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1

The Show / Housing options for Free-Staters

« on: July 22, 2010, 08:01:36 PM »

Just thinking about the comment on the show tonight about affordable housing for Free Staters, something I'm involved with in the UK which started not far over the state line in Burlington, VT (sure, it was Bernie Sanders, but don't hold that against the idea!) is called "Community Land Trusts".  It's often arranged as a co-operative, in which residents buy as much of the equity as they can afford, rather than according to the size of unit they need.  So you might get a relatively well off single with a one bedroomed apartment but who owns a bigger chunk of the equity in the development (and which is what he or he gets to sell out if they decide to move) and they are effectively cross-subsidising the less well off family that needs a three bedroomed property on a lower income.

Another fun option for some type of people, especially if they share a common interest, but which can actually often work out more expensive, is something called "co-housing" which is a development where everyone gets the house they want, but there's also usually "common space" built in - such as a common dining room for when you want to share meals, space for home-schooling or home-working and so on.

2

The Show / Re: How the Islamic Political System ensures Good Governance?

« on: July 22, 2010, 12:00:53 AM »

I agree about "DRO" vs "insurance company".  A later post about prisons/restorative justice drew some comments about "you're really just wanting us to choose whether our slave-masters are the shareholders of Prudential or Aviva" type stuff.

One thing that got me thinking from my work colleague who is a British woman convert to Islam was the idea that Sharia is, in its purist sense, really rather non-judgmental.  Of course we all remember (perhaps) the fuss about "Death of a Princess" and we see weekly stories of women in Iran or Muslim Nigeria being sentences to be stoned for adultery or something, but is this truly Islamic?  Is it not the case that we are told that judgment may really only rest with the creator, much the same message as Jesus's reaction to the same situation about the stoning of the adulteress in the Bible.

She was also explaining to me about how "-isms" are un-Islamic because in a way they are always a group people seeking some kind of power or dominance for their group and its ideology, usurping that personal relationship between creator and created through power structures (the suggestion was that they are really quite "blasphemous" in so seeking to impose one view, necessarily human and fallible, as the "true voice of the Creator", or the Prophet). 

And it struck me that as a person both of faith and an advocate of anarchism/voluntarism/anti-state I could readily identify with this and see the parallels with the way through both the Old Testament and now throughout the Christian "era" has been a story of disunity and "-isms" claiming to be the "one true way."  I have, despite being a card carrying Catholic, always seen the NAP and non-judgmental side of the Christian message as indicating that Christ was essentially a Libertarian - that the message, essentially of the "golden rule" is a universal thread that runs through the major faith philosophies, then corrupted by factionalism.

Whilst it won't have me converting any time soon (it's difficult enough to be a gay Catholic!) I will be returning to this topic of commonality between anarchism and both Christianity and Islam I am sure, and trying to see if I can get to the bottom of these accusations of "extremism".  As I say, if the guy who gave the lecture is described by some as an "extremist" I do think they need to get out a bit more and check out some firebrand protestants we treat as simply "devout" or whatever!

3

The Show / Re: How the Islamic Political System ensures Good Governance?

« on: July 21, 2010, 09:47:13 PM »

Interesting thread.  A few months ago I was made aware at my university (I am a staff governor) of the Islamic society inviting someone who had been previously described as an "extremist" to speak.  Out of curiosity, and because I had been talking about the event before that with a work colleague who is a convert to Islam and was helping organise it, I went along.

My family background is of Scottish non-conformist protestantism.  To be honest we have had people in the UK parliament who are more "extreme" than this guy was.  He had good arguments, if presented a little too loudly for my tastes, and none of the usual accusations levelled against "extremists" were evident.  Anyway, I did feel that one of the main reasons for some people calling such people "extremists" is that they, as he explained, oppose "liberal democracy".  And my ears pricked up, because I thought, well hey, *I* oppose "liberal democracy", what does that make me!

And then a few weeks ago, my university was also holding an international academic conference on Islamic Jurisprudence in the modern globalised world.  I'm neither an academic nor a lawyer, so I wasn't going, but it prompted me to write the following blogpost - I'll put it all here as I appreciate that some people don't want to bother "clicking through"...

"Sharia and Anarchist Private Law"

Next week here at Oxford Brookes University, they're hosting a conference entitled "Sharia and Legal Globalisation".  I should stress that from what I can gather from the program this is not a conference about how to implement Sharia alongside say English Common Law within Britain but about how Sharia as a legal system in use in many countries in the world can co-exist with other legal systems in a globalised world.  My interest, however, is how different ideas of justice and the legal systems used to implement them can co-exist at any scale. 

At an international scale law is, by nature, polycentric - there is, thankfully, not one global law code, despite no doubt more or less serious attempts to impose one.  Citizens of one state when in dispute with citizens of another state have to agree to settle their difference in a mutually agreeable jurisdiction, often one of the ones from which one of the parties to the dispute comes, but it could instead be international arbiters mutually agreed upon either by their respective countries or their professional or trade bodies or such like.
And of course, even in this context at an international level, there is a debate to be had about how any two or more different viewpoints on law and justice can co-exist, and such is, I expect, the main point of the conference.

But suggest anything along the lines of that Sharia ought to be allowed to be practiced alongside English Law, say, here in Britain and there is usually much outrage and gnashing of teeth.  Here, however, quite unlike the international, anarchic, polycentric system outlined above, we are of course subject to a monopoly of law - one state, one legislature, one system of courts and one system of punishment.  We are not used to choosing which jurisdiction to go to to settle our disputes.  Or at least not on the face of it.
But in practice, we choose different sets of rules all the time.  I know, because one of my jobs is enforcing one set - the university's "Student Conduct Regulations" in which ultimately the penalty for certain misdemeanours might be far more than the police and courts could inflict on you and may be life changing - such as being booted off your course for bringing the university into disrepute by your non-criminal behaviour offsite.

And of course, in my preferred anarchist system of market produced law, we would get to choose which "system" of law we wanted to deal with our disputes with different counterparties.  If we were both Mulsims we might both be members of a Sharia based insurance agency which would patronise Sharia based adjudicators for such cases.  But it might be prohibitively expensive to get a non-Sharia insurance company to agree to using such adjudicators when their clients did not wish to be judged by Sharia standards.

And this market would also, of course, allow for a "cross pollination" of jurisprudence to take place - so particularly with Sharia's economic and financial rules, we might find that non-Sharia people and their insurance agencies might actually want to incorporate some of that into the adjudication system they preferred.

People will often counter "what about people being forced to be members of Sharia insurance companies against their will because of family custom and coercion?"  Well, just as today we have public spirited people trying to ensure that people do not get trapped in situations not of their making or choosing, so we would likely have in an anarchist system (we do believe that such people are actually behaving that way out of the good of their hearts rather than because there is some state created reward for them don't we?).  Such people would offer services to, for example, a Muslim woman who did not want to live under Sharia but could find no easy way out, which would protect her and help extricate her, and even prosecute the Sharia insurance company of her family or community for coercing her.

Overall, as in the anarchic system of international law that exists even today in cross border disputes, the jurisdiction in which both parties will agree to co-operate will be the one that can make the most persuasive case for producing a most likely just outcome for both parties at a reasonable cost.  It's just that you don't need to be in different countries to live under different sets of rules.  In fact it seems likely to me that the market process would end up picking the best from each type and ending up in a mutually agreed hybrid system, but always based on the most fundamental underpinning that the "natural law" that would emerge would be based on the "non-aggression principle" as the only universal ethic.

This is an important issue.  When we spread around the world in imperial colonisation, we imposed our legal systems on other parts of the world.  Our legal systems had already by this time largely separated from our religious law in many important respects, although still based upon it.  Now in a globalised world we have communities and peoples in all parts of the world whose faith rather than country gives them a code by which to live, and such an anarchist polycentric legal system offers a way of incorporating that, whilst still allowing for people within that system some defence from the worst of such a system where it breaches the universal ethic.

In practice, because in a market anarchist system things such as one's ability to migrate will be largely controlled by the wishes of the property owners at your proposed destination - in the absence of state provided housing, welfare and income support you are going to need to find someone to employ and accommodate you before it's feasible to move there and those people would be likely, if they wanted to be able to continue to do business with their own existing neighbours, be willing to impose conditions designed to maintain some kind of cultural hegemony - the spectre of big cultural change being foisted upon indigenous communities who don't want it, is much more unlikely in a society where there is no central state to impose the will of a few on the many, whilst at the same time allowing those inward migrants a way of keeping some of their own cultural norms insofar as they relate to each other and don't impose on anyone else.

In my view that's what you call the "best of both worlds".

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The Show / Re: Email the presenters

« on: August 27, 2009, 02:15:14 PM »

Thanks - that's what I was looking for - and to email them in advance as well.

5

The Show / Email the presenters

« on: August 27, 2009, 11:35:02 AM »

Somewhere I once saw an email address to get hold of the presenters during the show, but I can't find it now.  Can anyone remind me please?

Jock

6

The Show / Temprance and "classical" Liberals in UK - Firday 10/07 show

« on: July 10, 2009, 08:45:09 PM »

As I understand it in the UK towards the end of the nineteenth century the Temprance movement was actually supported politically most by the Liberals (ie "proper" liberals in the UK sense of classical liberalism).  Apart from the fact that the party was greatly influenced by Welsh Methodists who were religiously tee-totallers, the economic argument was that the brewers were monopolies that operated in order to fleece the working classes of their wages through the "coercion" of intoxication.  Every town had its monopolistic brewer, owned by some local big-wig family of the privileged few.  It was only a bit later, when the "social democratic liberals" started to do their research on the causes of poverty in the big cities that it became a moralizing issue.

7

The Show / Complementary currencies - Sat 4th July show

« on: July 07, 2009, 09:46:35 AM »

I noticed you had an interesting discussion with a caller on Saturday about him wanting to use a complementary currency in his store.  This is a real live issue and one that libertarians could usefully pursue in any community.  It doesn't even need to use a silver backed currency - if you are a local enough network you can use virtually anything - usually paper or nowadays electronic transfers of tokens.

Mark, or perhaps it was Ian, mentioned that this could enhance the caller's business - there is an international trade barter system and several organizations that help match 'buyers' and 'sellers' - and some of these reckon that they can help increase a business's turnover by 15%.

During the depression there were apparently over a thousand local currencies in the US that the New Deal and Banking acts put an end to (allegedly because the folks in DC felt that it was unconstitutional for anyone other than the Federal Government to print money).  In Europe there was the WIR Bank system established by followers of the "Libertarian Socialist" Silvio Gessel in Basle in Switzerland to help keep the network of medium sized mostly locally owned businesses going at a time when there was no state money circulating.  It still exists today and trades many billions of Francs a year.

I believe that "free money" is the only way we're going to prevent a crunch like we are having at the moment in future and that these local networks are one of the ways we can work without troubling the state money institutions as much as we do now!

I'm working on one for my county in the UK, so we'll see how it goes.

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The Show / "Notch Babies" - Carmen from Florida on Sat 4th July

« on: July 07, 2009, 09:22:38 AM »

Over here in the UK I'm only just listening to the Podcast of 4th July's show.  There's a woman called Carmen on calling from Florida about letters her and her late husband have been getting about "Notch Babies" and some campaign to get them more money from Social Security.

I went off and had a look for "Notch Baby" on the web and found a piece on the Washington Post website (I know, we don't all believe the WP!) that these are a scam:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/quinn/columns/030299.htm

Just so you know...