You still think government wants to help people?  Think again!  Bloomberg is a terrorist.  I would dare a cop to stop me from giving food to a person who needs it, aka a homeless person or poor person on the street asking for help.  Dustin & I agreed that it would be fantastic to be arrested for passing out food to the homeless.  THAT is something I wouldn’t mind having on my hereto-clean record.  ”We see you have a past charge, Mr. Sewell.  What happened there?” “Our organization was feeding people who hadn’t eaten in days.”  :::blink blink:::

——————————

So much for serving the homeless.

The Bloomberg administration is now taking the term “food police” to new depths, blocking food donations to all government-run facilities that serve the city’s homeless.

In conjunction with a mayoral task force and the Health Department, the Department of Homeless Services recently started enforcing new nutritional rules for food served at city shelters. Since DHS can’t assess the nutritional content of donated food, shelters have to turn away good Samaritans.

For over a decade, Glenn Richter and his wife, Lenore, have led a team of food-delivery volunteers from Ohab Zedek, the Upper West Side Orthodox congregation.

DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond says the ban on food donations is consistent with Mayor Bloomberg’s emphasis on improving nutrition for all New Yorkers. A new interagency document controls what can be served at facilities — dictating serving sizes as well as salt, fat and calorie contents, plus fiber minimums and condiment recommendations.

The city also cites food-safety issues with donations, but it’s clear that the real driver behind the ban is the Bloomberg dietary diktats.

Diamond insists that the institutional vendors hired by the shelters serve food that meets the rules but also tastes good; it just isn’t too salty. So, says the commissioner, the homeless really don’t need any of the synagogue’s food.

Glenn Richter’s experience suggests otherwise. He says the beneficiaries — many of them senior citizens recovering from drug and alcohol abuse — have always been appreciative of the treats he and other OZ members bring.

It’s not just that the donations offer an enjoyable addition to the “official” low-salt fare; knowing that the food comes from volunteers and community members warms their hearts, not just their stomachs.

So you can imagine Richter’s consternation last month when employees at a local shelter turned away food he brought from a bar mitzvah.

He’s a former city Housing Authority employee, and his wife spent 35 years as a South Bronx public-school teacher, so they’re no strangers to bureaucracy and poverty. But an exasperated Richter says, “This level of micromanagement is stunning.”

Says Rabbi Allen Schwartz of Ohav Zedek, “Jews have been eating chulent and kugel for a long time, and somehow we’ve managed to live long and healthy lives. All we want to do is to continue sharing these bounties with our neighbors.”

This is very different from another recent high-profile food-police case. When a North Carolina prekindergarten aide took away a 4-year-old’s home-packed lunch last month, the school defused the incident by blaming a teacher’s bad judgment.

Here, there’s no teacher to scapegoat. The ban on food donations is the direct result of work by many city agencies, all led by a mayoral task force.

Fine, the city’s making enough nutritious food available to our homeless. (Court mandates require it.) But that’s no excuse for turning away charity that brings a tiny bit of joy into these lives.

The Bloomberg administration is so obsessed with meddling in how we all live that it’s now eating away at the very best that New York citizens have to deliver.

In a recent article, I discussed the possibility of private, competing security agencies.  I took for granted the background rule of law (or lack thereof), and merely made the relative argument that a monopoly institution of violence (i.e. the State) would not aid the achievement of a working consensus on legal norms, and that in fact (as history shows) government-controlled societies are certainly susceptible to civil war.  In the present piece, I will elaborate on how law itself could be efficiently and equitably produced in a private setting.

PRIVATE JUDGES

Whether society is in anarchy or under the domination of a State apparatus, individuals will always have disputes. Although most arguments are settled between the parties themselves, some disagreements are too serious for such resolution. In such cases, the disputants (in anarchy) can turn to a judge, who is simply a person who agrees to render an opinionon their dispute.  Although many anarchist theorists link private judges with enforcement agencies in their expositions, we should keep in mind that the two are conceptually distinct.  In its essence, a private judicial ruling is just that—one person’s opinion as to who is right, and what he or she is owed, in a given dispute.

One major difference between private and State judges is that the former only entertain cases when both parties submit to the “jurisdiction” of the judge.  (In contrast, one or both parties in a State court case may strongly object to the judge and/or jury who will decide the issue.)  Cynics of private law may consider this proposal as ridiculous—the very idea that a rapist or bank robber would agree to plead his case before a third party, ha!

However, this glib dismissal overlooks the fact that most disputes in modern commercial society arenot between an “obvious” innocent and an “obvious” malefactor.  Rather, it is often the case thatboth parties to a dispute genuinely believe themselves to be in the right, and would be happy to make their cases in front of a disinterested third party.

Another consideration is that, without the government monopoly and selection of judges based on political pull and demagogic appeal, a crop of professional judges would arise who were, well, quitejudicious.  (Any unmarried female judges would quite truly be the fairest maidens in the land.)  When reading their previous opinions on cases in which they had expertise, people would recognize their excellence, and say, “Wow, that was a great ruling!  When I first heard the evidence, I thought the plaintiff was right, but after Judge Barnett explained it with his analogies, the defendant is obviously not guilty.”

In anarchy, people would demand judicial services for all the reasons that people desire law itself:  They would want to satisfy their desire for abstract justice, but they would also want to foster predictable business relationships, as well as enjoy a good reputation among their neighbors.

Let’s consider a concrete example.  Suppose Mark Johnson owns a store and he breaks the arm of Gary Owens, a customer.  Owens proceeds to tell all his friends (and anyone else who will listen) that he was minding his own business when Johnson attacked him.  Now in the standard view (and even to some extent that promoted by anarcho-capitalist writers), unless Owens belongs to a protection agency himself, he has no recourse.

But this is simply not true.  It is bad for business if Owens runs around telling people he was brutally attacked, and if Johnson does nothing to rebut these charges.  If people give any validity to Owens’ story, they will shop elsewhere.  Even beyond the pecuniary aspects, if Johnson is at all a normal human being, he will feel uncomfortable at social events if people are whispering about the tale behind his back.

Consequently, Johnson will publicly invite Owens to bring his charges to any reputable judge who specializes in such cases.  Now if Owens comes back and recommends that they take the case to his brother, Johnson will object that such a trial would be biased.  But if Owens suggests several possible judges, all of whom are unrelated to the disputants and specialize in commercial theft and excessive force, and still Johnson refuses, then the community will give more credence to Owens’ claims of brutality.  The point is that within a private legal system, there would be dozens of fair judges from which to choose; there would be no question on two honest disputants settling on one of them, and hence failure to do so would be interpreted as a sign of dishonesty.

EVIDENTIARY RULES, PRECEDENT, ETC.

Now once two parties (Johnson and Owens, in our example) agreed on a judge, he or she would presumably hear testimony, admit physical evidence, etc. according to rules and procedures that were designed to best promote the appearance of fairness and objectivity.  After all, the one crucial asset a private judge would have is his or her reputation for unbiased rulings.  In our fictitious case, Owens would probably be allowed to present medical records from the date of the alleged attack, while Johnson would submit the surveillance tapes if he had footage of Owens pocketing merchandise and then resisting when confronted.

When making his final decision, the judge would probably rely on precedent.  He would probably say, “In other cases like this one, judges have found the store owner culpable of excessive force whenever…” and so on.  We should realize that this reliance on precedent is not necessarily due to an abstract conception of ideal law, but also the result of the incentives faced by the judge.  He wants future customers to bring cases before him, and they will be more likely to do so if his prior rulings are based on some type of judicial principles and are consistent with “reasonable” rulings made by other judges.

To see this point, imagine a ridiculous scenario.  Suppose after hearing the evidence from both sides, the judge ponders for a moment and then announces, “I find in favor of the plaintiff, Mr. Gary Owens.  Because of the unwarranted force used by the owner, I hereby declare that justice will be served only when Mr. Mark Johnson gives three hickeys to the plaintiff.”  After such a ruling, this judge would likely go out of business.

APPEAL

Instead of the above ruling that would benefit neither party, suppose instead that the judge had ruled that Johnson owed Owens 50,000 ounces of gold.  Johnson would surely object that this was ridiculous, and would refuse to comply.  He would then appeal the ruling and demand that he and Owens bring the case before a different judge, who would “overturn” the prior ruling.

The incentives here would be similar to the situation that led to the first trial.  Depending on how absurd the first ruling, the community would be more or less understanding of Johnson’s refusal to submit to the decision (even though he had agreed to do so beforehand).  But once a judge had rendered a quite “reasonable” ruling, even if it had gone against Johnson, the store owner would eventually submit in order to put the issue behind him and get back to his business.  As with someone who refused to go to trial at all, someone who continually appealed, especially after multiple rulings that were totally consistent with the prevailing legal norms, would be viewed with suspicion.

REFINEMENTS

The above examples serve to illustrate the fundamental basis of private law: individuals have disputes and want an expert, third party to render an opinion.  Over time, of course, the free market would develop institutional refinements of this basic service.

Most obvious, people could arrange beforehand on the judge (or arbitrator) to be used in the event of a dispute.  (For example, this could be specified in every contract, whether hiring an employee or renting an apartment.)  The legal codes to be applied, the number of permissible appeals, etc. could all be specified beforehand, making it all the more suspicious if one of the parties violated these provisions after hearing the decision of the judge.

The other likely refinement would be the involvement of guarantors, or agencies that would vouch for individuals in the event that they were assessed large fines.  Just as insurance companies presently pay catastrophic damages committed by their clients, so too would such agencies pay the fines if one of their clients were convicted, say, of bank robbery.  In modern societies banks, large employers, real estate agents, etc. would all probably insist on dealing only with individuals who were represented by reputable agencies vouching for them.

OBJECTIONS

One major objection to such a system is that there wouldn’t be one uniform set of laws applicable to everyone.  So what?  If orthodox Jews want to have a rabbi apply the Mosaic Law to their disputes, while atheist libertarians want Stephan Kinsella to apply The Ethics of Liberty to their disputes, why shouldn’t they be allowed to do this?  Yes, “bad laws” might be produced under anarchy, but people would not be subjected to them, or at least not nearly to the extent that they are forced to submit to bad government legislation.  (In the same way, bad books will be produced under anarchy, but no one would be forced to read them.)  In any event, under the government right now, there isn’t a uniform set of laws applied to everyone, so this objection is silly on its face.

Another common objection is that the rich could purchase rulings in a private court system.  Again, this overlooks the rampant corruption in government courts.  At least on the open market, future disputants could avoid judges accused of accepting bribes in the past.  In contrast, under the State the only recourse against a corrupt judge is to hope that the voters remember (and care) and vote him or her out, or that the politicians appoint someone else.

Another typical concern is that my proposed system would work for “rational” people, but not for violent criminals.  In an article such as this, I can only say that every action in a free society would be subject to the judicial process as I’ve described.  I specifically constructed the example to include the use of force (rather than reneging on a debt contract, say) to illustrate the principles involved.  Had Johnson hired a private security firm whose employees broke Owens’ arm, the situation would not be essentially altered.  (Of course, Johnson would do well to patronize only reputable security firms that had a reputation for restraint when dealing with shoplifters.)  This concern is related to the role (if any) of prisons in a free society, and here I do not have the space to deal with this fascinating subject (though I do so in my book ).

Finally, there is the allegation that I am somehow advocating legal positivism, i.e. that I am claiming any “law” that passes the profit-and-loss test is a good one.  Nothing could be further from the truth; my ethical beliefs are informed by my Christian faith, and I am a firm believer in natural law.  But in this article, I am describing not the content of the legal code(s) that would arise in a free market society, but rather the forces influencing their evolution.[1]  For those Randians who are tempted to email me and claim that there is one objective set of laws that any intelligent thinker can discover through ratiocination, I merely respond:  Even if this were true, no government in history has yet achieved what you desire.[2]  Perhaps it is time to consider a different approach?

laliberty:

When news outlets and social media share photos of tearful mothers, fathers, wives, and children mourning their lost loved ones, my heart breaks at the senseless death and unnecessary sorrow. The state claimed a life, and then marked its claim by adorning the casket in its symbolism. And too few people earnestly ask why.

You’re told to remember “sacrifices” today. That certain people “died for your freedom.” 

They didn’t.

You’re told to “honor your country” today. That its government is an extension of the people’s will by way of the consent of the governed.

It isn’t.

What you should remember today are the millions of lives and countless liberties lost at the whim and behest of the state. 

You owe the state and its minions the same a victim owes his attacker: animosity and contempt. Freedom is free. Anyone who says otherwise is only preaching subservience and acquiescence. As I said on Veterans’ Day: “we should not be wiled by trite propaganda into supporting militarism under the guise of requisite defense of freedom.”

You should no more be grateful to the metastatic state than you should be grateful to metastatic cancer. Anything good the state ever does can always be done without the state’s monopoly on force (and, without its inherently lumbering and corrupt bureaucracy, in a more just and efficient manner). There is no such thing as a necessary evil as evil can never be a prerequisite for good. 

Ultimately, the state is unnecessary, and its democratic pretenses purporting its validity are illegitimate. 

Those blinded by uncritical “patriotism” will no doubt find these truths “disrespectful,” but to echo previous remarks from last Memorial Day: “The most respectful way to honor fallen troops is to not continue sending more troops to die in unprovoked and unnecessary wars.”

We can not properly memorialize the very real human beings who have died very real deaths - the very real losses of countless families - by celebrating needless war, promoting wanton destruction, and glorifying the very state that made those tragic losses possible.  People who truly follow a desire to protect others, and are even willing to surrender their own lives for the well-being of not just their loved ones but complete strangers, certainly possess qualities that should be admired. But let’s not allow the genuinely honorable idealism that permeates many of those when they enlist - to protect their fellow man, to honor the principles of individual liberty codified in the constitution, to stamp out evil in the world - to cloud the sad reality of what those soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines eventually become: tools for the political and economic whims of politicians, bureaucrats, despots, overlords, oppressors, and their cronies. The worst thing one can do for a fallen soldier is to dehumanize and transmogrify him into a symbol for the exaltation of the state.

The state is not you. Unless you’re a politician, plutocrat, or connected crony, it doesn’t serve you except whatever minimum is required to buy your quiet compliance. As I’ve said previously, “The state and its symbols are not synonymous with society. Nor are they representative of you or any other individual in particular. When your identity is intermixed with your government and your patriotism becomes sacerdotal reverence, you become a mindless minion of the state to be manipulated into agreeing to whatever loss of liberty best suits your god government.

“Be a good neighbor to your fellow man, not a doting subject to the state.” 

On Memorial Day, you’re supposed to “remember the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.” By all means, remember them - and reflect on how most of them had their lives unnecessarily and prematurely extinguished for and by the state. Grieve for their families who not only lost loved ones in a likely pointless endeavor but were fed lies as to the true reason for their loss. Ponder what little value those in power, contrary to their empty platitudes, place on the lives of even the most noble member of the military. Consider how many more youths, riled by the pomp and pageantry of such memorializations, will naively follow the same ruinous paths as those who are remembered today.

Mark this day as one to contemplate the state’s tragic acts on its own people, and how it masks its atrocities with the rhetorical drapes of “honor,” “sacrifice,” “bravery,” “heroism,” and - when ugly truths arise - “just following orders.” Let this day be one of shame for those in power who send our neighbors, friends, and family members to die for their own selfish causes, and let it be a day of shame for the fooled and compliant masses who support, obey, agitate, glorify, conspire with, and cover for the state.

And if you feel inclined to hoist a flag today, make it a black one.