Taking the Law into Tribal Hands

A couple of years ago, I spent a month on a self-driving tour of Mexico. That country has a well-deserved reputation of being one of the most lawless nations on Earth. Mexico's murder rate, at around 25 per 100,000 of population per annum, is five times that of the United States and about thirty-five times that of New Zealand. There are entire regions of the country to which the warrant of the law does not extend or where the police are so corrupt they cannot be relied upon to enforce the law. When we were there, the Mexican president imposed federal police control over the state of Veracruz, sacking the entire state police force because it could not be trusted to uphold the rule of law, and since then the same has been done in Acapulco.

One of characteristics of a lawless Mexico is the prevalence of irregular enforcement of order (however those enforcing the "order" choose to define it). We got used to being stopped at unlawful roadblocks, often multiple times on a journey and on several occasions blockading entire cities. Many of these roadblocks were set up for the simple purpose of extorting money from hapless road users (particularly tourists like us - I think that rental cars in Mexico have special licence plates just to facilitate this). Others were established as protest actions in support of labour disputes or native land grievances. In most cases we weren't in any physical danger so long as we complied with their demands, but in one remote area of the country we were advised by Mexican Army patrols (the only legitimate authority in the area) not to stop for roadblocks under any circumstances if we could possibly avoid it. We were literally in fear for our lives.

I was reminded of my experiences in Mexico when I read about the "checkpoints" established by Maori tribal groups supposedly to stop the spread of Covid-19 to their areas. What makes these illegal roadblocks much worse is that they appear to have the support of local police and the New Zealand Government has refused to condemn them, which makes our country potentially as corrupt and as dangerous as Mexico. Of course, if I was to set up a roadblock at the end of my street, the police would be around to remove it and to arrest me as soon as you could say "rule of law".

We have seen the encroachment of special rights for Maori into New Zealand law for several decades, ever since Justice Cooke handed down his ruling in a 1987 Court of Appeal case relating to the sale of state-owned enterprises, which said that the Crown was obligated to act as if it were in a "partnership" with Maori tribes. This, of course, implied that Maori tribal authorities were equivalent to the Crown, with all the sovereign rights of an independent government. The problems with this are manifold, not the least being who defines what is a Maori tribal authority and whom do they represent? It is certainly not a recipe for universal, democratic, liberal government.

I have written before about how I believe legitimate political sovereignty derives solely from individual sovereignty, and therefore why I support the aspiration of any group of people for self-determination. If a distinct group in New Zealand, whether they are Maori or not, wish to establish a form of self-government, then that is their right. I also believe we all have an interest in ensuring all human beings enjoy the basic individual rights (of which the American Declaration of Independence remains the best definition with "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"), and as long as these rights are respected within the self-governing territory, then there is no reason for any external party to interfere with that self-government. What is intolerable is having two standards of law, or greater or lesser rights, based on ethnicity within the same jurisdiction. That is racism, pure and simple.

I will not submit to an illegal, racist, tribal authority that is trying to stop me going about my lawful business in this country. If I am confronted by an unlawful roadblock, I will act precisely as I was advised to do in that similarly lawless area of Mexico and I advise all law-abiding New Zealanders to do the same - keep your foot flat to the floor and keep going, no matter what.

[Hat-tips to Michael Coote at NZCPR and Bob Edlin at Point of Order.]

Rights and Racism

The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son ~ Ezekiel 18:19-20 

[They’re saying] let’s help individual A by punishing individual B for what individual C did to individual D some years ago ~ Walter Williams

Last week I had the opportunity to speak with an ethnically diverse group of young people about what it meant to be a New Zealander. The discussion was, for the most part, constructive and respectful. The most encouraging voices were those of recent immigrants, all of whom saw themselves as Kiwis and who were keen to make the best of the opportunities in this country. The only discord came from those of Maori descent, who saw themselves as something special with rights that trumped those of other New Zealanders.

The great achievement of Western civilisation is its recognition of the dignity and sovereignty of the individual, and the best manifestation of this achievement is the idea of universal individual rights. But we seem to have forgotten the true nature of such rights. If they are universal, they cannot be diminished by anyone else's rights, and if they are individual, they cannot be vitiated by notions of the collective good. Governments do not bestow these rights - they are inherent to us as human beings and the role of a government is to protect, not to abrogate, them. They are certainly not the right to anything (such as a job or a house). The corollary of the idea of universal individual rights is that we should judge others as individuals rather than as members of some identity group over which they have control and which they did not choose to join.

Racism means judging someone primarily on the basis of their race. There is no denying that racism still exists in Western societies but the term is so overused today as to be either meaningless or antonymic. If I decide a Maori shouldn't get a job because he is a Maori then I am being racist. If I decide a Maori shouldn't get a job because he is not as well qualified for the position as a non-Maori candidate, then I am not being racist. Nor is it racist to object to 'affirmative action' programmes, which discriminate in favour of people on the basis of race. Such programmes are racist in themselves because they assume that those who benefit from the programme are not capable of competing on even terms with people of other races.

Institutional racism is the premise that the institutions of society, such as schools, universities, employers, the courts, etc., are racially biased. The term is used to explain any situation where one racial group has different average outcomes to another racial group - for example, the fact that there are approximately five times the number of African-Americans in prison compared to 'white' Americans is often attributed to institutional racism in the US justice system. There is no doubt that there is a history of institutional racism in the United States - the Jim Crow laws in the South were obvious examples. However, claims of insitutional racism today are usually made on the basis of single variant analysis, i.e. the difference in outcomes is ascribed to solely to one factor - in this case, race. This is usually lazy and inept science because almost any significant difference between defined groups in a population, when subject to comprehensive analysis, turns out to have multi-variant causes (for example, this excellent article in Quillette magazine explains why the commonly-held beliefs about institutional racism for African-Americans are at best simplistic, and at worst false).

Institutional racism is a convenient cause for activists on the political left because the theory supports collectivist political solutions. If minority groups are institutionally discriminated against then surely we must change society's institutions? Nothing is off-limits - the legal, educational, economic and social systems are all fair game - and the need for total change justifies totalitarian solutions. Marxism, the political philosophy that is predicated on group victimhood, is particularly attractive to those who define all human interaction in oppressor-victim terms. It does not matter that Marxism has produced worse outcomes for everyone everywhere it has been tried - the good intentions justify the means and of course this time it will be different.

Here in New Zealand it has become popular to ascribe the relatively poor economic, social and justice outcomes for people of Maori descent to institutional racism and the attempts at redress have come to dominate our political discourse and to affect every aspect of political, economic and social policy. The most significant redress has been taxpayer-funded compensation to present-day Maori tribal leaders for alleged historical breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi (which was signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, making Maori British subjects and protecting their property). Recently, we have moved beyond Treaty of Waitangi compensation to granting Maori special legal rights over and above those of other New Zealanders, such as enabling them to claim ownership of the entire New Zealand coastline and territorial waters and to have superior voting rights in local government elections.

Preferential rights based on racial characteristics are morally and legally repugnant, whether they are the Jim Crow laws or special voting rights for Maori. They cannot be implemented without abrogating the rights of others. They aggravate the divisions and antagonisms that may already exist between racial groups and do nothing to enhance the individual achievement of the people concerned (for example, there is good empirical evidence that preferential racial admission programmes in US universities lead to higher levels of academic failure amongst those granted preferential admission).

It is worrying that many New Zealanders think that people of Maori ancestry should have superior rights to the rest of us. It means that they regard rights as goods to be allocated according to some arbitrary criteria such as racial inheritance. Of course, if rights are so tradable, then whoever doles them out can take them away just as arbitrarily.

Jail for damaging trees is an indictment on New Zealand

Every now and then I come across a story that makes me despair at the extent to which our individual rights are being eroded beyond the point of redemption. Just such a story was in the New Zealand media last week reporting how an Auckland developer, Augustine Lau, has been sentenced to two and a half months in jail for damaging trees on his own property. This isn't the first case of its kind in this country but it is a new milestone on a path that leads to the situation that exists in Bolivia, where trees and bugs have rights but those of humans are ignored.

My own residence in Wellington has a large section that my wife and I have restored to native forest, with new kauri, rimu and totara established amongst a miriad of smaller trees. Prior to our ownership, the property had been neglected and had been used as a rubbish tip. Our land adjoins public reserve land, which remains in a similar or worse state to what our property was originally, despite our efforts to persuade the local council to take better care of it. I state this so that readers will understand that I am not a philistine where the environment is concerned and to demonstrate that public ownership and interference in property rights is no guarantee of protection of the environment - in fact, quite the opposite.

The trees that Lau damaged were mostly pohutakawa, which are very common and so readily self-seeded that they tend to be a nuisance. They are certainly no General Sherman. But even if they were, trees on private property belong to the property owner and other than in a few cases where their removal may directly affect a neighbouring property (which would be covered by tort), no one else should have a legal interest in them. The fact that the Auckland Council is prepared to use the full force of the state's legal monopoly on violence against Lau for dealing with his own trees is an indication on how disproportionate our public planning laws have become.

It seems from the new reports that Mr Lau is not the most cooperative fellow and he appears to have a track record of breaches of the planning laws are concerned. In fact he sounds like a rogue. But nothing he has done comes close to justifying the Auckland Council's use of the state's legal monopoly on violence to deprive him of his freedom. This is a case of using a sledgehammer to crack a obstinate nut, and it is an indictment on the status of property rights in New Zealand that such a disproportionate response is possible under our planning laws.

Why voluntary taxation isn't a crazy idea

Taxation is theft. This saying is credited to many great thinkers such as Lysander Spooner, Murray Rothbard and Walter Williams. It is really axiomatic because taxation involves the taking of something that clearly belongs to another and it always involves force, extortion or subterfuge. In fact almost everyone who supports the idea of taxation argues from this axiomatic position - they do not seek to deny the larcenous nature of it but rather seek to justify the larceny.

I oppose taxation because I oppose the initiation of force in human relations and I make no exception for the state. I accept that individual citizens delegate the protection of their rights to the state but I do not accept that the state ever needs to initiate the use of force to carry out this role as the protector of rights*. Taxation requires the state to threaten and use violence against citizens who have no intention of committing violence themselves - and without the threat and use of arrest and imprisonment, the tax system would fall apart.

I often ask people who argue in support of taxation why, if they believe it is fair and moral, does it need to be backed with the threat of violence? They usually reply that while they would be prepared to voluntarily contribute to social goods, no one else would. That is, of course, a pretty misanthropic view of the world (and, in my experience, a fairly typical attitude amongst those who profess to be altruistic).

So how would we fund the state without taxation? The alternative is a system of voluntary contributions, similar to that in Ancient Greece, which they called liturgy (the use of the term in church services came from the fact that it was at these services that parishioners made voluntary contributions). The liturgical system worked well, funding the great buildings, institutions, festivals and even wars of the Athenian state. It was highly progressive, with the burden falling more heavily on the richest in society than in any modern state. A strong sense of public obligation amongst the wealthy, and a clever mechanism called antidosis, ensured that few escaped paying their fair share. 

The world is becoming a less violent, more rights-respecting place and the apogee of this trend is a society that rejects the initiation of force in all human interactions. I believe there will come a time when involuntary taxation is considered to be a type of slavery and no longer a necessary part of human society. That will be a very great day for human dignity.

* Note that I do not consider action to prevent the imminent use of violence, such as a policeman arresting someone who is about to stab you, to be the initiation of force. 

Rights, morality and the size of government

The city of Wellington, where I live, is the capital of New Zealand and it is full of well-off public servants who think that bigger is better when it comes to government, and being of a libertarian persuasion myself, I find I am often called upon to explain my political views to friends and colleagues. In fairness, my views usually engender curiosity rather than outrage - they wonder how someone who is apparently rational and thoughtful could hold beliefs that are so obviously at odds with their own. They are even more surprised when I argue for minimalist government not from the familiar position of practicality (i.e. that the private sector could fulfil many of the current functions of government more effectively and efficiently than the government itself) but from a position of morality. They find this surprising because left-wing, big government supporters always think they have the moral high ground and it is disconcerting for them to find an opponent who undermines the very basis of their own beliefs.

The elemental moral argument against big government is that it requires the threat, and ultimately the use, of force against its own citizens. You could argue that it is not the size of government per se that requires the use of force, but it is hard to see how government could have grown to the size and broad role that is has today without resort to violence. The collection of taxes, for example, requires the threat and use of force and without taxes there can be no big state. If you believe as I do that the use of violence in human relations other than in self-defence is never moral, then you can't believe in big government.

My friends respond that the government needs the threat and use of force to prevent and stop violence. That is the moral contract of government, they argue - we give up the right to use violence to settle disputes ourselves and give the government a legal monopoly on its use in order to protect our rights. But the government doesn't need the unprovoked threat and use of violence to fulfil that moral contract. The moral role of government is the defence against, and prevention of, violence - not the initiation it.

Ah, my opponents say, if the government has a role in protecting rights then what about when those rights are in conflict? Doesn't the right to life mean someone has a right to food - and therefore government has a responsibility for ensuring everyone is fed?

True rights are never in conflict - if they are, then they are not rights. Rights are inherent to our humanity and they are universal. My rights cannot detract from your rights. Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.* The right to life simply means you have the right not to be killed by someone else - not that everyone has the responsibility to feed you. When the government takes on the responsibility of feeding those who can't feed themselves, it has to resort to violence to force others to pay for the feeding.

But, they cry, what about a baby? Yes, a parent who brings a baby into the world has a responsibility to care for that baby. The parent has made the choice to bring the baby into the world and the parental duty of care doesn't detract from the parent's rights any more so than a restaurant owner's right to run his business doesn't obviate his responsibility not to poison his customers. In other words, individual rights don't eliminate individual responsibilities.

Genuine rights sometimes appear to be in conflict and it is the role of the government, through the police, courts and armed forces, to mediate these conflicts by resorting to the objective facts and to moral rights. I have yet to find an example where it is demonstrable that genuine rights are in conflict when all the objective facts are revealed. Of course, sometimes the objective facts cannot be determined and the courts must decide between conflicting claims without full knowledge.

So, if the legitimate role of government is to mediate conflicts, how can it carry out even this limited role if it can't forcibly extract taxes? It has to convince sufficient numbers of people to contribute (through voluntary taxes or user charges) the money it needs to run government services. Such a system would almost certainly result in smaller, more efficient, more accountable and more moral government and that would be a very good thing.

* Variations of this saying have been attributed to different people but most commonly to Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Reaction to San Bernadino Shooting is Revealing

The reaction to the mass shooting in San Bernadino, California, last week was almost as horrifying as the killing spree itself. I learned about the incident as was I was talking to a senior civil servant I have been working with recently and he immediately muttered something about, "right-wing gun nuts." This guy was, like most senior civil servants, an avowed leftie and it was obviously wishful thinking on his behalf because even at that stage the facts indicated that this was no run-of-the-mill (if one could use that expression in this context) mass killing. It was known there were at least three heavily armed offenders dressed in body armour and driving a large SUV, facts that suggested it was an organised, military-style attack. I responded by betting him it was Islamic terrorism and it gives me no pleasure to have been proven right in the days since the attack.

The comments of this civil servant were echoed throughout the left-wing media here and in the United States and the anti-gun lobby, including President Obama, jumped in with calls for stricter gun laws. Of course, calling for a ban on gun ownership in response to a case like this is about as pathetic as calling for aircraft to be banned in the wake of 9/11. Yesterday Obama changed tack and made a speech in which he conceded this attack really was terrorism.

The response of left-wing commentators and politicians to this incident says a lot about their moral ambivalence. In the leftist view, a mass killing by a right-wing nut job is bad, but a similar incident by a Muslim in the name of his faith is not so bad. We see this double standard all the time - it is bad for Israeli soliders to respond to rocket attacks on their cities by targeting Hamas strongholds in Gaza but okay for Obama to order drone strikes on civilian targets in Waziristan. In their view it is not the act itself or the degree of innocence of the victims that makes mass killing moral or immoral - it is the political views of the perpetrators.

We should not be surprised by this moral ambivalence because that is at the heart of the collectivist philosophy. The rights of the individual are subservient to the will of the majority and therefore the idea of any absolute human rights is alien to them. Even the right to life is relative - leftist lives are worthy, but right-wing nut jobs do not deserve to live.

Ferguson, Missouri Shows Race Relations in America Still a Long Way to Go

Living in New Zealand it is hard to appreciate just how big an issue race is in America. Sure, we have a few tensions around Maori historical grievances but it is nothing compared to the racial firestorms that periodically break out in America between African-Americans and other races. The most recent example is the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, following the decision by a grand jury not to indict white police officer Darren Wilson over the fatal shooting of black youth Michael Brown.

I think it is likely from what I have read that the grand jury made the right decision in this case. However, there is no doubt that America's law enforcement agencies have become far too trigger-happy, with many recent examples of innocent Americans being shot by over-zealous, and even downright sociopathic, police officers (such as the killings of Samantha Ramsay and Keith Vidal or the shooting of Robby Tolan in his parent's driveway or of 70-year-old Bobby Canipe, who was reaching for his walking stick). Many shootings by policemen involve black victims and you have to think the Ferguson protestors have a valid point. 

The real cause of the race relations problems in Ferguson and across America is a vast historical legacy of bitterness that isn't easily overcome. For almost two centuries Africans were transported in appalling conditions to serve as slaves in North America and, as if that were not enough of a crime against humanity, their descendants for multiple generations inherited their bondage. Millions of Americans spent their entire lives being owned by another human being. Slavery was finally abolished by President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, although it took another three years for the Union troops to enforce the proclamation throughout the South by defeating the Confederacy. It has been less than 150 years since then and to appreciate how little historical time that is, consider that there are likely to be people alive today whose grandparents were born into slavery. And, of course, it didn't stop there. Reconstruction after the Civil War led to another century of discriminatory 'Jim Crow' laws in the South that only ended with the Civil Rights Act and other measures in the 1960s. So, the wound is still very raw.

However, much as I sympathise with the historical plight of African-Americans, I don't accept the idea of 'white guilt' as it is contemporarily applied to Americans (or New Zealanders). Americans of European descent today are not responsible for the crimes of their ancestors. Prejudice is about pre-judging people (which is the very root of the word) on the basis of some collective trait, and Americans of European descent should no more be judged by their racial make-up than African-Americans, for to do so would be to pile one wrong on another. People should be judged by their actions as individuals, not tarred by association with the deeds of their forebears. The founding fathers of America got it right when they said that all men are created equal and have unalienable rights. The fact that they did not practice what they preached does not lessen the truth and utility of their famous words today. The answer to America's bitter racial legacy is to reaffirm and hold fast to those great truths.

The Narrowing Gap Between the Forbidden and the Compulsory

I was recently talking with a friend of mine about the inexorable encroachment of the power of the state into every area of our lives and he made a very insightful comment. There have always been things that are forbidden by the government - traditional crimes against person and property such as murder and theft; and there have always been things that are compulsory as well - taking care of your own children, for example. For most of the last few hundred years, in Western nations at least, the gap between these two areas of state proscription has been large and the State did not consider it to be its business to interfere in areas as broad as where and how you work, whether you save for your retirement, whether you make provision for personal medical care, how you are educated, what you eat and drink, and what you sell to your neighbour. We regarded countries that did try to interfere in all these areas of its citizens lives to be feudal and dictatorial.

The West, led by Britain and the United States of America, valued individual liberty and rights as important foundations of their ways of life. Of course, individual liberty and rights were not absolutes and there were significant exceptions to the rule, such as slavery in the United States before Emancipation, but the general principle was that the state left people alone unless there was good reason not to.  It is this principle that has been abandoned in much of the western world today where governments consider it not only their right but their responsibility to interfere in every area of every citizen's life. The gap my friend talked about is now almost non-existent. Sure, there are a few areas of increased personal freedom such as around the removal of state sanctions against homosexual relations, but the generally the trend has been far in the other direction.

Today we face new challenges to the narrowing gap that remains. Governments across the Western world are trying to ensure we do not say or do anything that is contrary to the narrow view of acceptable behaviour as defined by the small, often unelected, elite in the executive branches of our governments.  These people claim the right (often disregarding legal and constitutional restraints on their power) to watch our every move, listen to everything we say and read everything we write. As always, they claim this is for our own good, to protect us against poorly defined threats and enemies. They often claim these powers are temporary but of course they never give them up.

In the past the mainstream media would have carried the flame of the protests against this encroachment of the state but now most in the media are apologists for it. There are a few who are prepared to stand up and act against this existential threat to free, democratic society from within. Edward Snowden is one of the few. He has exposed illegal an unconstitutional activity by the US Government against its own citizens. Americans should stand up for Edward Snowden before it is too late.