Second Best Rules for Public Property and the Solution to Immigration Problems (One More Time)

I.

Given that public property exists, under democratic conditions, its management will produce (unlike private property) permanent conflicts between men on how "best" they should be run. To manage them is just as much an economic affair as it is to construct them. Administrating deals with the actions of men, and action is the foundation of economic activity. This administrating of public property will be based on political sway and therefore not based in the economic reality of scarcity, and accordingly to the genuine market demand and supply that is present.

To administrate public property, however, by default any of the State's actions (e.g., expelling drug users) or inactions (e.g., allowing junk to pile up with no cleaning) will abuse the helplessly robbed taxpayers. In distinct contrast to governmentally run property, private owners can justly implement their own rules and administration preferences. Customers that enter this private property do so voluntarily because they see it advantageous to do so. They, hence, benefit ex ante. Private businesses that implement rules and administer their property have to do this, though, to please the actual demands of consumers. The free market incentive structure will also pressure these businesses to do such inline with the underline economic realities. All of this is absence under statist a setting, of course.

By necessity any public property will be inferior to private property. The same is true with the production of various services. State officials and workers, motivated like everyone else, are self-interested and under the disutility of labor (i.e., men find labor painful and want less of it). They will therefore will want as much tax revenue as is possible and to produce or "serve" as cheaply as they can get away with. While the cost of their so-called "products" or "services" will continually rise, the quality will fall. Absence competitive conditions, innovation and cutting down on costs will deteriorate. With no profit-and-loss signals, no pricing signaling, allocations will always be distorted.

At times, nonetheless, you have to take certain things as a given. There are real world realities and treating statist public property as a complete slum, devoid of all common sense in maintenance and order, would only lead to a world that would increase the harm and decrease the living standards in the daily life of ordinary men and their families. That this position is becoming more common in libertarian circles is disappointing and, in my view, extremely damaging.

Surely it is better that the State uses its stolen tax money to build a public library than a nuclear weapon. Libertarians should not take a view of "I don't care because the State is doing it." Somewhat similarly, it is better that given public education exists, it is best that they have the ability to kick out hoodlums than not being able to. Government mailmen should actually deliver the mail to where it is meant to go versus not. Should the government mailman, after all, just dump the mail in the trash or actually deliver it to the proper locations? Firemen should do the job they are put there to do. The public libraries should be able to kick out bums who disturb the tax paying victims of the library who wish to use it. Hospitals should be run in the best shape that they can. (A very large number of hospitals near the border have closed down because a statist open door policy in regards to immigration. I can find no reason for someone saying that this is acceptable.)

The view that the running or maintenance of public property should amount to nothing is to cause double harm to ordinary people. They not only get hit in the head to be forced to pay, at the point of the gun, tax money, but they also get public property that is allowed to fall into the gutter. This is the kind of view, if I am not mistaken, that Dr. Walter Block has. Arguably he is the leading scholar of libertarianism today, along with Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and justifiably so. I find Dr. Block a source of wisdom and courage, from my reading of some of his writings and by listening to some of his online lectures. So I much admire and respect him, but I cannot accept his view on this matter. Making life worse is not the moral thing to do. Real people get hurt and makes life just more difficult. And this is why, as some libertarians actually believe, worse is not better.

Now I personally do not believe Block has a nihilistic attitude or view of the world (or thinks that "worse is better"), but I do believe that a fair number who subscribe to or share his view do, at least when it comes to the current statist world and its design. Although, unlike many of them, he believes one can support the "lesser of evil" in political elections. But, if I, as the slave, can pick between the lesser of evil; then why not the lesser of evil when it comes to the management of public property?

In the "Blockian" free-for-all idea of public property, if a man "homesteaded" a few signs on the government road----if he took them home, should that be okay? Even if it creates many hazards? Tomorrow if the State were to vanish, there would be no case against this man. That is tomorrow, not today.

Another way to look at this, is this. Let's go to the classic book Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt and the example of a young yob who throws a brick through a baker's window. What is being done is a criminal activity, of course. The boy should be punished. He should, at the very least, be forced to pay for a new window. It is an evil that should be prevented. But one evil is not equal to another evil. You cannot say that this act is as evil if the boy were to kill the baker. It would also be an evil to punish the boy who broke the window in the same way as if he killed the baker. They are not equivalents. It is therefore less evil if he causes less evil than more. Or imagine the boy stole the baker's car. If he is able to get it back, it is better that the criminal damages the car less than more. The baker would prefer, undoubtedly, to get his prized car back in one piece than none at all. So would all of us.

In a like-manner the above parallels a look into the various operations of the State. Thus, if the government runs the roads, it is better that they are run decently (for government "standards") than to run them in the worse way possible. Running them in the worst way possible would result in more accidents and fatalities. Something that should be wanted to be avoided, both in a statist society and a non-statist society. A State that snatches your kids and forces them to government school prison camps should do less damage to them than more. That is, the damage should be minimized as much as possible. Now try arguing against that! (Against minimizing the damage that those camps cause.)

As Murray N. Rothbard wrote in "What to Do until Privatization Comes" (Making Economic Sense, pp 146 – 150, sorry not online as far as I can tell), this opposite type of outlook is immoral and neither is it any kind of good strategy in the promotion of libertarianism. It could even cause a backlash.

He wrote that there are two types of statist activities. One is providing people with goods and services. The second is of direct coercion against individuals. Privatization is the goal of the first. The latter cannot be privatized and must be completely abolished. Short of the latter being abolished, Rothbard wrote, it is best that it is as inefficient an operation as it can be. We do not want efficient tax collectors! As for the first, however, we all should want to see the competitive free market provide these goods and services. Until that day comes, then what? Given that they exist with the State's monopolistic privileges, which will by necessity make these services or goods vastly inferior to the free market, they should be run "efficiently and" as "businesslike a manner as possible."

Murray Rothbard goes further in saying that libertarians have to reject the  idea that public property should be run in a free-for-all with completely open access as "the law of the jungle." To quote him in more length:

For example: the government, owner of the public schools, does not have the regular right [today] of any private school owner to kick out incorrigible students, or to keep order in the class, or to teach what parents want to be taught. The government, in contrast to any private street or neighborhood owner, has no right to prevent bums from living on and soiling the street and harassing and threatening innocent citizens; instead, the bums have the right to free “speech” and a much broader term, free “expression,” which they of course would not have in a truly private street, mall, or shopping center.

Other essays by Rothbard have spoken on how once this kind of standard (open access and egalitarian principles) are applied to public property and the State it then becomes that much easier to force it on private property and individuals. An ideology of men in a society that sees that it is right that the State adopt such is an ideology that no longer discriminates or differentiates. Then the line between private and public property can start to blur. Inroads made on private property start to subject them to this ideology. And today the sad fact of life is that we all do see this. No longer does much of the discourse of men think of a restaurant, store, mall, etc. as a private establishment that is private property. Today it is thought of as "public" property.

Does this relate to immigration? Yes, because public property has this kind of open access and egalitarian ideology. It has also been forced on private property owners by the State. The remaining focus in this blog entry to The Paleo Blog will focus on this issue.

II.

Often anti-capitalists attack capitalism because of its "anarchy." The anarchy is seen through how production in capitalism is completely spontaneous by acting men. There is no central dictator guiding the process along. It is done through free individuals. Only this anarchy in which they speak actually brings order, as counterintuitive or paradoxical as it may at first seem. This process, it is interesting to note, is why it is sometimes hard to get the minds of the public to grasp why the free market is always superior to statist interventionism.

On the other hand, what exists de facto on public property truly is an anarchy (chaos). Its existence today creates a revolving door displaying this (bad form of) anarchy. Private property and the private sector does not have this, but to the extent that it has it is de jure created by the State. Take a look at the public park in a big city. At night it displays its true essence of State-chaos or State-"anarchy." It is reverse in comparison to the private Wal-Mart at night or the private park at Disney World, for instance. Now it is incorrect to reply to this to say that private property is a revolving door because it is open attracting customers. As far at that goes, the reply would be absolutely correct in commercial private property.*

At the same time, though, it is not a revolving door symmetrical to the State. It could not be. A private establishment that had no management of its property or no "law" would be looted and soon disappear. It would cause chaos. Another example would be in its hiring practice. This, too, could not be a revolving door. That is, if they want to stay in business.

Beyond the business or commercial world, private communities would obviously be the most exclusive away from crowds, noise, and strangers. This has become less true today by the State's desire to control the individual and expand its parasitic existence. It wants to make sure that "its" public property extends to all corners of "its" territory so as to make each individual household isolated and easy to control. It thus creates easy and open access. By having this access, it then expands the revolving door to all areas of society. This not only creates an immigration problem because now no longer can people decide (1) not to associate their private community with certain people, (2) close it to strangers who walk into their private community, (3) or close it away from the hustle and bustle of the center of their town or city, but it also isolates individuals and individual family households to atomize them from all social constraints and social-cultural intermediate institutions, which serve as a blockage to State control and power.

A single household does not have a revolving door to its entrance. One that did, i.e., one that had the door wide open and most likely had some goodies inside visible to the outside, would attract criminals.** This does not appear to change in its correctness applied to the macrocosmic level as it relates to public property and a nation-State. Implied in this is that given that public property does exist and that the State does exist, its control regarding access should end its free-for-all and be replaced with those that most directly connected with each given public property. The more this control zooms into those most tied into such-in-such property, the better. The ultimate goal being that it zoom in all the way until each public property becomes private.

Subnotes to this section

*[It might be important to note, even in attracting customers, the private business, nonetheless, would still not be a revolving door. Today it is impossible for businesses to discriminate. But in a free society they could. Excessively rude customers would be more likely in a free society to be kicked out compared to today under statist conditions. Businesses would want to please their regular customers by providing them a good environment.]

**[In purely economic terms, private communities would want to "let in" those that would increase and not decrease property values. They would not have just an interest in the here-and-now, but in the future because they own the capital of their respected properties. This is something that Hoppe argues in regards to immigration in comparing a monarchy to a democracy. Public property under the former would be more "conservative" relative to democracy because a classical monarchy owns the capital stock akin to a more private form of government versus democracy's temporary caretakers which make it more akin to a public (or almost unowned---as spoken about above) government. Although, I wonder if it is worse than what Hoppe deduces. In general theory he is correct from my limited reasoning, but democracy's caretaker is not just some kind of king-like caretaker. The filling of government politicians is more "spread out," so to speak, causing more calculation problems and disincentives for any "good" government. So they not only want to loot now because they might not get a chance in the future, but if they do not loot now another politician might for his "buddies" (e.g., special interest groups). So down with democracy.]

III.

Now I would like to go over some of the general ideological reasons or temperaments that some libertarians reject to the above proposal. The first has already been covered. This is the notion that public property should be run as a cesspool. They go from the notion "of here" to "privatization now" with nothing in the middle, even though that middle will sadly remain for the time being or exist until the latter (privatization) comes. They become indifferent to this "middle." A middle that can cause different levels of harm or frustration to the lives of men.

A second reason, that I have observed, is to attack this because, they say, it implies some kind of so-called "nationalism." But this is not implied in the above analysis. All that is suggested is that public property should be run more business-like and inline with the tax payers who are forced to pay for them-----i.e., to get some use out of that stolen loot and to minimize the damage of it until one day, hopefully, all of that public property is turned into private.

With that said, I personally fail to see what is wrong with the concept of "nation" or "nationality" (as long as we disconnect it with statism or a forced "nationalism"). If this makes me un-libertarian, then I guess so was "Mr. Libertarian," Murray Rothbard, un-libertarian. As he explained in his "Nations By Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State" [pdf] in the Journal of Libertarian Studies, we are not only motivated or "bond to each other only by the nexus of market exchange." There is such thing as family, language, and culture. "Every person," Rothbard wrote,

is born into one or several overlapping communities, usually including an ethnic group, with specific values, cultures, religious beliefs, and traditions. He is generally born into a “country.” He is always born into a specific historical context of time and place, meaning neighborhood and land area.

He said that a "'nation' cannot be precisely defined; [but] it is a complex and varying constellation of different forms of communities, languages, ethnic groups, or religions" and that a nation "is a complex of subjective feelings of nationality based on objective realities." Governments, it is true, have often developed from or out of nations, in a manner of speaking. Not always, though. Sometimes a State forms comprising various nationalities and holds them together artificially. Libertarians, Rothbard wrote, should welcome secession if these nationalities try to break off.  The more this is done, the better. Secession should be all the way done to individuals. We should also understand that nationality does make a difference. (It has in the world.) For example, he writes, what should the language be for a given nation-State when it comes to the "street signs, telephone books, court proceedings, or school classes of the area?"

(One issue that Rothbard mentions in the essay is the problem of citizenship when an "illegal" baby is born in a given nation-State. The solution is the one that Rep. Ron Paul offers. It should be to reject automatic citizenship. This will put an end to the parents receiving welfare, which consequently helps to subsidize immigration.)

The hostility to the idea, concept, or analysis of "nation" sometimes comes from some sort of rejection to any "group." Including a group that forms a sort of nationality, a group in a particular city, or even family. (A business too is the joining of individuals in a group.) It seems to come from the attitude that groups only exist in the "abstract," whereas individuals exist in reality. So, for that reason, we cannot talk about groups. This can get to the point of silliness. It is this that makes the direction of how to reply difficult. A group of people is just a group of individuals. The group does not exist apart from the individuals that compose it, but this does not mean that groups cannot be formed or do not exist. The world would exist in chaos if man could not make categorical (group) statements about things, man as a being included. Everything would be random. We could not say that men exist, women exist, blondes exist, and so forth.

Insofar as a libertarian says that only individuals have rights, they are correct. All human beings have a right to their person and property. This consistent moral or ethical code logically rejects the idea of collective "rights." And when a libertarian says that we should judge individual persons qua unique individuals and treat them as such is also correct. But then to make the jump of group egalitarianism, or something of this nature, is something quite different. That is a "revolt against nature."

As the reader can clearly see, I take a "Hoppeian" position on immigration and agree with Murray Rothbard on the subject, meaning, and importance of "nation." The solution to the immigration problem is to be found in section II. Outside and independent of this more libertarian analysis, I happen to partly agree with Mr. Patrick Buchanan (see his books State of Emergency and The Death of the West) on what makes a framework for liberty (and a division of labor) possible, and how it interrelates to culture.

Today immigration is one unrelenting wave, and this is what makes it different than before. A people with different allegiances and a different language. Rightfully or wrongfully (I believe rightfully) the vast majority of the public does not want this. (Xenophobic, or whatever other smear term wished to be used, or not.) The trouble is that public property is what opens the doors, in particular the doors to their various communities. It destroys the freedom of men. As is so often the case, the interests of ordinary men and those that fill the State are reverse.

As Mr. Llewellyn Rockwell said in the introduction to The Irrepressible Rothbard:

Everybody with a noggin understands that millions storming across the southern border would cause an economic, political, and cultural upheaval. Libertarians should also understand that such a policy would, on net, make us less free, especially because the welfare state slathers tax dollars on all comers, and because, thanks to civil rights, minority aliens automatically have rights to trample on property and privacy, rights properly denied to the majority of natives.

(Rockwell continues that it was this that caused Murray Rothbard to revisit the issue. That Rothbard thought it was "the central government [that] uses liberal immigration policies ... as a means of unsettling bourgeois property holders and increasing the power of government.")

The unrelenting wave of immigrants do not have to assimilate. This causes a lot of resentments and hurts the bond between people, which is not just governed by the "cash nexus." (Life, after all, is not purely economic.) The language barrier is getting deeper. And I would not call bilingualism in any society a healthy thing. No more than a society that has a barter or partial barter (e.g., more than one hard moneys) economy. Both are somewhat equivalent in terms of an analogy. Both hinder the development of a complex division of labor; be it barter problems of double coincidence of wants or language communication problems. There is another way they fit as an analogy, as far as I can tell, and that is any developed society that has either of the two can only be caused by a Leviathan State.

A third reason is that many libertarians only look for a "formula." They like exact questions and exact answers. Everything, to them, is like a geometric puzzle. Each puzzle requires a perfect geometric solution. Since there is no "rational" way to say how public property should exactly be run (in relation to immigration or not), it should not be run at all----again, even though it exists and will continue to exist in its monopolistic form for the time being by the force of the gun. But there is an answer: The only way to specify how public property should be run, given that they exist, is through decentralization and a libertarian temperament of common sense. Many libertarians do not like that. There is not always a formula for this, almost (in the good sense) "conservative," temperament.

Of course, public property is on shaky grounds. Its existence is illegitimate. Evil and destructive ideas can be implemented on public property, but a libertarian temperament should be able to discern. It should fight against those evils; including the immoral idea that public property should be run into the gutter (which can only cause harm). That is the purpose of having this temperament. But decentralize, always.  All the way until each piece of public property becomes private. More decentralization results in the tendency to run public property as it would if it were private (by being in the hands of those by it). Freedom is the ultimate answer to all questions of the political and judicial.

IV.

Now, personally, I do not expect anything to be done in terms of immigration and public property. It is not in the federal government's interests to do much of anything----democratic government in particular. The real solution to the problem is privatization and as quickly as possible. Let the "borders" of private property work. That will not only bring the good ideal of freedom of movement, but also eliminate any forced integration which creates hostility in society and violates property rights. It distorts the market. This, though must be admitted, will not happen any time soon. Sometimes, if I am to be fully honest, it is this that does push me to a more "Blockian" position on immigration. I become my biggest skeptic.

Now if this is to be ever truly solved on day it will probably be (with my pessimist side speaking) when the United States Empire collapses. The first trouble with this, though, is that the less any kind of cultural bond can be formed, the less likely any division of labor will be strong enough to introduce a truly free stateless society. The second trouble is that a natural aristocracy, in which H. L. Mencken spoke, needs to exist. Freedom will not necessarily be what is called for when that collapse happens. The average man is content in whatever the present order of things is. He just goes along with the flow. He finds it hard to discern right from wrong when he is a part of that flow. He is also unable to see that the culture is in a major crisis, and that the West is dying. The democratic mob is easy to be in contentment, and this contentment is fine to go along with tyranny.

There are reasons to be more optimistic than before, however. There exist men of great stature talking about the evils of statism. Classical liberal ideas are coming alive. Dr. Ron Paul is one of those great men of stature. He is talking about the evils of the federal reserve, fiat money, empire, and socialism. Dr. Paul is against "open borders." There are also centers of great erudition promoting the cause for liberty, especially the Mises Institute. More people than ever are reading Austro-libertarian literature. This is very true for the young, like myself, even with my limited capabilities. The ideals of liberty are snowballing. And it is ideas where the battle is at.

Murray Rothbard, the joyous libertarian that he was, was a long-term optimist. While I love Rothbard, this is something I do not share as much. That puts me into the more doom-and-gloom camp of Albert Jay Nock. But looking at the Ron Paul Revolution, Rothbard, as is usually the case, might have been right all along.

Some Online Resources:

• The Paleo Blog's "The Problems of Pro-Trespassing Libertarians" --- Has many external links as well. Plus see follow-up.
• "Nations By Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State" by Murray Rothbard
• "On Free Immigration and Forced Integration" by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
• "Natural Order, the State, and the Immigration Problem"
• Immigration Debate in the Journal of Libertarian Studies (pro & con): "Are There Grounds for Limiting Immigration?" by Julian Simon; "A Libertarian Argument Against Opening Borders" by John Hospers; "A Libertarian Case for Free Immigration" by Walter Block; "A Libertarian Theory of Free Immigration" by Jesus Huerta de Soto; "Immigration Into A Free Society" by Tibor R. Machan; "The Case for Free Trade and Restricted Immigration" by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
• "Nationalism and Liberalism: Friends or Foes?" by David Conway
  
• VDare.com's "Libertarians and Immigration Archive"
  
• David Gordon on Peter Brimelow's Alien Nation
• Download Alien Nation