Anagorist platform

List of platform planks stolen from the left-libertarian platform.

Copyright, Patents, and Trademarks

Intellectual property is a by-product of the necessity of earning a living. It is the kludge created to answer the question “how can I do something creative and get paid for it.” An inevitable side-effect has been a “gold rush” mentality that has more to do with staking claims than with creating things or making discoveries, in which the phrase “you’re fired” is a registered trademark. The only independent artist is an amateur artist. The same goes for writers, scientists, inventors, etc.  The solution to the problem is BIG.

Free speech

Free speech means zero tolerance for censorship, including when the censor is part of the private sector.

Sexism

Sexism is a by-product of the fact that economic independence is a privilege rather than a right.

Free Trade

An oxymoron. Free means you don’t have to pay. Trade means you do.

Debt

A transferrable form of indentured servitude. In indentured servitude, the party to whom one is indentured is one’s creditor. In the modern debt regime, a worker who is in debt (to anyone) is less free to “take this job and shove it.” This is why, as a J.O.B. applicant, “no credit is worse than bad credit.”

Banking

Like any industry, it serves a useful purpose, and like any industry, it’s best done as a cooperative.

Immigration

First off, we call it migration. Our position: No borders. No one is illegal. Neoliberalism deregulates the flow of capital and goods, and ties the hands of member states to do otherwise, while the same states throttle migration with large visa fees (which lead to indentured servitude), “managed migration,” hoops to jump through, etc.

Military intervention

Some sovereign entities are more sovereign than others. Sovereignty is not the answer.

Taxes

Not right, but not a front-burner issue.

Victimless crimes

Another oxymoron.

Death penalty

Incompatible with due process. There will never be an infallible due process, therefore capital punishment is unconscionable.

Social services

Social provision of services, i.e. mutual aid.

Corporations

Not a good thing, but the central problem is the profit motive, not the corporate form of organization.

Elections

Better to have non-binding public opinion polls. But democracy may be best for small groups. Federalism is the only way to implement organization on a large scale.

Contracts

I tend to avoid them. In theory, contracts protect both parties. In practice, the vast majority of contracts are “boilerplate,” drafted by one party (inevitably an institution) and offered to the other party (an individual, see thick individualism) on a “take it or leave it” basis. Even equitable contracts are based on pessimistic assumptions about human nature, as the “protect both parties” thing is “from each other.” I’m not impressed with contractarianism, but I’m considering inventing “thick contractarianism.”

Secrecy

Nothing good ever resulted from secrecy. Reverse engineering must be used as a weapon against secrecy.

Privacy

Privacy is not the same thing as secrecy. The latter applies to institutions, while the former applies to individuals. Privacy is a worthy, but lost, cause. It is becoming impossible for technological reasons, and I don’t think it is possible for policy (or social norms) to trump technology. Extreme transparency in some form is inevitable. The nightmare that is well worth guarding against is that extreme transparency should take an “asymmetric” form. I propose pubwan as a strategy for dealing with this.

Pollution

Perhaps no definitive solution short of primitivism, but partial solutions require reduce, reuse, recycle, IN THAT ORDER. Small is beautiful.

Licensing

An entry barrier, to be sure. One of the few areas where libertarianism actually speaks up for the underdog.

Police and prosecuters

As they say in the opening credits to Law and Order:

In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders.

Libertarians, of course, object on “collectivist” grounds, to the phrase “people are represented.” I object on the grounds that police and prosecutors (being “archists”) are human-nature essentialists, which is why in cop culture, “individual” tends to be used as a pejorative. While not a statist, I think the idea of checks and balances has merit, so (at least for the time being) I’m generally supportive of the adversarial legal system. Prosecutors have defense attorneys as adversaries. But whom have the police?

International development

Development of increased sophistication I can get behind, but growth for its own sake is not sustainable. International implies nations, so let’s stick with development without adjectives.

Education

I’m for education. I hate ignorance. Obviously it’s best to de-institutionalize education, and failing that, to tip the balance of power as far as possible in the direction of joint faculty/student governance. I’m especially a big fan of education as an end in itself—enough of this right-wing fixation on “practical education.” There’s a place for on-the-job training. That place is the (hopefully syndicalist industrial) union-based apprenticeship, which is open to all who are interested.

Domestic slavery

Had to look that one up: “A civil relationship in which one person has absolute power over the life, fortune, and liberty of another.” That’s horrendous. Every effort must be made to rescue persons in such straits; pacifism be damned.

Abortion

I vote pro-choice.

Healthcare

If it is a privilege, then expect the positive correlation between income and life expectancy to grow stronger; one of many things I categorize as nightmare scenarios. If that makes me a collectivist, so be it. Medical research (like all research) should be nonproprietary.