The unintended consequences of the New Deal are slowly but surely being brought out into the open. Hoover’s Dam demonstrates how government policies can destroy the environment (in this case overusing the Colorado River), create unnatural and unsustainable economic development, and inevitably be brought to a point of collapse. This article was written by Douglas French.

Economics professor Bernard Malamud not once but twice invited the crowd in Las Vegas to visit nearby Hoover Dam to see for themselves an example of the productive assets that were created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR) New Deal. Professor Malamud was recruited to plead the Keynesian side of the argument in an “FDR’s Depression Policies: Good Deal or Raw Deal?” debate with the Foundation for Economic Education’s (FEE) Lawrence Reed during FreedomFest.

I finished my masters degree from UNLV under the tutelage of Murray Rothbard but I started my coursework with a class or two from professor Malamud, who, while being as Keynesian as they come, is at least sympathetic to the Austrian view when it comes to explaining speculative bubbles. He certainly took on Mr. Reed with good humor in front of an unfriendly, anti-FDR audience.

Malamud’s thesis is that no matter what your ideology, New Deal economics worked! The economy was in the midst of a terrifying deflation spiral. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon was saying things like “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers.” The money supply was dropping, strangled by a rigid gold standard. The private sector was not eager to invest, so an alphabet soup of federal programs — like the CCC, CWA, WPA, FDIC, SEC, FSLIC — had to fill the void, putting people back to work, stimulating aggregate demand and providing for FDR’s four freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of belief, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. At the same time, FDR’s “playing with the price of gold” as Malamud put it, loosened up the money markets.

Recovery (or reinflation) started as soon as 1933 and was only sidetracked in 1937, when the stimulus was pulled back. The “mistake of 1937″ was made, according to the UNLV professor, when FDR’s administration went back to listening to Andrew Mellon and instituted the austerity programs FDR had promised during his initial campaign.

When his turn came for rebuttal, Reed joked that he “felt like a mosquito at a nudist camp; I know what I need to do, but I don’t know where to begin.” After his free-market case was made and the Keynesian case was destroyed, Reed quipped, “The economy recovered when FDR didn’t.”

Keynesians erect a pretty low bar when judging the productivity of government stimulus projects, but the results of the concrete monster known as Hoover Dam have been devastating. Hoover described the dam as “the greatest engineering work of its character attempted by the hand of man.” The massive structure cost $49 million (or $736 million in inflation-adjusted dollars) and measures over 726 feet in height and more than 1,200 feet in length. It took five years and 4,360,000 cubic yards of concrete to build, and was finished two years ahead of schedule. About 16,000 people worked on constructing the dam, with over 100 losing their lives in the process.

Just as the Keynesian policies of the New Deal tried to cheat the laws of economics, government’s damming of the Colorado River attempted to cheat Mother Nature by bringing water to the desert southwest — water that just isn’t and never was there. The great western explorer John Wesley Powell was booed out of the room when he told the irrigation congress, “Gentlemen, you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not sufficient water to supply the land.”

But 75 years ago, when the dam was nearly completed, FDR proclaimed during his dedication speech that millions of present and future residents of the southwest could count on “a just, safe, and permanent system of water rights.” The turbulent Colorado River that vacillated between droughts and floods would be tamed and become “a great national possession” and be counted on for irrigation to support a human migration seeking mild winters and new opportunities.

“The nation took him at his word,” writes Michael Hiltzik, author of Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century. “Since that dedication year, the population of the seven states of the basin has swelled by about 45 million. Much of this growth has been fueled by the dam and its precious bounties of water and electrical power.”

As Hiltzik points out, the dam’s water promise gunned the growth of southern California cities and attracted farmers to the west to grow water-intensive crops like cotton despite the lack of normal rainfall required to support this kind of agriculture.

Just as government stimulus programs and artificially low interest rates that promise to spur growth and make up for the lack of private investment never work, Hoover’s promise that his dam would, as Hiltzik writes, “provide all the water their states could conceivably need to fulfill their dreams of irrigation, industrial development and urban growth” is literally drying up. The water level at Lake Mead is down 120 feet from its high-water mark, revealing a white “bathtub ring.”

Now that millions have migrated to the southwest and private industry has invested millions of dollars, Hoover and FDR’s promises have confined those living and doing business in the west “in the straitjacket of an ever-intensifying water shortage,” notes Hiltzik. And while Interior Secretary Gale Norton claimed to have stilled the “conflict on the river” back in 2003 with the signing of two-dozen agreements transferring water rights between various Indian tribes, cities, and governments, the battle for water will rage on. The supply will never catch up with the demand.

After the ten-year drought, another $700 million is now being spent to install an additional intake pipeline into the diminishing Lake Mead. Almost 90 percent of the drinking water for Las Vegas comes from the lake. The new intake pipeline, officially known as Intake No. 3, “will reach deeper into the reservoir to protect the valley’s water supply should the lake shrink low enough to shut down one of the two shallower straws,” reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

However, the cost of this project is likely to rise, because the tunnel being excavated for the pipeline unexpectedly filled with water earlier this month. But this cost overrun shouldn’t trouble Keynesians, because the additional taxpayer money just provides more stimulus, right?

Those in government never learn. They can’t print prosperity, and more water won’t magically appear if they dam a river. While the man on the street believes government infallible, politicians and bureaucrats cannot calculate the economic profits and losses of government interventions. Ludwig von Mises made the point that government interventions inevitably lead to unintended consequences, leading government to constantly intervene further. So governments will fight over scarce water, and private use is increasingly being restricted by local ordinances.

The New Deal dam project that professor Malamud is so proud of provided a few thousand jobs 80 years ago, but has spurred migration, farming, and development that is likely unsustainable and may ultimately be the biggest malinvestment in history.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=1024

Great speech from Helio Beltrao at a Mises event in Brazil. The power of the individual is the strongest sovereign power, but people foolishly believe that the decisions of politicians are somehow more worthy and worthwhile. Below is a portion of the speech Beltrao gave.

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President [Leonardo] Fração, it is a pleasure to be here, at this XXIII Forum da Liberdade, whose theme is based on Ludwig von Mises’s Economic Policy book [known in Brazil as The Six Lessons].

Mises was one of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century, a resolute and uncompromising champion of freedom. Fifty years ago, Mises came to South America and delivered those six historic lectures, which are heralded and quoted just outside, at the Forum’s exhibit.

Today, there is a great international revival of Misesian ideas — including in Brazil — which show the benefits that consumers and workers derive when they are free to venture, to chart their course, and to fulfill their desires.

This week, in Porto Alegre, there is a great concentration of intellectual heirs of Ludwig von Mises. We, from Instituto Mises Brasil, have just concluded our first conference, which was a great success, and it could not have been otherwise! The energy emanating from you is contagious. We have here today many scholars and experts of the Austrian School of economics. Tom Woods, one of the speakers at our conference and the bestseller author of Meltdown, will address you tomorrow. The legendary founder and chairman of the Mises Institute — Lew Rockwell — is also among us tonight! Without Lew, there would be no Mises Institute, no revival of the Austrian School, no Instituto Mises Brasil. Thank you, Lew. And above all, thanks to you, President Fração, to IEE [The Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies], for your support to our conference and especially for your achievements in the fight for liberty. Results come first in this contest; the results of the work of IEE and of the Forum da Liberdade are both evident and quantifiable. Congratulations, IEE!

On other occasions, I customarily speak about finance and economics, about the measures that are likely to bring about a more prosperous society; in other words, as did Mises, I usually speak about what works and what does not.

Today, for the first time, I am addressing a different subject. I speak about what moves me. I speak about where my energy, as an individual, originates. Its source is here, in this advanced and progressive libertarian community, which looks forward to real changes; not merely illusory changes from campaign slogans. I feel at home. It is a great honor to receive the Libertas Award.

The history of ethics has been a history of exploitation. From time immemorial, individuals were set apart into two groups: those that must obey the rules, and those that need not. The people must observe ethics and morals, while rulers not.

The ethics that you and I must observe correctly advocates that one should not steal the property of others, should not murder, and should not force others to do something against their will.

But note that those ethical rules do not apply to government — the government takes your money, calls it “democratic taxes,” and presto! — it is now authorized to steal.

If one enslaves another, this is considered a heinous crime. After all, slavery is the antithesis of individuality! However, in the case of government, they will draft you to “serve your nation” for a year, call this conscription “military service,” and serfdom becomes perfectly legal.

If one kills a neighbor, this is murder. However, if he is an agent of the government — particularly that of the United States — using an olive-green uniform, and invoking a “preventive” war or similar excuse, suddenly it becomes permissible to murder — legally.

Counterfeiting is a crime, but only for you and me. For the government has the money-printing machine, or more precisely, the counterfeiting machine. If it is they doing it, fine. If it is we, we go to jail.

Three hundred years ago, a substantial part of the population in the Americas was comprised of slaves. One hundred percent of the fruits of their labor were the property of their owners. Today, we are no longer slaves. However, about 40 to 50 percent of the product of your efforts and talent are not your property, but your masters’ — that is, the government and its friends. This is what you pay, whether you like it or not, embedded in the prices of the products, or through other taxes, duties, or tariffs. We are no longer slaves, but we are serfs.

Previously, the slave owner would threaten to punish with a whip a slave who refused to work. Now, if you refuse to pay the government, you are summoned and attacked with lawsuits, until you are finally thrown into jail. In both cases, the violence is of the same nature. The gun doesn’t even need to be displayed, as in the case of the customary robber. The mere threat of violence suffices. But the gun is always present, in the robber’s pocket and in the ruler’s jacket.

Theft and slavery are crimes, even if sanctioned by the majority of the people! Theft of the government, by the government, and for the government is somehow accepted and rationalized by the population at large. Why does that majority agree with this theft?

We must analyze the most misrepresented concept nowadays: the concept of democracy.

The conventional use of the term “democracy” conveys a certain disrespect for semantics. Most of us utilize the word democracy when we actually mean other concepts, such as the “rule of law,” “liberty,” “equality before the law,” “individual rights,” “solid institutions,” “justice,” and other concepts that have specific words to designate them. Democracy is, formally, the regime of majority rule, that is, the majority of voters decides whatever it sees fit. Or, as is commonly said, it is the tyranny of the majority — which in practice means the tyranny of the minority: that of the politicians who rule over our lives and property.

“Property is prior to law; the sole function of the law is to safeguard the right to property wherever it exists, wherever it is formed, in whatever manner the worker produces it, whether individually or in association, provided that he respects the rights of others.” — Frederic Bastiat

Amusing and excellent post by Tom Woods regarding “discrimination” of obese people, particularly on planes and other transportation methods. Rights do not come from people, they come from our Creator. If you expect government to legislate perfect equality (regardless of how different that means to different people) in products, service, and other such things you are bound to go down the road of disappointment.

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Southwest Airlines recently announced that, as of this week, “persons of size” who fly with them will have to purchase an additional seat if they cannot fit into one.

The policy is not without precedent: United Airlines already charges heavier passengers double if they cannot fit in one seat. But in the wake of Southwest’s announcement, the discrimination police were out in their usual hysterical force. One obesity activist I saw on television argued that fat people shouldn’t be charged more for exceeding their allotted space since bulimic people do not receive a discount for using up less.

I was about to refute this argument, but it’s probably safe to assume that my readers are not comatose.

Einstein, these spokesmen aren’t. A person’s height does not impose any discomfort on people in adjacent seats.

These cries of “discrimination” recall the old claim that a hairdresser who charges more for women’s haircuts than men’s is engaged in discrimination. Men’s and women’s haircuts are not the same product. The women’s cut is generally much more demanding and time-consuming, and requires considerable skill, while men are generally content with a simple, straightforward haircut. (Of course, even if this did constitute discrimination, it should still be perfectly licit; anyone whose blood boiled from moral outrage over such an egregious travesty against human rights could simply patronize another establishment.)

Likewise, the passenger using up more than one seat is not using the same product as the person who uses only one. In no conceivable sense could it be described as “discrimination” to charge a higher fee to someone who uses more of a service.

Activists for the overweight complain that the real problem is the small size of airplane seats. “The fact is that Americans are getting larger,” Berg noted. “This is what the population looks like, and an airline has an obligation to make its seat fit the population.”

Of course, an airline has no such “obligation” in a free society. Since it wants to keep its customer base, it naturally wants to provide accommodations suitable for the population, and it will lose market share if its competitors do a better job of catering to people’s comfort. Berg’s inanity amounts to saying, “The fact is that Americans are moving away from classical music and toward rock. This is what the population listens to, and a record company has an obligation to make its music suit the population.”

Now, businessmen are not infallible. Southwest’s policy may backfire. It all depends on the difference between the revenue lost when angry overweight customers refuse to pay for an extra seat and fly on a competing airline that features no such requirement, and the revenue to be gained by passengers eager to fly on an airline that ensures that its passengers will enjoy a comfortable flight.

“We don’t want the customer to be embarrassed or offended in any way,” said Southwest spokeswoman Christine Turneabe-Connelly. But the comfort of all passengers is important. “If we have a full flight and there’s somebody sitting next to [a larger passenger], the other customer becomes upset.” In fact, Southwest found that most of the letters of complaint it was receiving came from people “feeling crowded by a large passenger.”

Under the new policy, a Southwest employee would speak discreetly to especially heavy customers planning to board a crowded flight, and ask them either to purchase a second seat or to wait for a less crowded flight. The Times of London quoted one NAAFA spokesman as saying that she would not pay one cent more than any other passenger, and predicted that Southwest’s policy would lead to lawsuits (as people seek to vindicate their inalienable human right to pay for one seat and use one and a half).

“Remember that you have a right to accessible transportation,” the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance tells visitors to its website. It would be interesting to hear the philosophical basis for such a “right,” strangely overlooked by John Locke and the framers of the U.S. Constitution.

Of course, the only genuine rights are ones that can be enjoyed by all people at the same time and in the same way, since any right that belongs to man qua man (such as the right to private property) must by definition be available for his exercise at all times, else it is not truly part of his nature. A “right to accessible transportation,” of course, means that one person gets accessible transportation while another is forced to provide it. To paraphrase Frank van Dun: Imagine two people on a desert island – how would they enforce their “right to accessible transportation” on each other, apart from each of them fruitlessly barking commands at the other person?

The response to Southwest’s obviously reasonable policy reflects the growth of an antidiscrimination movement among the overweight. Laws are presently on the books preventing discrimination on the basis of weight or height in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Michigan.

When San Francisco’s Jennifer Portnick applied in the summer of 2001 for a position as an aerobics instructor with Jazzercise, a company with 5,300 franchises in 38 countries, she was turned down. “Applicants must have a higher muscle to fat ratio and look leaner than the public,” the 240-pound Portnick was told.

“I thought, I’m being judged by my measurements and not by what I can do,” Portnick later told reporters. Well, that’s a crying shame, but it’s their company, not yours. In the same way that a dentist might not want a receptionist with David Letterman-like teeth, an exercise center might want to communicate to its customers that following its regimen might actually make them thin. “A Jazzercise applicant must look leaner than the public,” Portnick’s rejection letter read. Nazi Germany!

Naturally, Portnick had no choice but to pursue the matter with San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission and its ordinances regarding weight discrimination. “She can inspire people to be fit that don’t have a cookie-cutter body,” lawyer Sondra Solovy said, thereby suggesting that if only Jazzercise possessed better businessmen, the company would realize the unique profit opportunity it had just missed.

But if Jazzercise was really shooting itself in the foot by not hiring Portnick, let the market prove her right. In fact, the publicity surrounding the case led to an upsurge of business at Portnick’s own aerobics center, where she now works. The “discrimination” mentality, on the other hand, has become all-consuming in the United States, supplanting common sense and rational thought. The first instinct is now always to run to the state and bully the hapless employer whose crime was not to hire you.

Naturally, Jazzercise eventually backed down under the pressure and settled with Portnick, dropping its “fit appearance” requirement for its aerobics instructors. Portnick announced her victory during International No Diet Day festivities in San Francisco.

There’s no logical stopping point to any of this. Why not demand, for instance, that all clothing stores respect overweight people’s human right to purchase clothes of their size? Why should they need to degrade themselves by having to shop at a Big & Tall? Isn’t that almost like apartheid?

Once again, it is private property that provides the only conflict-free resolution to problems of this kind. By intruding in the affairs of civil society and curtailing the rights of property owners in the name of stopping so-called anti-fat discrimination, it will be the state, when all is said and done, that ultimately grows the fattest.

Reprinted from Mises.org.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods137.html

Constitution? What constitution?

If you are a member of the Lions Club, there is a constitution that empowers the leaders to act for and in the name of the members. The members, by joining, empower the elected leadership to act in that manner. The members agree to the constitution. No one is forced to join such a club, and indeed, one must be selected by a current member to join, I believe. It is a privileged status. The same goes for many other clubs. One is invited to join such clubs as the Knights of Columbus, Rotary International, etc. They are exclusive clubs. Members of those clubs promise to conduct themselves outside the club in a manner that is acceptable to most of Society. I say most of Society, because the Society of murderers, rapists, muggers, thugs, and many members of Congress are a small percentage of the general Society, and their actions are not acceptable to the rest of us.
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“Know your rights!” That is an order.

I am a very selfish man. The reason that I would like for everyone to know his or her rights and know how to assume the powers to exercise those rights, is because that is the only way my rights can be protected.

We must be able to exercise our rights. If a thug with a gun enters your home, and you are unarmed, you do not have the power to exercise your right to protect your property and to defend yourself and loved ones, if you have any. It makes no difference if the thug is wearing a uniform of some kind and is committing the atrocity at the behest of, and under the auspices of, a government – your absolute right to self defense cannot be exercised. You have that right, but it cannot be exercised.

The One, the Is, the All, the Power, the Author of the Universe, the Creator, by whatever name your Creator is known to you, makes little difference unless you, through the use of force, intimidation, or coercion insist that I call my Creator by the same name you have given your Creator. If you insist on that, you are interfering with my power to exercise my natural and inherent right.

You have the natural right to call your God by whatever name you choose. You may call your Creator Vishnu or Krishna, Jehovah or Allah, Henry or Georgie-Boy, it makes absolutely no difference to me as long as you do not attempt to kill me or do some other damage, because I want to name my Creator something different than the name you have given yours.

We have the right to breathe. We have the responsibility to keep on breathing.

We have the right to food. We have the responsibility to earn that food.

We have the right to shelter and clothing. We have the responsibility to provide that shelter and clothing for ourselves.

Do we have the obligation to provide for those who refuse to provide for themselves? I think not.

We have the right to decide how to dispose of our property. If we choose to help a neighbor or loved one, that is our right. We should choose. The choice should not be made by some faceless bureaucrat in Liechtenstein who thinks that he or she knows what is best for every human being on this ball of mud.

That bureaucrat has quite possibly never calloused his hands by using a shovel, or an axe. He has quite likely never been a sanitation engineer on a dairy farm, though he has learned how to sling the brown stuff. He has no concept of how the food that is served to him got to his table. He does not stand in line at the grocery store, nor wait at an airport. Boiling water would surpass his ability. Yet, he deems himself so all-knowing that he will dictate to all and sundry how to live.

If we assume the powers given to each of us to exercise our natural and inherent rights, we will be better off.

If we assume the power to exercise our natural right to travel without any licensure by any government, to our house of worship, by whatever means available, we will be better off. If we purchase a car and choose to use it, providing we harmed no one in the purchase and the use, to travel to the grocery store, and buy the week’s victuals, who rightly has the power to interfere? I say, “No one”.

By what right does a government, instituted by men, take money from one’s income to distribute to those who will not earn any income? There is no such right as that. There is power, though, Power from the threat of fines and imprisonment, and such threats are carried out daily in this nation of free men and women. The power of sending a missile from the end of a tube of steel through the air to knock one’s life out of one’s body, is an awesome power. The threat of using that power is intimidating. It could be called a terror.

However awesome that power might be, though, it cannot be compared to the awesome power of the Creator, by whatever name you might address him.

Assume the power. Exercise your rights.

“What, then, is legislation? It is an assumption by one man, or body of men, of absolute, irresponsible dominion over all other men whom they can subject to their power.  It is an assumption by one man, or body of men, of a right to subject all other men to their will and their service.  It is an assumption by one man, or body of men, of a right to abolish outright all the natural rights, all the natural liberty of all other men; to make all other men their slaves to arbitrarily dictate to all other men what they may, and may not do; what they may, and may not, have; what they may, and may not, be.  It is, in short, the assumption of a right to banish the principle of human rights, the principle of justice itself, from off the earth, and set up their own personal will, pleasure, and interest in its place.  All this, and nothing less, is involved in the very idea that there can be any such thing as legislation that is obligatory upon those upon whom it is imposed.”  – Lysander Spooner

What, then, is freedom? It is an assumption by some members of the human race of absolute responsible dominion over themselves and their property.  It is an assumption by some members of the human race, that each individual is responsible for his own condition; his/her own prosperity, or lack thereof; his/her own education; his/her own health and care of health.  It is an assumption by some members of the human race to take care of oneself; what he/she may and may not do; what he/she may, or may not, be.  It is, in short, the assumption by some members of the human race to protect, cherish, and preserve the freedoms and rights granted by the Creator as granted at conception.  It is the assumption by some members of the human race to protect the principle of human rights, the principle of justice, so that it never perishes from the face of the earth.  All this, and nothing less, is involved in the very idea of freedom.

An old Japanese adage advises us that the other side of a coin has another side.  Lysander Spooner was an anarchist that started his own Post Office in New York around 1850, but the Federal Government put him out of business.

Let us not always look at the negative side of the government’s intervention in our lives; let us look at what we can do to prevent such intervention.  We do have natural and inherent rights.  They are ours and they are absolutely perfect.  The power to exercise those rights is, however, imperfect.  That imperfection gives the government and other criminals the opportunity to interfere in our daily lives to the extent that we cannot spend the money we earn in the manner in which we see fit.

Do you know, then, what your rights are?  They are many and valuable.  The only way to protect those rights is to use the power to exercise those rights.  Use that power in the face of all that is evil.  My life is not worth preserving at any cost.  My power to exercise my rights is worth protecting at any and all costs.  What say you?

In light of the looming Senate vote and my recent announcement to only accept my district’s median household income for my congressional salary, and to make a charitable donation to local non-profit hospitals, I’d like to review this subject once more.  For more details, please read my health care plank, and to completely debunk the incumbent’s claim that health care legislation is constitutional, please read “To Nancy Pelosi on Health Care – Are YOU Serious?”

In the Bill of Rights of the Soviet Union, they were honest about health care – it states that “citizens of the USSR have the right to health protection.” This document also stipulated Soviet citizens have the “right to work” not longer than 41 hours in a workweek, the “right to rest and leisure,” the “right to education,” the “right to enjoy cultural benefits.” (Source) To find out how well this worked out for the Soviets, try reading Dr. Yuri Maltsev’s article “What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us.”  Even today, Russia’s life expectancy for males is just 59 years, while in the US it is 73 years.
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No past, present, or future document can grant rights to humanity, nor can any government or collective. The rights and freedoms of an individual person are a priori, have been, are, and will be so long as a single person draws breath. Whenever in the course of history a governing body infringes upon the rights, life and property of the individual, that individual may bring it upon himself/herself to rise up against his/her oppressor in order to take back what was rightfully his/hers from the beginning of time. While in the past the will of the majority has served to oppress those in the minority, no greater example of this can be found than in the formation of nation-state governments. Government should have one purpose and one purpose only: to protect the people and their property from plunder. Instead, our government like so many that went before has passed laws allowing for legal plunder, and has systematically stolen our lives by taking the fruits of our labor, which no government can ever earn or deserve.

The crimes of our government are indeed too numerous to list them all, but some of the more egregious offenses include restriction of liberty through excessive taxation for the purpose of redistributing wealth, maintaining a monopolistic control over the means of money and credit, propagating inflation and the subsequent devaluation of the only legal tender allowed by law, subsidization of the immoral behavior of banks and bankers, the jailing of criminals who have committed victimless crimes, the sending of our men and women to fight unnecessary wars as well as unlawfully occupying other countries for the benefit of those in power while simultaneously spying on its own citizens without first obtaining the proper warrants.

It is because of the above mentioned policies that if any man, woman, or child should choose to fight back peacefully either by not paying taxes or impeaching the whole of the government he/she would be entirely justified in their actions.

The Constitution of Freedom

An individual owns his/her life, labor, and the product of his/her labor. People are free and no government, law or collective action of any kind shall infringe upon their freedoms, namely those of life, choice, belief, action, and property. A person’s freedom is infinite so long as it does not infringe upon the freedoms of another, cause bodily harm to another, or damage another’s property.

No person can be the property of another person, government or collective.

No ruling body is necessary for a functioning society. No government can make law restricting rights or freedoms.

People have the right to individual defense of their own life, liberty, and property. No army is permitted during times of peace; this does not include security forces for the purposes of personal protection of life, liberty, and property. No military war shall be waged for the purpose of conquest. If an army is formed it shall be for defense only. No army nor the government or collective it represents has a right to the land or property of any other individual or collective.

The will of the people can never take precedent over the rights and freedoms of the individual.

Law is justice. A law shall be invalid if it stands in violation of the rights or freedoms of an individual except in cases of reparations for payment of damages to another person or their property. Any law that promotes injustice in any form is invalid. Any law which would plunder a person’s life or property for the benefit of another person or group is invalid.

No tax shall be levied upon any individual or group of individuals. No tariffs shall be levied upon foreigners as this is a hidden tax upon the people. No inflation of any money supply is allowed without the consent of all the holders of that money.

No government can determine what is or is not money. No person must accept any form of payment that he/she determines to be unfit as proper payment for his/her goods or services.

Morality can not be imposed upon a person. No law shall be made in an attempt to impose morality on anyone. No crime can occur without a victim. If the rights or property of a person are infringed upon he/she make seek just compensation by bringing a complaint against the offender to be tried before a jury of peers presided over by an arbitror agreed upon by both parties.

The only public property is of that necessary to travel; this is to protect the freedom of movement. No one may prevent someone from traversing his/her land if their means are peaceful and nondestructive; this does not apply to a person’s or people’s private residence, only to pathways essential to commerce. If destruction does occur from such travel, just compensation for damages may be sought.

No restrictions of any kind shall be placed upon what may be owned by an individual. No restrictions or regulations may be put upon any business as no person may be forced to purchase the goods or services of another against his/her will.

No person shall commit fraud or in any way deceive another person in a voluntary exchange of goods or services. All contracts whether verbal or written are binding. In cases of fraud a person may seek just compensation by bringing a complaint against the offender to be tried before a jury of peers presided over by an arbitrator agreed upon by both parties.

The signer(s) of this document believe(s) that the government which governs least governs best, and that people should not be accountable to the government but the government accountable to the people. I ask nothing which I can not rightfully earn of my own accord, and demand only to be allowed to keep that which I earn. I ask no assistance from any government as anything the government has is not theirs to give. I hold all governments to the same standards expected of all people, namely not to plunder one person or group to profit another, to respect life, liberty, choice and property and deem any government which does not act in accordance with these laws as unlawful, unjust, invalid, and an atrocity in the history free acting people.