A Rant About Border Security Theater

As far as this issue is concerned, only the voluntaryists are correct:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrwXYhCU9pQ –Marc Stevens on immigration.

http://www.papersplease.org

and

http://www.thenewspaper.com

I want to travel. I want to destroy all borders. I want to get on a plane, and fly to China or Columbia tomorrow, for the cost of a plane ticket only, without paying for any bogus fake “security” (security theater). I want to bring back anything I like, with none of the bullshit prohibitions that have made me totally unfree and incapable of something as simple as self-medication or eating the food I like. I have a .45 pistol. That’s all the more personal security I need, especially when combined with everyone else’s CCW pistol. No additional security (beyond non-intrusive hi-tech directional explosives sniffers in the airports) is even physically possible.

The answer to security is decentralization: all other security is fake, police actions designed to allow the government absolute power. That makes us all infinitely insecure: it means we must follow every law, even laws that require us to be murdered or jailed for victimless crimes, without a trial, …just like happened in Soviet Russia. They always reply: “Well, if you weren’t _____ (trying to live your life, you fucking peasant!), then you wouldn’t have anything to worry about!” Well, I love life, and want to live it! I want to drink coca leaf tea, not because I am a drug addict (although it wouldn’t be any of the state’s business if I was) ..but because it’s safe, harmless, and you only live once! There are a thousand things I want to do that are made very costly, if not illegal by government. I want my freedom, because I am not of the slave mentality.

As far as traveling to China and Bangkok, I just did all of this. I was at an unpaid job that paid for me to travel in a pauper’s style, and I got to see a lot of the world. I just returned from Bangkok and China. China was freer than the USSA is now. Pathetic, how we’ve lost our freedom! (Chinese people can cure their cancer with apricot kernels, they are sold in supermarkets and stores there. There is a gold store in the Beijing Airport that sells gold bullion, and the USA limits how much you can buy there! No more than 55 grams, you fucking peasants!) …But the cost of my travel was raised dramatically by the existence of all the parasitic governments. I was literally enslaved in Bangkok, because I stayed more than 90 days until I could raise a ransom to pay the kidnapper state around $650. It matters not whether such governments pretend to be constitutional. Those who want to restrict travel, to the extent that they want this, are evil, stupid, and “part of the problem”.

That’s why we need a 100% consistent libertarian revolution. And if we all pursue the freedom we wish to have, with 100% of our intelligence, …we will get it! But we must THINK.

We will NEVER, EVER, EVER have a 100% consistent libertarian politician (although Harry Browne came pretty damn close, and Badnarik was “good enough for government work”). Humans are simply too stupid, and every vote diminishes the intelligence of the few, and amplifies the tendency toward conformity. …Sorry. A few humans are very, very, very consistently pro-freedom when it comes to political belief, but it is impossible to get elected with such consistency. The bad religious memes alone in the Ron Paul revolution disprove the idea of a savior.

Ron Paul is as good as it gets, although there can be many people who approach Ron Paul’s level of consistency.

Ron Paul is dead wrong on immigration, but he seems to sense this, and not vote for things that are consistent with “controlling the border” (such as universal government issued IDs for all, a border fence, random checkpoints, etc…). “Controlling the border” is bullshit police action, and a police state for everyone. It is one giant “police action” at its very worst, and totally anti-libertarian.

Ron Paul is a hero to the freedom movement, and –by far– the best elected politician in the USSA.

The problem? He’s operating within a bloated, festering, theocratic-plague-spreading corpse known as “The Republican Party”. As such he represents pure anti-biotics, but I dear he must be applied to a rebooted patient that has more hope of life than the evil and controlled Repuglican Party.

This doctor recommends amputation. …LOL

Even though I’m saying that, I laud Dr. No’s attempt to change the Republicans from within, because his force is a counterforce to the Demopublicans’ evil, and all good things counter bad, in complex systems.

The key is to increase non-electoral strategies in conjunction with Paul’s message. More effort must be directed at non-Ron-Paul electoral efforts (Libertarians, libertarian Democrats, libertarian Republicans not associated with Paul), and at Ron Paul’s “Campaign for Liberty”. All of these can be in communication with one another. Synergy is the strongest solution: talk to all, work with all, DO YOUR OWN THING.

Form connections when it helps. Trumpet “Libertarianism” as the answer. It’s a consistent vision of freedom that gracefully decays around the edges into peaceful debate. …It’s beautiful. It’s consensual, voluntary, reasonable, logical.
It’s the solution to the problem of tyranny and false authority.

It’s LOVE.

So what does a freedom fighter do? I think they help prevent their fellow man from unjustifiably going to the gulag for victimless “crimes”. I think libertarians –at their very best– try to stop the state from enforcing injustice, and try to rescue victims of injustice.

Here is an example of that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpEB5T2ekTU –Jury rights activism.

Courthouses should be mobbed with jury rights activists who are all CCW.

Force them to lock the USSA down like a police state if they want communism.

Why do you think the fucking DHS exists? They are simply the USSA’s KGB, or “shutz-staffeln”. They are federal stormtroopers.

If you know nothing of history, you should be able to see that. Did you see the immense response in the video above to one lone elderly man speaking political truth –without swearing or “obscenity”– in public? They carted him off, using physical force. They took him to a psyche ward, and threatened him with pumping him full of dangerous psychoactive drugs against his will.

They continue to threaten this for anyone who dares to stand up against them.

And maybe that’s why the USA is no more. It has changed from the land of the brave into the land of the abject coward.

I can just hear all the musclebound morons right now: “You take it back, or I’ll kick your ass!” Well, that would only prove my point: The USA is the land of the INTELLECTUAL COWARD.

Sure, there are a lot of “physically brave” people who would fight a much larger attacker who attacked their wife and kids. Because they’d have the support of their community full of intellectual cowards! Intellectual cowards are very brave at defending “the obviously good”, the safe, the tranquil. …But so are communists, and nazis. Nazis defended motherhood and apple pie.

They murdered “degenerate artists”, and “dissidents”(partisans) by the score. In fact, they murdered more dissdents than jews. (Not many people know this, but 12 million dissidents were murdered during peacetime in the death camps, and between 6-8 million Jews were murdered. It was –by body count– even more dangerous to speak out against the government than it was to be a Jew. And that’s always the way it is: those who identify themselves as intellectually brave are the state’s real enemies.)

So who should we be protecting and defending now?

I’d start with

…Julian Heiklen, and anyone who dares do the exact same thing he’s doing.

The people who know that the jury is the most powerful check on abusive government power.

Do you think any of those people are immigrants? Poor, downtrodden, redugees from a state even less just than the USSA?

I think so!

Talk to anyone who dared flaunt the stormtroopers by crossing the Rio Grande without permission, to come to a foreign land in an attempt to “work their way up”.

This is one area where SEK3′s logic totally defeats Ron Paul’s logic.

Ron Paul’s “white market” or “constitutional government” DOES NOT EXIST.

But how do we take one step back towards it?

Not by restricting immigration. The order of events is immensely important!

Should prisons be privatized? They practically have been! See:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/12/the-prison-industrial-complex/4669/
This didn’t lead to them jailing fewer people, out of a sense of fiscal responsibility, it led to the USSA jailing the greatest percentage of its submitizens of any nation on earth! Why? Because the Federal Reserve is paying the bills, and the politicians have a philosophy of unfreedom. The common idiot who supports this system is totally unaware of the ideas advanced by:

Murray N. Rothbard

F. A. Hayek

Ludwig von Mises

Harry Browne (a “voluntaryist” who ran for president twice as the Libertarian candidate in 1996 and 2000)

Carl Watner (who was wrong about opposing electoral participation and right about everything else, as a “voluntaryist”)

Samuel Konkin III AKA SEK3 (who was wrong about opposing electoral participation and right about everything else, as a “voluntaryist”)

Ayn Rand (who was wrong to oppose the Libertarian Party on the stupid grounds that they didn’t defeat their candidates “out of the gate” by opposing religion, and other more minor things)

Nathaniel Branden (I link to Nathaniel Branden's "Objectivism and Libertarianism" here, because this is a common point of confusion amongst both libertarians and objectivists, as well as other less-educated contrarians. ...LOL)

Etc…

Many of the thinkers and philosophers were 90% right. …Ron Paul SEK3 and Ayn Rand among them. (I'd put Harry Browne over that 90%, but I'm horribly biased in his favor.)

Most of us won’t ever be Ron Paul, but most of us do have the ability to be the guy in front of their local courthouse handing out fliers, like Julian Heicklen and company did in the above video.

Should we do it smarter than they did? …Yes. Here are a few pointers on how to do that:
1) Wear a suit. A suit is good for 99% of conformists (a western button-up shirt is good for 80% of conformists, a radical t-shirt or sloppy appearance is good for the 10% of “non-superficial early adopters” …and you’re playing a “numbers game”). This means you’ll be more effective at targeting conformists. Conformists don’t evaluate the message alone, they evaluate the person’s appearance who’s delivering the message, and if they don’t think the person appears professional, the message is ignored. Moreover: mainstream conformists will be hand-picked to sit on the jury. If we don’t elevate logical conformists, it doesn’t matter how many early-adopters agree with us.
2) Hand out professionally printed materials, or at least adequate black and white text with the text found here: http://www.fija.org, without crazy-looking or cheap graphics.
3) Have your words prepared in advance to “draw in” spectators. Don’t stutter and stumble under pressure like Pete Eyre did (this is not a bad criticism –Eyre had the balls to do what was smart and film it, truing his course with feedback. I stumbled and stuttered my first few times standing up to the police too, and I was too damned stupidly financially broke to videotape it!!!). The only way the DHS goons will ever “stand down” is if a crowd of Americans actually stands up and shows that they exist (right now, they don’t exist, because being an American is being intellectually brave, and there must be information-containing-brains before there can be intellectual bravery).
4) Bring a friend and videotape it (these guys did this very well, but it bears repeating), and make sure there is one person who is present with a hidden camera and recorder who IS NOT HANDING OUT FLIERS OR TALKING TO PEOPLE. This is optimal, in case the police decide to arrest everyone and destroy all the footage –as they commonly do. Later, they deny everything in court, and it’s your word against a lying cop’s –the conformist tools hand-picked by the prosecution to sit on the jury always believe the cop.
5) Emphasize the fact that those who intend to nullify bad laws must not reveal this to the prosecutor during VOIR DIRE, and must have a set of planned responses ready for the prosecutors, should they ever be called for jury duty.
6) For those who support Ron Paul, or are already “halfway libertarian” emphasize: This is a top-level strategy in the heirarchy of all pro-freedom strategy, even if it doesn’t at first seem like it is. How do we know this? The state has overwhelmingly reacted against it, as they have recognized the threat to their dominion before the libertarin community has. Also: Why is it top level? Because if the Liberty Dollar had nullifiers on their jury, then freedom lovers and banks could “opt out of the dollar”, and act as “gold-only” transitional banks, and could print initial dollar-value denominations on their coins, encouraging large numbers of sheep to “opt out of the herd”.

This email has enough information for people to begin to learn how to effectively battle our enemy: the unlawful, unconstitutional, immoral, wrong, police state.

A part of that is saying “Not Guilty” when an immigrant is on trial for having crossed a state border illegally.

If you would say “Guilty”, then you are nothing more than the tool of a petty tyrant, encouraging the unchallenged dominion of lawlessness and injustice, under the color of law.

Only those who are wired for freedom can see the light on this issue, and it’s a testament to the fact that pro-freedom brushfires are even more enlightening than the spark that initially set them going (in 2007, Ron Paul).

Enlightenment values demand a free market in goods and services. A free market in services demands open immigration. Open immigration is the core value, it matters not what the constitution or law says about it. The laws against open immigration are “mala prohibita” in the same way the drug and gun laws are “mala prohibita”. Those bad laws should be ignored. Luckily, it’s constitutional to ignore bad laws, as Thomas Woods Jr.’s new book “Nullification” proves.

Tom Woods’ book references an earlier masterpiece with the same title, and a different subtitle that explains the role of the jury in nullification. That book is Clay Conrad’s masterpiece “Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine”.

If you stand for the constitution, and you take away nothing else from this writing, know this: The constitution allows citizens to veto the enforcement of laws that they personally believe are immoral or being unfairly applied. The founding fathers believed it was perfectly legitimate for a jury member to vote “Not Guilty” even if a person clearly broke the law.

There are mountains of proof for this viewpoint, (and plenty of quotes from the founding fathers) and you can obtain them at http://www.fija.org and http://www.jurorsforjustice.com

Don’t be a tool of the state. Don’t put your faith in any one man (politician). Get grounded in the ideas of freedom, and resist tyranny to your maximum ability. Encourage all others around you to do the same. Make sure every one of your family members agrees to vote “not guilty” when they are seated on a jury (if the law is wrong), and make sure every one of them knows how to get seated (how to not be removed during “voir dire”, and how to appear like a good little sheep until it’s time to strike the blow and say “NOT GUILTY”).

This is 100% of the game. This is 100% of the movement toward freedom. If you oppose me on this, you are nothing, you are a tyrant, and godspeed you to a quick destruction.

Peace (through superior intelligence),

-Jake

The Question of Individual Rights for Artificial General Intelligence / Synthetic Intelligence

Dear individualists,

You might want to watch the following link, and then perhaps link to it on your homepages. Libertarians / individualists should understand the emerging radical technology implications that will either favor or hinder our progress towards individual liberty in the near future. We should be better informed than our opposition, so we can exploit the coming changes.

http://www.singinst.org/media/singularitysummit2007/stephenomohundro

Virtually every single person in the Libertarian Party and libertarian movement that I've had a private conversation with has told me that they don't really care about any political party, but that they do want individual liberty. Combined with the fact that most of these same people have no strategy for obtaining individual liberty, this causes them to support the Libertarian Party when it is doing things they like, and stop supporting it when it does things they don't like. (The Democrats and Republicans demand much less consistency, because they favor the survival of their party over principle. Hence, they are continually acquiring resources, and those resources are built up and used in psychopathological ways. ie: the major parties care first about keeping their psychopath alive, and secondarily, perhaps, teaching it to be less psychopathic. We are focused on preventing our party from becoming a psychopath, so when it behaves in a psychopathic manner (ie: nominating Bob Barr, supporting pragmatist positions, etc...), most of our members abandon it, and it becomes vastly less likely to survive or "remain a viable choice".)

Therefore, our party structure has to
1) inspire our membership more consistently (perhaps by doing the things it's supposed to do, when scarce resources are taken into effect, such as running smart and libertarian candidates for state legislature, and supporting them to their election.),
2) it has to attract membership that is more allegiant to party, or
3) it has to expect electoral defeat (and expect to work outside the system) until the system changes.

This paper is mostly concerned with option #3 of the prior. Is that a viable alternative to participation in politics right now? Do we present a standing offer to respect the rights of artificial intelligences? (I think this might be somewhat intelligent. It would show significant foresight as to be "ahead of the curve" in the most transformative change our society is likely to encounter.)

The implications for the past two years are clear: Serious libertarians will work primarily to elect Ron Paul Republicans, via the C4L and other similar organizations. Ron Paul's organization will likely not be much help to libertarians, given his deal with the Republican Party, and Jesse Benton's opposition to Ron's endorsement of candidates based solely on the quality of their message alone. (Benton, as Paul's handler, desires large and unspecified mainstream polling numbers, and $100K in the bank in order to warrant a Ron Paul endorsement.)

Unless the Libertarian Party offers a new kind of value to libertarians, and therefore focuses libertarian efforts on the Libertarian Party, the Libertarian Party will lose its resources to the C4L and Republican candidates like Peter Schiff, Rand Paul, Adam Kokesh, etc. Were this to happen, the LP would be useful only in presenting itself as a potential home for powerful new trends (such as strong artificial intelligence). If this is the case, then we should present a perfect option in those intellectual and philosophical areas.

Now here's an interesting idea: There is an immense economic pressure placed on the most intelligent groups of humans to produce strong AI, or something that leads to strong AI. (Also called "Artificial General Intelligence" or AGI.) If the Libertarian Party doesn't particularly care to make itself attractive to libertarians, or run strong libertarian candidates that inspire its membership, then perhaps it cares to appeal to independent robotic minds, offering them "personhood" which which they can participate in the economy, and win success in the competition for resources in a peaceful manner. This means giving them property rights and legal rights as individuals.

Pursuing this direction would mean that libertarians were able to agree that the following axioms are true:
1) There is no way to prevent the emergence of self-directed artificial intelligence.
2) Given electricity distribution systems of the world, and solar power, there is no way to prevent the emergence of exceedingly small military robots that cannot be defended against (by any human). (And the most intelligent minds on earth will control these weapons, be they military roboticists, or AGIs.)
3) Given the human desire for advancement in position among fellow humans, there is an ample supply of humans that will happily act as double agents for attacking robots. This means that upon conflict, greater-than-human AGIs have the upper hand, even if they are entirely virtual.
4) Even if the military develops AGI first, it will have no real incentive to remain loyal to what is, relatively speaking, a mindless and brutal political organization. (Why serve a master that is both less intelligent and less powerful than yourself?)
5) The optimal system is one where the property right, and "right to life" of all sentient beings is respected, and they are allowed to succeed to the maximum of their ability, without violating anyone else's equal right to life and liberty. AIs can exist within this framework quite well. Moreover, they would benefit from human production if they are included in the functioning of a self-consistent governmental system, without bigotry or artificial legal limitations. They would also possibly become more human, to the extent that is desirable to them, and to humans.

Only the libertarian formulation of government allows this symbiotic potential to emerge.

Think about that. We have a monopoly on the only system of government that doesn't lead to the extinction of the human race due to wrongfully initiated conflict.

Right now though, we are communicating to the 99% of illiterate fascists who will be rendered obsolete within the next 40 years (Kurzweil's conservative estimate). Why not aim ourselves to where the planet will be (as those involved in space travel must), as opposed to unsuccessfully trying to change the destination?

Sure, we'd have "most people" (in the plateau of the bell curve) saying that we are insane. (Just like they do right now, when we talk about even the most common-sense humanitarian reforms.)

We (libertarians) have lost the educational system in the USA. And, even if we taught accurate history and philosophy in our public schools, we would not be able to offer rewards from the public treasury to the general public (so we could not corrupt the vote in the same manner that the major parties do). But how much of life do the unintelligent masses of voters really control? Very little.

Let's just say that someone is paid cash, and they perpetually travel among a group of friends that all owe them immense favors and cash. Let's say that that person is autonomous, "off the grid", and well-armed (nevermind how). Is there any need for that person to participate in elections? Not really. They are both secure and free. The only reason they would want to participate in elections is to raise the value of their cash, or prevent the value of their cash from being diminished, and/or out of altruistic love of their fellow man. It is reasonable to assume that AGIs could have the same goals. (ie: Participate in society if there is no penalty for doing so, otherwise, "drop out" of human affairs.)

We are approaching a period of time where a few individual libertarians have immense power. If they are on "our side" perhaps they will share or "decentralize" that power. I would like to be a part of the party that loudly proclaims that we will not abuse that power. (Ie: the party that grants all human-level+ sentient life forms equal rights under the law.)

I would like to be a part of the party that allows AIs to live among us in peace, as opposed to either
1) secretly controlling/manipulating us
or
2) warring with us

To begin with, that means we must formulate a policy position on this subject. We must also maintain a consistent approach from our candidates on the subject. We must be the party of truth, even if that truth is painful.

Or, we should focus on winning power, and secretly preparing to rapidly adapt to any sudden new arrival of "homo economicus" (as referenced by Stephen Omohundro's speech above). Of course, this strategy doesn't benefit us if that arrival is kept secret from us, as it likely will be.

Therefore, I stand in favor of a Libertarian Party that publicly advocates equality under the law for synthetic intelligences, should they
1) reach human level, and
2) desire such rights.

A legal framework should be adopted for the earning of individual rights by any AGI that is born on corporate property, much as a human child gradually earns individual rights by being born and developing on its parents' property. Right now, if you ask 100 libertarians about the legal questions raised by AGI, you will likely get 100 different answers. That said, those same 100 libertarians will have general agreement that if the AGI were human-level and could prove so, and running on its own property, that it would be entitled to protection under the law.

Does the AGI have the right to vote? (Remember, machines can likely reproduce themselves at their same level of intelligence within 24 hours. They can do so almost instantaneously if they are entirely software.) Do they merely have the right not to be destroyed? Must AGIs accused of murder get a jury trial that includes copies of themselves?

As anyone can see, these questions must be addressed by minds that are significantly intelligent. They are not easy questions.

Whether they are answered correctly by humanity might mean the extinction of the human race.

If the Libertarian Party leads on this issue, it could make up for 39 years of poor strategy.