forget, because not too long after, numerous other drugs have been prohibited, without even the formality of amending the constitution.

Utopian Analysis: Having the government be in charge of enforcing its own compliance with the constitution is the equivalent of having criminals be responsible for their own punishment.

 

Checks and balances ensure that federal power is decentralized

PD: The executive, judicial, and legislative branches each restrain the others from abusing their powers.

Like most of the other items on this list, the separation of powers was a well-intentioned system that has some benefits, yet utterly fails to protect your liberty. There are many cases where checks and balances have at least slowed the growth of tyrannical government, but they will not stop or reverse it.

There is no reason for each branch to use its power to restrain that of the other branches, and no mechanism to ensure that they do this. Is it not just as likely that the various branches will work in tandem to increase all of their powers?

Let’s think about the incentive structure here. If the legislature passes a law that infringes upon the rights and liberties of the citizenry (but has no negative impact on the other branches), there is no incentive for the courts to strike it down or the executive to veto it. Sure, it’s their job. But as we saw in the previous section, this is hardly good enough.

In fact, the more laws that are on the books, the bigger the executive and the judiciary branches need to become in order to enforce the new laws and to try court cases about them. In other words, there is a general inclination for all three branches to grow in power together.

Of particular concern is that the president gets to appoint Supreme Court justices. Naturally, they will make their selection based off of shared ideology rather than some objective qualification. This is a fairly non-controversial point. I have heard numerous people wish for some justices to step down at specific times, so their favored president is the one who gets to appoint the next one.

This makes perfect, rational sense. Why would any president (other than an ideological libertarian one) appoint a judge who intends to decrease the power of the government, including that of the executive branch? This incentive alone practically guarantees the perpetual growth of government. The slate of recent Supreme Court cases ruling in favor of the police state supports this theory.

Some people might counter here that politicians become politicians because they are good people, and their intention is to help, not to gain power. I’m sure this is true of many politicians, but their intentions are irrelevant. If they support policies that concentrate power, it doesn’t matter if it is because they think that concentrated power can be used for good or not. And there is reason to believe that the type of people who tend to become politicians are also the type of people who would behave in a corrupt and dishonest way, as this study shows.

Besides the institutional incentives, there are numerous ways by which the separation of powers has been weakened. For instance, a lot of regulatory functions have been delegated to specific agencies, giving the executive branch considerable lawmaking power.

In fact, the power of the executive branch has grown dramatically over recent years. Consider that Obama has appointed nearly 40 Cabinet officials without legislative approval, went to war in Libya, ordered drone strikes, and repeatedly amended the Affordable Care Act when it suited him politically.

The most disturbing possibility with regards to the separation of powers is that the NSA is spying on prominent members of government, including Congressional representatives. We know that J. Edgar Hoover used the FBI to spy on members of Congress in order to blackmail them (as part of COINTELPRO, mentioned above), so why would it be different now? In the unlikely event that politicians aren’t being blackmailed, much damage can be done when members of Congress are spied on, even just incidentally. The Jane Harman story should teach us this lesson.

Utopian Analysis: The separate branches of government have the incentive to cooperate in order to increase their own power and scope. There is no reason to believe that government officials will behave in ways counter to their own interests, but there is substantial evidence that they will act in dishonest ways to seize more power.

 

Conclusion

We may have a much better political life now than several hundred years ago, but this is largely due to the spread of classically liberal values, not the political system itself. It is because enough people would be disgusted by certain government behavior that authoritarianism hasn’t fully taken over. But as people become more illiberal, and that is the way we are trending, this protection would be reduced.

A number of these features of democracy may slow down this tendency toward authoritarianism, but they are all inherently flawed. The scale is weighted heavily away from freedom and towards the totalitarian state, and appealing to some of the features of this system can do very little to prevent this from happening.

For this reason, a limited state is impossible. America was the most well conceived government in the history of the world, with the most extensive built in protections to maintain the liberty of the people. And yet even in America, less than 250 years after its founding, the government is hardly recognizable when compared to its original ideals. Even in a democracy, state power will metastasize.

Economists across the political spectrum agree that in instances of market failure, the government should step in to optimize when the market could not. One generalized instance of these market failures has been dubbed the “externality”, which is where the full social cost of an action is not paid by the agent who takes the action.

An example would be instructive. Let’s say I own a factory, and pollutants billow out of my smokestacks. Wind picks them up and carries the pollution into a nearby town, creating smog. The townspeople are experiencing the cost of the smog, but that cost is not factored into my decision of how much to produce at my factory. After all, I don’t have to suffer the consequences, so I will produce until my marginal product equals marginal cost.

Here, it is the role of the government to step in and “internalize” the externality, say, by imposing a tax on the amount of pollution I produce. Now that I have to pay the cost, I will decrease production and pollution will be reduced, maximizing the social welfare.

This is all well and good. The government has stepped in and helped to internalize some externalities, but there are some that have gone completely ignored, with disastrous consequences. There is one externality I have in mind that touches our lives every single day. Everybody knows about it, but our politicians are silent, despite the fact that it quite literally causes outright revulsion and disgust among most Americans today.

I’m talking about all the ugly people. Nobody wants to look at someone who is ugly, and yet that ugly person need not bear this cost. Conversely, beautiful people provide a positive externality, and yet they don’t get to reap the rewards! Why is Washington not doing whatever it can to maximize social welfare by discouraging ugliness and rewarding beauty in line with their appropriate social costs and benefits? Why is this issue not a matter of public discussion?

Call me a “conspiracy theorist” if you will, but I’ll bet it has something to do with the fact that most politicians are old and ugly themselves. Have you seen Hillary? Politicians balk at the idea, because they know that they will be on the hook themselves.

That is why I’m reaching out to You, the American People. I can’t solve this critical social justice issue on my own, but with enough of us together, we can get Washington to listen.

Perhaps you don’t think this is that big of an issue, or that things are okay the way they are. This is only because you don’t know what is possible.

Imagine living in a world where everywhere you turn, there are gorgeous people abound. Where most people look like supermodels, so supermodels look like….super-supermodels.

Imagine living in a world where the greatest dread of any air traveler, sitting next to a fat person, is no longer a concern.

Imagine living in a world where being the wingman doesn’t mean jumping on a grenade, where the song “Hot for teacher” has lost all meaning, and where every dining experience is like going to Hooters.

It may take 100 years, but yes, this vision is possible. Like preventing global warming, often those most worthwhile of pursuits may require a long time before we see the benefits.

“Even so,” you say, “but things aren’t that bad the way they are now.”

Oh really? Consider this:

• According to the Journal of American Medical Association, over one third of all U.S. adults are obese, and 17% of children are as well¹.
• The estimated annual medical cost due to obesity is $147 billion dollars². As wonderful as our more socialized medical system is, you, the skinny and attractive taxpayer, must foot the medical bill for your obese neighbors. Is this fair?
• According to research done by OkCupid, attractive men get 11 times more messages than ugly men do, and attractive women get 28 times as many messages as ugly women. How inegalitarian! No wonder so many people whine about dating. Yet nobody considers the solution: remove ugly people from the equation, and human shallowness becomes a non-issue!
• According to the National Bureau of Economics Research, ugly people commit more crimes³. Yes, it’s true. So the next time you walk past someone revolting looking, you are right to get as far away from them as possible.
• Good looking people earn more money. The penalty for “plainness” can be as high as 5 to 10% of wages⁴! By improving our looks overall, we can increase wages, stimulate aggregate demand, and lift ourselves out of this economic slump.

Because we deal with peoples’ looks any time we find ourselves dealing with people in general, it is particularly important and warrants closer study and attention. And it requires action, and meaningful public policies aimed at decreasing ugliness and maximizing beauty.

 

My 9-Point Plan

Luckily, there is a way forward. There are many ways the government can help internalize this externality. I’ve included here my plan, but I’m sure that individuals more clever than I can come up with more ideas. These are just a few suggestions, but I’m hoping this article can start a discussion about how we can right this wrong.

1. First, we need to allocate more federal funds to the study of beauty. Science can show us more clearly what the American people find attractive and unattractive. Only through understanding this can we figure out what the “neutral” attractiveness is so that we can penalize those who are uglier, and reward those who are more beautiful.
2. We also need more grant money going to the study of relevant psychological principles. We need answers to many questions. What will most entice people to go to the gym? At what point do people decide to get plastic surgery? What makes people eat fatty foods?
3. Take a yearly survey of preferences for physical attractiveness in order to establish a baseline. Use this survey to figure out which traits are most and least attractive in the general population, and then mandate that those features be prioritized. Let’s say large breasts create the greatest positive externality. Then, at a woman’s mandatory yearly physical, she will receive a check from the government if she has large breasts, and will pay a fine if she has small breasts (after factoring in an age adjustment, of course).
4. Nationalize the plastic surgery and health and fitness industries. Greedy plastic surgeons charge exorbitant rates for facelifts, breast implants, and hormone therapy. There are people who want to do their share for the community by getting implants or taking steroids (which should be legalized), but cannot do so because of their financial situation (getting paid 10% less than their more beautiful peers surely plays a role here). Similarly, few can afford good personal trainers. These services are a right, and it is a travesty of social justice that people be excluded just because of life circumstances.
5. Levy a tax on all food items. A panel of experts will determine what is healthy and unhealthy, and the tax will be proportionate. Calories in general should be discouraged, because obesity is the leading cause of ugliness in this country. Reducing America’s aggregate weight will do wonders to increase our attractiveness (so called “chubby chasers” are a small enough percentage of the population that their effect is statistically insignificant).
6. Expand the legal, medicinal use of certain drugs. All men age 16 and older who are in the bottom quartile of lean body mass will be prescribed steroids (under careful doctor supervision). Cocaine and methamphetamine should be prescribed to the obese of both genders (along with a responsible dose of cigarettes) to aid in weight loss. In order to ensure compliance, we will institute mandatory school and workplace drug testing. Anyone not taking their medication will be fined. Similarly, there should be harsher penalties for marijuana possession in order to reduce incidences of “the munchies”.
7. Isolate the ugliest members of society. Some people are so hideous that normal people should not have to see them. There can be special jails for ugly people, or some type of house arrest. Conversely, there should be state sponsored cocktail parties for the most beautiful. Attractive people don’t spend enough time in public, so they are not producing the optimal amount of this positive externality.
8. Implement strategic mating policies designed to increase the beauty of our next generation. More research will be needed to determine what characteristics of parents lead to the best looking children. As we learn more about this, we should nudge peoples’ decisions on who to have a child with toward more beautifying choices.
9. Arrest parents who have obese children. Raising an obese child is just a subtle form of child abuse. Authorities have already begun to do this in the UK, and we need to start doing it here. Having an obese child is not only abusive to the child, but damaging to the rest of society.

It will take a concerted effort to end this epidemic of ugliness. But we must do it, for the good of humanity. It will not be easy, but the War on Ugliness will be won!

 

Footnotes:

1. http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1832542
2. http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/28/5/w822.full.pdf+html
3. http://www.nber.org/papers/w12019
4. http://www.nber.org/papers/w4518

 

The most common, most “feel good” justification for the state is that it can be used as a vehicle to help the less fortunate. Were it not for food stamps, Medicaid, and a multitude of other government entitlement programs, half of us would be living on the streets, eating from dumpsters, right?

Some of the least fortunate among us are homeless. One would assume that this generous government would do its utmost to take care of them, lending a helping hand to put roofs over their heads, and doing its best to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place.

The reality is a whole other story entirely. Not only are government policies putting more people out on the streets, but they are systematically creating an economic and legal environment that does immense harm to those who cannot afford housing.

Don’t believe me? A 2011 report by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty which analyzed 234 cities across the US found that:

• 40 percent prohibit “camping” in particular public places, while 16 percent prohibit “camping” citywide;

• 33 percent prohibit sitting/lying in particular public places;
• 56 percent prohibit loitering in particular public places, while 22 percent prohibit loitering citywide; and

• 53 percent prohibit begging in particular public places, while 53 percent prohibit “aggressive” panhandling and 24 percent prohibit begging citywide.

And these laws aren’t just empty threats; plenty of real damage has come from them. Survey participants had been arrested, cited, or both, for the following:

• Public urination/defecation: 73 percent of respondents;
• Camping/sleeping in public: 55 percent of respondents;
• Loitering: 55 percent of respondents;
• Panhandling: 53 percent of respondents;
• Public storage of belongings: 20 percent of respondents; and
• Sidewalk-sitting: 19 percent of respondents.

Most of these people were then robbed by the very state that claims to look after their best interests, through what they euphemistically call “fines” or “tickets”.

In 62% of these cities, respondents claimed that there were police sweeps to push homeless people towards the outskirts of the city, most of them unannounced. In many cases, police will seize the limited possessions that they find during these sweeps.

Unfortunately, it’s not easy for homeless people to find affordable housing. In 2009, affordable housing units were available to only 32% of extremely low income individuals, and 42% of all affordable housing for these individuals were occupied by high-income renters. In other words, those who can afford housing have displaced those who can’t in the market for cheap rents.

And we’re really just scratching the surface with these statistics. Let’s take a look at how governments across the US and at all levels are systematically making life worse for the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder.

Note: I encourage you to read the articles I’ve linked out to. Many of them show that the situation is in fact worse than I am describing here.

 

Criminalizing Homelessness

In cities across the US, there are laws on the books that specifically target homeless people. These laws have a variety of “justifications”, but are primarily done to make the city look nicer and sweep the homelessness problem under the rug. Wealthier individuals, the ones who can bring more investment into a city, don’t like seeing homeless people around, so city officials have catered to their “needs” and made living in the city as challenging as possible for the homeless.

How have they managed to do this? All manner of laws, either specifically designed to target the homeless, or just selectively enforced, are used to criminalize homelessness. Here are some of the more obvious examples, although I’m sure there are plenty more:

Illegal to sleep in cars. In a huge number of cities, local governments have made it illegal to sleep in a car. Many homeless people do have a car, and it is a huge asset to them because it gives them a shelter to sleep in and a place to keep their stuff. It also gives them a mode of transportation such that they have more opportunities for traveling to work. Unfortunately, these homeless people are targets of government theft any time they try to shield themselves from the elements.

Not only do these laws hurt the homeless, but they lead to some twisted incentives. For example, this woman was arrested for not wanting to drive drunk. Considering how fatigue is the #2 (and drunkenness the #3) cause of car accidents, you’d think our “protectors” would want to reward people for having the foresight to sleep in their car. Instead, being responsible may cause you to spend the night in a jail cell.

Squatting laws. It’s not uncommon to see abandoned buildings. If a property is legitimately abandoned, then it is un-owned, and a candidate for homesteading. Of course, if the owner intended to return (in which case, it isn’t abandoned), “squatting” would be trespassing, an actual property crime. But in many places, particularly publicly “owned” and unused land, this is not the case.

If some homeless people find an abandoned building, they have every right to use it as a shelter. But the majority of cities have made this illegal, and police will sweep through these areas, pushing the homeless out and stealing their (limited) stuff! And then of course, that building will continue to go unused for years while the government decides what inefficient way to use it.

Consider Umoja Village in Miami, where homeless people created their own shanty town society on a vacant lot. About 50 people made Umoja their (drug and alcohol free) home, despite the government’s repeated attempts to shut it down. After an accidental fire, the city used it as a pretense to seize that land and make 11 arrests.

Prohibitions on camping. In Ashland, Oregon, for instance, it is illegal to “camp” in any public spaces. Being caught leads to having possessions seized, and up to 48 hours of community service. Really, community service? Do lawmakers not see the irony of this? If homeless people aren’t even allowed to sleep outdoors, then where can they go?

But wait, it gets worse! In Pensacola, Florida, it is illegal to cover oneself with blankets, cardboard, or newspapers in public.

“Quality of life” ordinances. These are laws that tend to be related to hygiene. The most well known of these laws are ones against public urination, but there are many others as well. Take this list from Cleveland, which includes such non-crimes as “unlawful congregation”, feeding birds, and being outside past “curfew”. Some of these laws are well intentioned, but they are vague enough to be twisted in ways that police can easily fabricate an excuse to target the homeless. It’s not hard to imagine a man picking through trash to be construed as “feeding the birds”.

But the public urination laws are, in my opinion, the worst of the bunch. Even homeless people need to go to the bathroom. Yes, the world would be a nicer place if we didn’t have piss-soaked alleys, but that’s just the way it is (perhaps if government economic policy wasn’t so harmful to the poor, this would be less of an issue; more on that later). And since public urination is grounds to be given sex offender status, government agents have “lawful authority” to permanently ruin a homeless person’s life, several times per day.

Open container laws. Most people probably think of open container laws as a nuisance that stopped them from drinking on the streets in college. Their stated purpose is to prevent the non-crime of “public intoxication”. Of course, this is used disproportionately against the homeless. In Key West, for example, the law is selectively enforced so that tourists tend to not be targeted.

Begging is prohibited. Among the more absurd of these laws, prohibiting begging is quite clearly intended solely to force homeless people to leave the city or else (in tandem with laws against feeding the homeless) starve to death. Due to acts of economic warfare against the poor such as the minimum wage, most homeless people have no way to make money except for panhandling. If laws like these don’t convince Americans of the gross inhumanity of government, I don’t know what will.

Prohibitions on loitering and sitting in public places. Again, these laws are designed to push homeless people outside of the cities in which they reside. These laws are so vague and have such a wide scope that selective enforcement is rather simple. Luckily, many court cases have challenged the constitutionality of these laws. Of course, rational people should be challenging the morality of them. Some people are. For example, angry residents protested a law that would have made sitting on the sidewalk illegal in Portland.

Laws against jaywalking. Here’s yet another non-crime being banned in order to steal from the public, and disproportionately the homeless. In Los Angeles, it is illegal to use a crosswalk when the red light is flashing, even though it has a countdown. This is a $197 infraction! Sure, jaywalking is not as overtly targeted against the homeless as other laws on this list, but the hefty fines are used to destroy their lives and their chances of getting themselves on their feet.

Banning homelessness. Admittedly, this is not widespread (yet), but in Columbia, South Carolina, it is outright illegal to be homeless within city limits. The law mandates that the homeless must either check into a homeless shelter outside of the city, leave town, or get thrown in jail. Well, at least they can go to the homeless shelter! Oh wait, it only has 240 beds, and Columbia has 1500 homeless people.

Perhaps you are reading this and thinking that some of these laws don’t sound too bad. And for most people, they aren’t (beyond the fact that all laws are merely threats of violence). But the combination of all these laws, plus escalating court costs, creates a trap for the homeless and poor. Go ahead and read the following two articles before returning to this post:

• Petty law enforcement vs. the poor from Reason
• Increasing court fees punish the poor from NPR

There’s no way I can explain it better than those articles, but for those of you who don’t have the time to go through them, I’ll summarize the main points.

Court costs are being increasingly borne by the defendants. This means that the poor are being squeezed financially more and more as they get robbed from by the state for victimless “crimes”. These “fines” (“armed robbery” when done by a civilian rather than a government functionary) can then lead to a form of debt slavery for poor people who can’t make payments on it. Many then go to jail.

But it’s not just laws that harm homeless people. There is also an attempt by the state to make the lives of the homeless as challenging as possible in general. For example, in Manteca, California, the city turns sprinklers on in parks at night so the homeless can’t sleep there. And in numerous locations, including Sarasota, Florida, the city is removing benches in order to prevent homeless people from congregating.

Finally, there is the rash of police beatings of homeless people. The most high profile of recent cases was that of Kelly Thomas, who was beaten to death by a group of police officers using a taser and a baton, literally, for no reason. The whole affair was caught on video (Warning: graphic and disturbing), and yet the police officers got acquitted. I wish I could say this was an isolated occurrence, but it’s not.

 

Economic Sanctions Against The Homeless

Besides the direct criminalization of homelessness, the government is also systematically launching an economic war against the less fortunate. It’s beyond the scope of this article to discuss all the ways in which the government screws over the poor, but I will touch upon some of the most egregious.

Criminalizing Charity and Food Sharing

Governments are doing everything they can to make sure that homeless people will starve to death if they don’t get out of their cities.

Yes, that is a bold statement. But it’s true. Many cities have made it illegal to feed the homeless, both on a small scale and in larger charitable events. Of course, this is always done with their “best interests at heart”, in order to prevent someone from giving out contaminated food.

In New York City, former mayor Michael Bloomberg outlawed donating meals to homeless shelters because they could not assess the salt, fat, and fiber content of the food. Because I’m sure that’s exactly what the homeless are concerned about. “I haven’t had a meal in 36 hours, but this food has half a gram too much sodium. What if I get hypertension?!”

What kind of monstrous psychopaths would enact laws like this?

To get a true feel for the scope of this heinous immorality, I suggest skimming through this 2010 report from the National Coalition for the Homeless. Local governments use numerous kinds of regulations, such as requiring a permit to serve food, limiting the number of people who can be served, and imposing zoning restrictions against charitable groups.

It’s not just food sharing restrictions either. Building codes and zoning laws make it harder for charities and shelters to operate. For example, in Lorain, Ohio, a shelter was shut down for not passing fire inspection.  Again, the noble intention is being used to justify an act of horrible immorality. Sure, there might be more risk in a fire, but the homeless people were choosing to stay there voluntarily. The fact that they had been operating for two years while in known violation of the fire code shows just how arbitrary the enforcement of these laws are.

The Rent is Too Damn High!

There is also a more indirect, but equally nefarious means of economic warfare that the government is waging upon the homeless, as well as the poor in general. Government economic policy (aka, threats and intimidation against those would interact with each other on a voluntary basis) both drastically increases the cost of housing as well as makes it more challenging for people to lift themselves out of poverty.

Why is it so hard to find affordable housing in America’s cities?

One of the greatest economic sanctions against the poor comes disguised specifically as a way to help (as usual). The stated intent of rent control policies is to keep the prices of housing down (by threatening with violence those who would charge rents above a certain arbitrary price) so that people with lower incomes can afford to live in a home for a “reasonable” price without “exploitation”.

And, as usual, this government policy causes significant harm to precisely those who, at least on the surface, it is designed to help. The actual effect of rent control policies is a shortage of adequate housing. These policies lead to decreased investment and a deterioration of housing quality. It causes existing homes to be converted into luxury apartments, condos, and office space so that landlords can charge a higher price. Because of this, rent controls actually lead to higher housing costs in sectors not covered under these laws (in addition to the shortages in the sectors that are covered).

By decreasing the availability and quality of low-income housing, rent control leads to more people out on the streets. With a near zero vacancy rate in low-income housing, those who are homeless would need enough money to afford the now higher priced, non-controlled housing units before they could find a place to live. As Assar Lindbeck said, bombing is the only thing that can destroy a city more effectively than rent control. Don’t believe him? Go here, and try to guess which images are of bombings and which are rent control. It’s not easy.

In addition, there are zoning and land use laws, as well as building codes, which ratchet up housing costs for just about everyone, as well as harm the tenant-landlord relationship.

For example, some laws prohibit people who are not blood or marriage-related from sharing a home. Building codes usually limit the number of residents who can live in a given apartment or building. This eliminates one of the most obvious ways for poor people to get a roof over their head. If a handful of homeless people could band together and chip in a smaller amount, they could live in a real, albeit cramped, apartment.

Not only that, but the many regulations regarding plumbing, electricity, safety, etc., while well-intentioned, drastically increase the cost of housing. Not only does it cost a lot of money to abide by these regulations, but they also become barriers to entry, resulting in less housing investment as well as decreased competition among construction companies. In fact, government regulations make up about 25% of the final cost of a new home.

The difference between high rent areas and low rent areas in the US is almost entirely explained by the zoning laws in the high cost areas. Since 1970, the increase in housing prices is mostly due to the difficulty in obtaining regulatory approval to build new homes. The fact is, cities with high regulation costs are not responsive to demand for new housing construction.

One of the most evil zoning laws I’ve ever heard is in Madison, Wisconsin (and also Washington D.C.), where it is illegal for a building to be taller than the Capitol building. This drastically decreases the amount of available housing, thus increasing its price. Anyone walking around downtown will notice the huge number of homeless people here. It is inexcusable that in a city with a population of only 250 thousand, nearly 3500 people will be spending a night in a shelter per year, and over a thousand students in the school district don’t have a home. If more housing units were available, there would be far fewer homeless people.

And then of course, there’s “eminent domain”, a euphemism for stealing someone’s land. Not only does the government forcibly make people homeless through eminent domain, but they will also seize formal title to unused properties. They will then hold these lots out of use, often for years at a time, all while prosecuting any “squatters”.

Cutting Off the Bottom Rungs

If poor people had fewer restrictions on how they could earn an income, not as many of them would be unemployed and forced to live on the streets.

Government (often with the support of large swathes of the misinformed public) has decided that it isn’t okay for two people to engage in mutually beneficial economic relationships on a voluntary basis unless certain conditions are met.

The most obvious example of this is the minimum wage, which cuts off the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder by outlawing employment relationships where one party is paid less than some arbitrary amount of money.

Let’s say there is a minimum wage of $10 per hour. If someone can only produce $5 per hour’s worth of output, an employer would be out of his mind to hire that person. And I imagine that unemployed homeless people would be seen as a fairly risky investment, especially compared to, say, the white son of a wealthy family. Since the employer would have to pay either of them $10 per hour regardless, the choice is obvious. Without a minimum wage, the homeless man could offer to work for $4 per hour and then actually have an income. As they prove themselves, they will surely become more valuable and get paid more to reflect it.

Besides the minimum wage, there are a whole slew of regulations surrounding cottage industries which make it far more challenging for poor people to compete (not to mention raising prices for everyone).

Different industries have their own separate regulations, but a lot of potential entrepreneurial opportunities are eliminated by government extortion rackets. In order for someone to get involved in many industries that poor people might have skills in, they must acquire a license. This usually involves some form of mandatory training and paying a tribute to our bureaucratic overlords.

Why can’t someone with the right skills just cut hair, operate a food cart, or have a taxi service, without going through a whole process? If a homeless person has a car, driving people around for a small fee would be an easy way for them to get off their feet. Too bad they don’t have a “medallion”, and can’t afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for one.

More controversially, entire industries have been outlawed, including prostitution and drugs that are politically out of favor. These may not be the most “wholesome” solutions, but oftentimes becoming a prostitute, even just for the occasional income, is enough to help someone get by. These laws turn innocent poor people into “criminals”.

 

Conclusion

Homelessness is a large and growing problem in America. Most people just assume that homelessness is inevitable or that they should just “get a job”.

Unfortunately, government policies have made that far more difficult. And to add insult to injury, cities are doing their utmost to harass the homeless and make their lives as difficult as possible.