My first ever protest march … was against the 1981 Springbok Tour.
I don’t remember the date or the details. It was such a long time ago.
1981. Were you for or against the Springbok Tour?
Oh, I can’t even remember. 1981? Er … I don’t really know.
But I remember more than John Key!
Here are two libertarian axioms.
1. The non-aggression non-initiation of force (NIOF) principle.
2. Private property rights.
The two libertarian axioms CONTRADICT each other. (As I recently explained here and here.)
You have four choices.
1. Deny the contradiction. (Objectivist libertarianism)
2. Maintain the contradiction.
3. Reject the non-aggression non-initiation of force (NIOF) principle. (Christian libertarianism)
4. Reject private property rights. (Anarcho-pacificism)
The choice is up to you.
Yesterday’s post was about a Cosmic Corner brand of fake cannabis. Back in July 2011, Juicy Puff was suddenly ordered off the shelves by the government and temporarily removed from sale after it was found to be contaminated with phenazepam.
Here’s what Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne had to say at the time. (Emphasis mine.)
DRUG REFORM ON THE WAY
Associate Minister Peter Dunne today said finding phenazepam in a second product within a week reinforced the problem of suppliers being able to put unregulated drugs on the market.
“The people in this industry are generally not trustworthy or reliable,” he said.
“They are fast-buck merchants who, on the one hand claim to be offering a legal and safe alternative to illicit drugs, then throw their hands in the air and say they do not know what is in their products when our testing catches them out.
“They cannot have it both ways.”
Dunne said restrictions that would curb the marketing and advertising of synthetic cannabis products were just weeks away, and would be made through amendments to the Misuse of Drugs Act.
“In the longer term the solution we are looking at is reversing the onus of proof and making the manufacturers and suppliers prove their products are safe before they get anywhere near the market.
Currently, authorities have to prove such products were unsafe before they could be taken off the market. “We are doing that successfully, but it is not an ideal process. It is cart before horse and the restrictions that will come in the next few weeks are an important step in addressing these issues.”
The following month, in August 2011, Parliament voted to pass the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act (No 2) 2011. This amendment enabled Peter Dunne to start issuing temporary drug bans called Temporary Class Drug Notices.
Remember how Peter Dunne sold us the follow-up Psychoactive Substances Act?
Here‘s what he told the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs when he took the world stage in Vienna, Austria earlier in 2013. (Emphasis mine.)
While we have placed more than 30 synthetic cannabis-like substances under temporary bans, but we are aware that there are potentially hundreds more that could replace them.
Last month, the New Zealand Government introduced new legislation into our Parliament that will end the game of catch-up once and for all.
We are going to reverse the onus of proof so the manufacturers of these products have to prove they are safe before they can bring them on to the market.
He said the same thing in 2012. It’s what he’s said all along, time and again. In his capacity as a Cabinet minister. On behalf of the New Zealand government. (Emphasis mine. Click the banner below for the official statement from the Beehive.)
As promised, we are reversing the onus of proof. If they cannot prove that a product is safe, then it is not going anywhere near the marketplace
None of these products will come to market if they have not been proven safe.
I think I’ve said enough to establish beyond reasonable doubt that Peter Dunne, the National government’s Associate Minister of Health, promised us this on behalf of the current National government.
Would you feel happy purchasing and consuming a product that had been proven safe? Many of you will answer, yes. What reason do you have to think the products now on the market are safe? Well, none of the products now on the market would be on the market if they hadn’t been proven safe, right? The National government promised us that that simply wouldn’t happen.
But the government has broken its promise. None of the products now on the market have been proven safe. None of the products now on the market has been tested. They are only now being tested. On you, the consumer. And some of the products the government approved for sale have since been proven unsafe.
Is it morally right to test untested drugs on people after promising them that they’ve already been tested and proven safe? Is it morally right to test untested drugs on people after first having obtained their misinformed consent? It’s certainly not legal.
Here’s Section 10 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990.
Right not to be subjected to medical or scientific experimentation
Every person has the right not to be subjected to medical or scientific experimentation without that person’s consent.
The National government is in breach of the Act. Someone should take these conscienceless psychopaths to court. They’re criminally insane.
What’s the damage? Kidney failure is the damage. A government approved product called Kryptonite has caused some test subjects to experience
Kryptonite: Kidney failure, hallucinations, vomiting, chest pains.
This according to the Dominion Post.
Back when it was still on the official records, and approved for sale from approved outlets, this is what the MoH told us about Kryptonite.
Product name Psychoactive substance(s) Quantity Company name Physical address Status Interim product approval number Kryptonite Red SGT-7 25mg per gram Lightyears Ahead Limited Unit 4/24, Airborne Road, Albany, Auckland Under consideration P0058 Kryptonite Green SGT-19 40mg per gram Lightyears Ahead Limited Unit 4/24, Airborne Road, Albany, Auckland Under consideration P0059
What are SGT-7 and SGT-19? The Ministry of Health has never told us, and neither have the manufacturers or suppliers, even though Section 58 the Psychoactive Substances Act says
Restrictions and requirements relating to labelling of approved products
…
(2) A label for an approved product must include the following information in a prominent position on the label:
(a) a list of the active ingredients of the product and the appropriate quantity of each active ingredient;
But the Ministry of Health has let slip (here) that SGT-7 is
ADB-CHICA
and SGT-19 is
4-fluoro-AM2201
So now you know. No, wait …
You’ve never previously heard of ADB-CHICA or 4-fluoro-AM2201, right? Well, neither have I, and neither has Google. We still don’t know WTF-7 and WTF-19 they are.
Suppose that someone other than the manufacturers and the Ministry of Obfuscation knew the chemical identities (structures) of these substances? Could they have reasonably guessed that they would cause serious adverse effects such as kidney failure? Well, it’s reasonable to think so. Indeed, I sounded the alarm here a few months ago.
The compound on the left is AB-005 which has interim approval. The compound on the right is XLR-11 which was banned as from 13 July 2012 by Peter Dunne. They are structurally similar. They are analogues.
The problem here is that XLR-11 has been linked to acute kidney injury in some users. Now the Ministry of “Health” has seen fit to approve an analogue of a suspected kidney toxin for human use. But it’s legal so it must be safe, right? Yeah right.
But it turns out there’s a problem in my reasoning. You see, we can take an educated guess that analogues of known nephrotoxins are quite likely unsafe. But we don’t know which structural similarities count. Some wise heads in the online drug-using community have suggested that the culprit is not the backbone of the XLR-11 molecule (i.e., the ring structures) but the fluoropentyl side-chain. And there’s at least three products with interim approval that contain a fluoropentyl side-chain, viz., 5F-PB-22, (S)-N-(1-amino-3, 3dimethyl-1-oxobutan-2-yl)-1-(5-fluoropentyl-1H-indole-3-carboxamide and 1-(5-fluoropentyl)-3-(4-fluoro-1-naphthoyl)indole.
However, in the event it’s none of the suspects above that have so far caused kidney failure in some users. It’s one or both of ADB-CHICA or 4-fluoro-AM2201. And what this means is that we cannot make a reasonable educated guess as to which synthetic cannabinoids are possible nephrotoxins. They’re all suspect.
The National government is conducting medical experiments on New Zealand citizens without their informed consent. Really, they’re only one step away from the Tuskagee syphilis experiment and two steps away from the Nazi human experimentation of Josef Mengele.
Never again!
The National government is criminally insane. And must be stopped.
Your freedom ends where my nose begins.
Various permutations of this quote have been incorrectly attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, but it was actually written by Zechariah Chafee (pictured above).
Zechariah Chafee, Jr. (December 7, 1885 – February 8, 1957) was an American judicial philosopher and civil libertarian. An advocate for free speech, he was described by Senator Joseph McCarthy as “dangerous” to the United States.
In June 1919 the Harvard Law Review published an article by Zechariah Chafee, Jr. titled “Freedom of Speech in War Time” and it contained a version of the expression spoken by an anonymous judge.
Each side takes the position of the man who was arrested for swinging his arms and hitting another in the nose, and asked the judge if he did not have a right to swing his arms in a free country. “Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.”
According to the Quote Investigator, the genesis of this adage can be traced back more than thirty-five additional years. Several variants of the expression were employed by alcohol Prohibitionists. For decades the saying was used at pro-Prohibition rallies and meetings. Such is the colourful history of this libertarian adage. But I digress.
Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.
Your freedom ends where my nose begins.
Consider the meaning of these sayings. They tell us about property rights. Libertarians are huge fans of private property rights. Libertarians own. Be it self-ownership, ownership of tangible goods or even ownership of so-called intellectual property. Private property is essential to libertarianism. But what is the essence of private property? Restrictions on your rights and freedoms, that’s what. Your freedom ends. How very unlibertarian!
Back in 2002, Winona Ryder was convicted of shoplifting $5,500 worth of merchandise from a Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue. According to the Onion, one of the terms of her probation was
May no longer walk into stores and just take things.
This is also one of the terms of living in a libertarian society. Kiss goodbye your freedoom to walk into stores and just take things!
Libertarianism is all about sacrificing some of our rights and liberties—e.g., the right to swing our arms and the liberty to walk into stores and just take things—for the security of private property rights.
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security deserves neither and will lose both.
Suppose I copy a blog post that a libertarian claims is his intellectual property. Suppose I contend that people cannot own pieces of writing because copying is not theft. God creates. Man makes alternative arrangements. There is nothing new under the sun.
In my copying the blog post, I do not touch the libertarian or threaten to touch him in any way. Nonetheless, the libertarian proceeds to initiate force against me or calls the police to get them to initiate force against me (or, at least, bloviates in my general direction). Libertarians are fine doing this and therefore libertarians are huge fans of initiating force.
The initiation of force or the threat to initiate force is the mechanism that underlies all private property claims.
It’s a terrible thing that some libertarians can be driven to initiate force—even deadly force—because of bad metaphysics.
In part one of my series of what libertarians are huge fans of, the topic was coercion. They loves them some coercion. In today’s episode, we will discuss libertarian’s second great love: the initiation of force.
Yesterday, Reason ran a post by Sheldon Richman, who–as Sarah Burnside points out–bears a striking intellectual resemblance to twitter user 1st year Phil major. In the post, Richman explains that most people already agree with libertarians. How so?
It’s quite simple. Libertarians believe that the initiation of force is wrong. So do the overwhelming majority of nonlibertarians. They, too, think it is wrong to commit offenses against person and property.
This is something libertarians like to say, especially the Ron Paul Internet ones. But it’s not actually true. Consider the following hypothetical scenario.
Suppose I walk on to some piece of ground that a libertarian claims ownership over. Suppose I contend that people cannot own pieces of ground because nobody makes them. In my walking on the ground, I do not touch the libertarian or threaten to touch him in any way. Nonetheless, the libertarian proceeds to initiate force against me or calls the police to get them to initiate force against me. Libertarians are fine doing this and therefore libertarians are huge fans of initiating force. The initiation of force or the threat to initiate force is the mechanism that underlies all private property claims.
Now a libertarian will see this and object. They will say that, in fact, violently attacking me for wandering on to some piece of ground is not the initiation of force. It is defensive force. Aimlessly wandering on to ground is actually the initiation of force. I am the force initator because, despite touching and threatening nobody, I set foot on some piece of the world that the libertarian believes belongs to him.
But at this point, it’s clear that when the libertarians talk about not initiating force, they are using the word “initiation” in a very idiosyncratic way. They have packed into the word “initiation” their entire theory of who is entitled to what. What they actually mean by “initiation of force” is not some neutral notion of hauling off and physically attacking someone. Instead, the phrase “initiation of force” simply means “acting in a way that is inconsistent with the libertarian theory of entitlement, whether using force or not.” And then “defensive force” simply means “violently attacking people in a way that is consistent with the libertarian theory of entitlement.”
This definitional move is transparently silly and ultimately reveals a blatant and undeniable circularity in libertarian procedural reasoning. Libertarians like Richman claim that they think we can determine who is entitled to what by looking towards the principle of non-aggression (i.e. the principle of non-initiation of force). But then they define “non-aggression” by referring to their theory of who is entitled to what.
So in the case of the libertarian in the hypothetical who attacks me, here is how the libertarian line goes. The reason the libertarian is entitled to that piece of land is because they are being non-aggressive. The reason the libertarian’s attack on me is non-aggressive is because he is entitled to that piece of land. So their claims of entitlement are justified by appealing to non-aggression and their claims of non-aggression are justified by appealing to their claims of entitlement. It is truly and seriously as vacuously circular as that.
Basically all theories of economic justice believe it is wrong to use force that is inconsistent with the theory’s view on what belongs to who (labeled “aggression”) and believe it is OK to use force that is consistent with the theory’s view on what belongs to who (labeled “defense”). But only libertarians have made the apparent mistake of thinking that calling things “aggression” and “defense” can actually tell you what belongs to who in any non-circular way. While other theories correctly realize that those terms only derive their meaning from a theory of entitlement, many libertarians bizarrely think that those terms form a theory of entitlement (Read more on this point here. Seriously, it’s good and fairly short.).
In reality, all systems of allocating scarce resources that lack totally unanimous consent operate off of coercion, violence, and the initiation of force. This is a function of scarcity. You wont ever get around it until you make matter and space itself non-scarce. Like every other theory of how to justly allocate scarcity, libertarians are huge fans of using coercion, violence, and aggression to make people who disagree with them conform to their views regarding who should get what. What they do to try to appeal to the dim is simply pack their view of who should get what into their very specialized definitions of coercion, violence, and initiation of force in order to be able to say they aren’t triggering those specific words. It is truly remarkable to watch the number of minds captured by what amounts to a fairly transparent word game.
The real debate between theories of economic justice is always and anywhere about who should be entitled to what. Appealing to non-aggression when people disagree about what belongs to whom does nothing in the debate whatsoever. We only know what is and isn’t “aggressive” after we have determined what belongs to whom. It is a word that gets its meaning from our theory of entitlement. So taxing someone, for instance, is only aggressive if you think the amount being taxed belongs to the person being taxed. But if you believe the amount being taxed belongs to whomever the money is going to (say a retired person), then it isn’t aggressive. The force involved in extracting the tax when someone resists is simply defensive force.
So to Richman’s point that everyone is already basically libertarian, the question to ask yourself is whether everyone basically agrees with the libertarian view of who should be entitled to what. And the answer to that question is clearly no.
There is no overlapping consensus.
There is no consent of the governed.
To justify their violent governmental inclinations, minarchists must look elsewhere.
Cui bono.
Follow the money.
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. (KJV)
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. (KJV)
“Prohibition doesn’t work.” You’ve heard it before. I’ve said it before. (See here and here, e.g.) You’ve probably said it before, too. It’s any libertarian and/or drug law reformer’s mantra.
Prohibition doesn’t work. If it did, there wouldn’t be 400,000 New Zealanders who currently use cannabis, and people like Smith to supply. Prohibition has not reduced demand or illegal supply of cannabis. Only a sensible drug policy, such as that promoted by the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party, can do that.
Vote ALCP – End the War on Drugs™.
But I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the claim that Prohibition doesn’t work.
Prohibition doesn’t work. Now think for a moment about that. Prohibition doesn’t work… OK. So, what would it be like if Prohibition did work? What’s Prohibition supposed to achieve? What’s Prohibition for? Prohibition is supposed to stop people taking drugs. Now, ask yourself, why on earth would you want to do that? Is it any of your business if people are taking drugs? How are you going to stop them?
What’s Prohibition for? The official line is that prohibition is supposed to stop people taking drugs. Prohibition manifestly doesn’t do that! That’s why I’m sticking to the official line when I give election speeches. Prohibition doesn’t work!
But what is Prohibition really for? We can find the answer to that by asking what an adaptationist evolutionary biologist would ask when trying to determine the biological function of a phenotypic trait. What has Prohibition done in the past that best explains why we still have it?
Prohibition is for protecting vested interests. Prohibition works.
Prohibition’s time is up. It’s throw a spanner o’clock.
The top image is a real NZ Police recruitment ad. It ran for about two weeks in late December 2010. It was pulled just before the release of a report prepared for the State Services Commission in the wake of the commission of inquiry into police conduct. The report said the culture within the force seemed to have reached a plateau and fundamental change was needed.
That was three years ago.
The bottom image is a parody ad created by Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury, editor of the Daily Blog, in response to the NZ Police inaction against the Roast Busters. The police contacted Bradbury and threatened him with 6 months imprisonment and/or a $5000 fine unless he pulled the parody. But Bradbury won’t back down.
Rape is a serious crime. So is false allegation of rape. But the concern of this post is the casual manner in which the NZ Police repeatedly attempt to rape our most important freedom, upon which our democracy depends, freedom of speech.
I’ve seen a similar attempt before, up close.
Two years ago the NZ Police made a clandestine ultra vires attempt to take down Billy McKee’s Green Cross website. The webmaster made sure the website stayed up.
Good on Bradbury for not backing down. Freedom of speech is not negotiable.
Every time you speak to me,
Makes it plain that you don’t see,
What’s really happening here,
You just confuse respect with fear,
Lawman, I think you’re a poor man
I’m ginna get tickets!
Update: Someone said this may not be happening….
Nothing on Google.
????
Click >>> Brian Welch: From Korn to Jesus
