The Costs of Being Left Alone

Prompted by a recent tweet, I began to ruminate on the idea that certain people only want to be left alone. Now, that can seem extremely enticing, indeed for some even desirable. The problem is, many of the people who want to be left alone don't really want to leave you alone necessarily.

The tweet in question is provided by famous whistleblower and defector Edward Snowden. In it he compares being afraid of Libertarians politically to being afraid of cats. I do admit that, on some level, there is a bit of a point as the Libertarian Party of the United States is so whacky in its politics that the odds of them ever forming a stable government are damn near impossible. However, the ideas that they do hold are downright terrifying in what they could do to you.

I've never understood the political fear of Libertarians.

"Sure, they're not in power now, but someday they might take over and... uh, leave you alone, I guess, since that's kind of their whole deal."

It's like being afraid of cats.

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 3, 2022

Lest it sound like I'm just down on libertarians, I'm not really. Libertarian ideology actually has a few principles in personal liberty, property rights, freedom of speech, and various decriminalization ideas that I do admire. However, most of that was coopted from it's original libertarian socialists/anarchists of the late 20th century and bastardized into an extremely schizophrenic defense of laissez-faire capitalism, which means many of the good things about the ideology do come from a completely different place in the political spectrum. That one of the main ideas of libertarianism is that it wants to completely dismantle many existing government regulations on just about everything and let "the market" take over is really just an enormous problem. Essentially, while I like their take on personal liberty and rights, I find their look at trying to craft a society to be downright horrific.

I've written a bit before using fictional examples of how this is probably a bad idea, but I'd like to just make a quick summary of why that is. For reference, in the Libertarian Party's platform is a stated desire to allow employers to refuse to recognize a worker made union, effectively negating the leverage of collective bargaining or such protections. While it is not against unions, it does not offer any protection or inherit legitimacy, which is an enormous blow to the mere existence of labor organizing when one traces its history.

Secondly, it supports free market solutions to healthcare. The free market solutions in the United States as it already exists are so hideously expensive and inefficient in delivering care that it's near cartoonish, and this is with minimal government intervention in the healthcare system. Among wealthy nations it has the highest rate of hospitalizations from preventable causes, and the highest number of deaths from preventable causes. Quite simply, it spends an enormous amount of money on healthcare, while creating an enormous financial barrier to actually seeking that care (indeed, most bankruptcies in the US result from unexpected medical spending). Any objective analysis would conclude that the problem rests with the issue of making healthcare a commodity rather than a public service, but the Libertarian Party concludes the opposite.

Thirdly, it supports market based solutions to the environmental crisis. This is, put simply, almost so ludicrous that it barely rates a comment. However, it is an insidious idea that is in vogue that we can simply use the free market to get out of climate change, even though oil and gas companies spent decades running climate denial propaganda, and private corporations are notoriously unaccountable for the environmental damage they cause, while overselling their commitment to fighting it. But the market will solve all!

While these are just small examples of what is really wrong with the Libertarian platform and ideology, let me swing this back to Snowden's original message. He says "Sure, they're not in power now, but someday they might take over and... uh, leave you alone, I guess, since that's kind of their whole deal."

Let's look at this for a second; on one hand, he's saying that with a Libertarian government they will say "We can't tell you what to do," and well, sure, here's a question? What's the flip side of "we can't tell you what to do?" It's "You can't tell me what to do."

That's where the problem sets in. It's a similar problem I have with anarchism, where it depends very much on community norms and peer pressure to enforce conformity, but in libertarian ideology the extreme emphasis on individualism creates a Randian nightmare where what you want doesn't really matter if no one is going to bother to help you. With one ideal of libertarian ideology being a "night watchmen state" which merely enforces contracts through the judiciary and police, while enforcing the 'non-aggression principle' through the same and defending liberty with an army, the ability to do much beyond basic property rights becomes a bit complicated.

Broadly speaking this is a problem with both libertarianism and anarchism since both tend to look at the vacuum a loss of government function would create and assume utopia. As the old adage goes, nature abhors a vacuum and so something must fill it. In the libertarian world that's the market, which as I lay out in my longer essay, has no accountability to the public good. 

As an example, let's say for instance that a company builds a factory on a river. Since there is no regulation on what kind of waste they can dump into that river, they begin dumping harmful industrial byproducts into it. This causes the local environment to be poisoned, leading to the drinking water supply of a local town to be contaminated and people die. Naturally, some people will organize and try and sue the company that caused it. In the libertarian philosophy, case closed, but is it? Quite a lot depends on the people being able to afford a good legal team, and a company which has the capital to build that factory in the first place will almost overwhelmingly be able to afford a good legal team (or potentially SLAPP suit the problem away before it starts). The corporate legal team will almost inevitably win this, and the people who have lost loved ones or who are still living with a poisoned water supply will still have that problem. The overwhelming legal defense for the corporation might be "it was their individual responsibility to prepare for what might happen, no one stopped them from looking into living downriver from a factory might be like, it's their fault if they weren't prepared!"

If that seems like a ludicrous idea, projective personal responsibility onto the victim, allow me to refer you to the story of the MacDonald's Hot Coffee lawsuit. Despite becoming the poser child for a frivolous lawsuit, most of what you know about the case is actually wrong. The victim, Stella Liebeck, was a 79 year old woman who was in a parked car when she accidentally spilled coffee on herself, because the coffee was at 180–190 °F (82–88 °C) it caused third degree burns to her legs an genitals, nearly killing her, requiring extensive surgeries and skin grafts, costing 20,000$. Liebeck merely wanted her medical expenses covered, but MacDonald's framed this as a case of greed, among a litany of other crazy claims. Indeed, this was framed as a 'personal responsibility issue" and a concentrated effort was made to portray this as a "clumsy, greedy woman wanted money for her own mistake" rather than "company serves coffee capable of melting skin" to the public. That Liebeck won was astonishing.

Though let me give you another, more concretely libertarian example. In his book A Libertarian Walks into a Bear,  tells the story of personal liberty run amok in a New Hampshire town called Grafton. A weird mix of libertarian activists moved in and, effectively, took over the town government. They cut services to the bone, paring down police, fire, road maintenance, and even the public library to an absurd degree to the point where they almost existed in name only. The town's legal fees skyrocketed because it became an extremely litigation heavy region, the local police force was so handicapped by budget cuts that they could hardly ever put their single police cruiser on the increasingly pothole cratered roads for fear it was so unsafe, and the number of accidents and medical incidents practically overwhelmed what medical services were available.

The title comes from the fact that, by doing away with bylaws and many other ordinances that prevented big groups of people from living in the woods, trash began to be dumped everywhere. So bears showed up. With easy food, and some people even feeding them just because they enjoyed it, bears lost their fear of humans. That led to confrontations and bear attacks. When some frustrated people got mad at people who fed the bears, they were told that anything that happened wasn't really the bear feeders problem.

As I said, the flip side of "we can't tell you what to do" is "you can't tell me what to do" and as seen here, with the government pared down to nothing, life got immeasurably worse as no one bothered to take responsibility for anything. The book did show a fascinating divide among the libertarian ideology, and how many people had such broad ideas on what libertarianism is. The author treats most of the people sympathetically, and does an excellent job showcasing the slow motion collapse of a civil society. While he treats the people with sympathy (and occasional incredulity) I can say for certain that there was a lot of "fuck you, got mine" on display, which unfortunately tends to be a very common underlying theme in many proponents of libertarianism. 

These examples are, overall, just a few reasons why people are genuinely afraid of libertarianism politically. While the broad ideas of freedom and individual liberty are indeed admirable, they come attached to a series of poorly thought out other political ideas. From dismantling healthcare to effectively ceding economic primacy to unaccountable corporations, libertarian political emphasis on individual freedom does not make up for the broad structural damage it could introduce from a lack of protections or responsibility. 

Freehold and Jennifer Government: The Ideas

Picking up from where I left off in Part 1 of this analysis, I shall expand on why I think that the societies portrayed in both Freehold and Jennifer Government are fundamentally the same. Though first, I will begin on spelling out the inherent differences.

The first, and perhaps most important thing to point out is that each is set in a different genre and telling very different stories. Freehold is a work of science fiction set far in the future telling a refugee and war story fleshing out the authors view of a realistic libertarian society with minimalist government and maximum personal freedom. Jennifer Government on the other hand is a satire set on present day Earth which instead takes rampant consumerism and corporate greed to its absurdist conclusion while also pointing out the de-fanged nature of a minimalist state and the problems that would cause.

Different genres, different aims, and very different stories.

Picture is my own

With that in mind though, I do want to explore why these societies are almost twins of one another.

“The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?” - Angela Davis

Firstly, the society of Freehold has a very simple ethos "work or starve" which to some might seem reasonable. This will only effect the parasites who leach off the system of course!

Unfortunately, any dispassionate examination of economic reality would lay this brutal all or nothing system bare for the failure it is. It is a very inhumane dog-eat-dog ideology which rests at its core on an unworkable idea. This idea is that everyone has an equal starting point when engaging in economic activity. No one has any innate advantage over another person or everyone is capable of contributing to society equally. This idea is very much in error.

Now, I just want to make clear this is not necessarily a problem with libertarian thought per-say, but a problem with both libertarian and anarcho-capitalist economic thinking. It is fundamentally obvious that not all men are created equal. Some are born poor, some rich, some stronger, taller or weaker, shorter and so on. That divides the playing field at birth.

As an example, someone born into a poor family will very much be handicapped by their lack of access to greater resources or even basic living costs on some hands. Studies have shown that it is extremely difficult for those born into poverty to advance beyond that line, leading to an endless cycle. In some cases and countries this can be overcome, but it does tend to rely on government assistance or grants and loans, whether unemployment insurance or school loans in order to attend higher education.

Someone born into a wealthier family by contrast, has many advantages. They do not need to worry about the struggle for daily needs like food and rent, they have much more access to both higher education and the social circles which allow for social advancement. Whether the option of choosing more prestigious (and better connected) private schools or the simple expedient of not having to rely on loans to even get a higher education, someone born into a wealthy family has an inordinate advantage over someone born poor or even to a middle class family.

In that vein, let me use an example from Freehold. When Kendra arrives on the Freehold, she is sent to a job agent to try and find employment:

“I realize there may not be anything in inventory or a related area,” Kendra acknowledged. “But I can do loading, stocking or whatever, until something administrative shows up.”
“The problem is,” Calan explained, “that all the light jobs get snatched up by juveniles looking for spending money, veterans get preference for technical positions and unskilled heavy jobs are rare, with the industrial base we have. If you can lift fifty kilos regularly in this climate, I can find a few, but they don’t pay well.”
“Fifty?” She repeated, shocked. “No, not for very long.”
“That is the detail. I can recommend a couple of prospects that usually aren’t hiring, but will probably make an exception for you. They both offer training. Cavalier Enterprises and Bellefontaine.”
“What would I be doing?”
“Cavalier Enterprises is one of the most respected escort services in Jefferson. They offer dancers, modeling, escorts for business or social functions, massage and exotic sex fantasies. The Bellefontaine is a club that offers erotic dancing and they specialize in dancers with rare or off-world looks.”
Kendra was silent in amazement. A chill shot down her spine and all the way to her left heel. She opened her mouth twice and finally got out, “No.”
“They are both excellent companies,” Calan stated simply. “I occasionally visit the Bellefontaine myself.”

The obvious problem here is that, outside easily lost menial labor, Kendra has no real special skills. The implication too is that if she were not attractive she would probably have no choice but to work in backbreaking menial labor which would slowly grind her down. In essence, she has no negotiating power in the system and if she had not gone over the head of her agent and asked for other options she would have been trapped, but the point stands that if she did not have other skills which were deemed useful she would have been stuck with the physical labor.

In comparison, the hapless Hack Nike has both a self-esteem problem and a negotiating problem. He always gets screwed at his quarterly wage negotiations because he won't stick up for himself. A problem with consistently negotiating your wages is that you don't really have the power to properly negotiate if you're bad at that very act or have no one to negotiate on your behalf. Hell, the problems Hack faces are that he then foolishly subcontracts away from the contract he didn't read before he signed!

Problematically we also see that corporations themselves will penalize individual employees in the world of Jennifer Government for things as mad as their replacement at a job might not be as good as them. This of course can be interpreted as satire, and arguably should be, but the process of rewarding or punishing employees based on successes isn't exactly a new idea.

Essentially you do not have freedom of choice in these societies, you have an illusion of freedom. When the alternative is starvation and death perhaps not just for yourself but for your family, then whoever has your paycheck in their hands has you at their mercy and the power imbalance would be absolutely catastrophic.

I'd next like to address the bigger problem in both worlds, lack of government intervention and corporate accountability.

“Accountability. This is the primary ingredient missing in politics, corporations and financial institutes.” ― Brandon A. Trean

From dreamstime.com

In the world of Jennifer Government the government is a joke and corporate oversight is a laughable concept. The paraphrase Ayn Rand through Robert Heinlein "I would say that my position is not too far from that of Ayn Rand's; that I would like to see government reduced to no more than internal police and courts, external armed forces — with the other matters handled otherwise. I'm sick of the way government sticks its nose in everything, now." The government only exists to adjudicate disputes and prevent crime, or enforce punishment if you can afford it. Ironically in that world they don't even seem to have a monopoly on military power! The Freehold is much the same. The government exists only to adjudicate, prevent crime, and keep invaders at bay. At least they appear to have the monopoly on force though.

However, it should be noted in each case that the government in each world is, effectively, powerless. While this is part of the driving plot of Jennifer, in Freehold it is a very background case.

As an example, the government adjudicates lawsuits between individuals and presumably corporations. The biggest scandal presented in Freehold is that since there are no government standards, private corporations, three large ones specifically (several smaller are mentioned, but for all intents and purposes that is irrelevant) are ratings firms who rate various products based on their reliability and quality. It turns out one firm has had employees taking bribes to up ratings and as this news leaks consumers boycott the company and it devolves into a mass of lawsuits.

Simple enough right? The lawsuits will be taken care of and the companies guilty will be held responsible. In the real world we're quite aware this doesn't work, but on the Freehold this would be far, far worse. In an ideal world, this kind of whistle blowing would end up seeing a company held responsible for their misdeeds. However, a particular problem (especially in the US) is that the company could just begin handing out SLAPP lawsuits. In brief, a SLAPP lawsuits would be designed to censor and intimidate anyone who wants to harm either a corporation or a very powerful person. It is a pet tactic of Donald Trump and John Oliver has a very detailed piece on the matter which points out why it is so harmful since those handing them out can often afford to drown people in expensive legal action.

Boycotts rarely work in reality, and in a world where 'work or starve' is the ethos, then the consumer would have virtually no power to boycott. The journalists who leaked the stories would be SLAPPed silly, and the employees who took bribes would probably already have their asses covered by management if it weren't management in the first place colluding to get better money in exchange for hyping up products from certain companies, no matter how bad said product was.

This is by no means unrealistic. Whether it is colluding to fix the prices of ebooks, illegally manipulating interest rates for profit, fixing emissions tests to sell vehicles that let out too much poisonous gas, creating fake bank accounts without client consent, among other things, these are just a few examples of the blatantly illegal and manipulative practices carried out by both individual and colluding corporations to the clear detriment of the consumer. More notably, even in a world where we see governments coming down hard on these practices, many of these corporations still exist and can screw over their customers more.

What is worse, is that in Freehold and Jennifer Government, even the mild punishments experienced in real life are impossible. The corporation is only beholden to its bottom line, not the consumer.

In the case of the latter novel, the lack of ability to enforce such accountability is the driving theme. In the former, that lack of accountability means that Freehold would essentially be an oligarchy where the various corporations run wild and no one can do a thing about it.

The Freehold, unlike the United States and affiliate nations in Jennifer, does not even have a government capable of oversight. It doesn't even have a traditional democracy. Instead, it is 'run' by a Citizens Council. To whit:"Citizens pay for the privilege of ruling, getting a small stipend in return and the court fees paid are more generated income. The military and safety patrols charge for any assistance we render on duty and most of the large corporations donate a small percentage to the military as an insurance against our need in industrial accidents. They also use us as testing and advertising for any products we may find useful."

Now while that seems great in theory, I think you can see where this would fall apart rather horribly with where I've been going. It is explicitly stated Citizens do give up their means to wield their political power. However, there is nothing which says they cannot be given gifts to play favorites. Surely bringing out a Citizen for dinner is nothing suspicious, selling them a property at a discount, donating to their District upkeep among other means? There seem to be no restrictions on what a Citizen can receive from private residents of the Freehold, and then who would enforce those restrictions? Petty bribery is practically enshrined in the American system with dark money influencing politics and cushy jobs promised to retiring politicians in exchange for their support. In the Freehold that would be even more pronounced. And you would have no oversight body, Congress, Parliament or Supreme Court, to turn to for redress. They would almost inevitably be in the pockets of these corporations.

Much worse is that then the military has much of its funding (how much is never clear) coming from corporate donations as insurance against natural disasters and presumably social disorder. Would that extend to gifting the officers and certain men who needed to be influenced? Almost certainly. While in a throwaway line it is mentioned everyone on Freehold is armed well enough to overthrow the government if they chose, with the corporations controlling the products and the government, and the military in their pocked to back it up, well you have a recipe for corporate dominance.

Speaking of that dominance, let's discuss monopolies.

From wikimedia commons

"I am not denying that monopolies are terrible things, but I am denying that it is readily easy to dissolve them through legislation of that nature." ― Alan Greenspan

A monopoly is an economic situation where a single company controls access to a specific service completely. However, an oligopoly or a cartel, is where numerous companies control access to a resource and collude on how to distribute it. This can be seen today by the domination of certain industries by a small number of corporations. Two of the most infamous examples are Microsoft, which developed the idea of EEE (embrace, extend, extinguish) in order to try and corner the tech development market. The second is Walt Disney Studious which owns a truly disturbing number of mass media assets which is still being unraveled to this day.

Then we have the problem of oligopolies, where a small number of companies can collude to set prices or at least create an illusion of competition. This is seen in the case of mass media communications, such as four companies controlling over 90% of the cellular communications market in the US. In Canada this can be seen by three companies dominating the supermarket industry, four companies dominating the cellular communications industry, and three dominating the internet providers industry.

In Jennifer Government this is exactly the problem. Two massive corporate oligopolies, US Alliance and Team Advantage, dominate the market. You can either shop with them or you shop with no one and smaller stores simply go out of business. In fact the driving desire to win that competitive game nearly starts a shooting war! But the point is that consumers have an illusion of choice. They are deciding to eat at Burger King or Macdonalds, shop at Walmart or Sears, not go to the small business up the street. It is an either or situation which is being created. It's a terrifyingly real possibility.

On the Freehold you would most likely end up with an oligopoly by default. With no oversight and no method of redress, corporate dominance would just be the way it is.

This is possible because the free market does not necessarily bring the best ideas to the top. There is no invisible hand to guide and self-regulate it. Without a firm hand to stop someone from cornering a market, and many times even in spite of it, you have to work very hard to prevent the moneyed interests from simply dominating it as they see fit.

But all these dangerous signs aside, what about personal freedom?

"To change your mind and to follow him who sets you right is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before" ― Marcus Aurelius 

In both worlds, we find lands of fairly astonishing personal freedom. Drive how you want, be as promiscuous as you desire and no one will shame you if its all in good fun. You can buy any weapon you want, even up to lethal missile systems and weapons of mass destruction (on Freehold at least). Drugs are easily available, you can legally go out and inebriate yourself to whatever level you desire. The worst thing you might do is violate a contract or fail to pay your debts.

But as discussed before, is this freedom?

Some would argue enthusiastically yes! Small government! Privatization is the way! But is it? Privatizing a public service not only has been found to cost the public more, but has yet to be shown to be either more efficient or safer. So arguments put forward by both protagonists (and antagonists) in each story can be very, very detached from reality.

Neither society would have any means, beyond charity, of helping people in need. Whether it is something as simple as community snow removal, or even providing healthcare to the needy, an absence of a government to step in and attempt to provide these services, you would instead find widespread suffering and poverty. The corporation doesn't care.

What happens when personal freedoms begin to get in the way of profits? Could they then coerce or attempt to regulate those freedoms away or make a profit from punishing disobedience? Punish consumers by hiking prices or denying access, or simply invoke their monopoly and put people out in the cold who attempt to pressure them? All real possibilities by non government entities.

Truthfully, Jennifer Government is a very keen expansion on what the Freehold would devolve into. There are no elections, and those who govern are going to become either impotent and irrelevant or simply cronies of a larger for profit driven machine. Dissent is either pointless or a death sentence, and over time the very idea will be foreign with the brutal reality of your society laid out for you. But if enough people, and well armed people at that, become desperate enough, would work or starve make fight or die an option?

The end of these societies might then end up being all out war between those on top, or all out war against those on top from the bottom up.

Either way, these two societies are twins of each other I think, perhaps not in the way their authors imagine. While Freehold is meant to show off a 'realistic' libertarian society, and an interesting one is created to be fair, that very liberty and lack of oversight brings to mind more images of the world of Jennifer Government. Vast corporate dominance of global affairs and no one who can reign them in. The little man on the bottom had best get out of the way.

Freehold and Jennifer Government: The Stories

As part of my Great 2020 Re-read I took it upon myself to go back to two novels of varying seriousness. One was a novel I picked up a decade ago, Michael Z. Williamson's Freehold which is a guilty pleasure of mine, and the other is Jennifer Government by Max Barry. One is an interesting story of an alternate society in the far future, while another is a satirical look at a society in the near future. Both are ironically, fundamentally the same society.

That though is a rather simplistic explanation with a broad brush. On the surface they are extremely different, with different cultures, naming conventions, and even different planets. The ideology that unites them however, is fundamentally the same.

First though, let us introduce our two focus cases. First up is the novel I originally read, Freehold.

From Wikimedia Commons

This was the debut novel by Michael Z. Williamson, for Baen Books. Published in 2004 it was his first full length novel and though it shows at points, it is still an exciting read. My original review still does stand, though I've soured more on some aspects of the story over the years.

Set roughly in the 26th century, it tells the story of Kendra Pacelli as she flees unjust charges of embezzlement in the military on the UN dominated Earth to the only independent planet in human colonized space, the Freehold of Grainne. Self described as "the first truly free society in human history" it is set up as a libertarian paradise (more on that in Part 2) and is meant to be a contrast to the bureaucratic nightmare of Earth. You can do almost anything you want, so long as you are willing to accept the consequences for your actions. Own any weapons you like, drive however erratically you like, love who you like, and sign whatever contract you feel free to. No one is forcing you after all!

Kendra experiences quite a lot of culture shock, but eventually adjusts to her life in the new colony.

When political friction between Grainne and Earth forces her to move into the military, we spend a huge portion of the second act looking in depth at military training on Freehold. It is brutal, harsh, and very difficult. Kendra passes and officially joins the Freehold Military Forces. As she was in logistics in her old military life, she fits right in to logistics in her new one. Getting into the groove of her new job, she again gets caught up with Earth/Grainne tensions as 100,000 malcontents are shipped into the Freehold to stir up trouble. They succeed masterfully, and the UN government declares they are going to annex the Freehold for their own good.

Of course, this leads to war and the UN invades. Needless to say though, that for all the well portrayed horrors of war, the Freehold wins by some pretty far reaching deus ex machina which probably could have been better concentrated on with both a wider cast of characters and some further research. The war largely did depend on a very 20th/21st century understanding of strategic warfare and combat to be believable.

That said, it is a guilty pleasure read, and I fully acknowledge it. Worth a bit of a read if you find the idea interesting.

Now this next book, I actually have only very fuzzy recollections of where I picked it up. However, I do recall it being uproariously funny and I definitely read it shortly after reading Freehold. That book is Jennifer Government. Written in 2003, it is an excellent satire of rampant consumerism and corporatism, and turns on its head the idea that a dystopian future requires a totalitarian government!

From Wikimedia Commons

The story begins twenty minutes in the future where much of the world has become the US. Or literally, the United States has expanded into much of the world through corporate purchase. These countries have become part of the US led trade bloc, having gradually given away their sovereignty to become part of the largest, freest system in the world! There is minimal government, no elections, and you're free to do whatever you can afford! Just make sure you read that contract! People have done away with surnames, and you know yourself by the company you work for!

The world of Jennifer Government Blue = US led countries Red = non-US trade blocs Green = fragmented markets

By user Sannita, Wikimedia Commons

Enter one Hack Nike, who works as a middle merchandiser for Nike. One day his water cooler
malfunctions so he travels to the floor above him to try out the one there. It is here he meets John Nike and John Nike. They offer him a fast trace to advancement, he can help them whip up sales for a new line of shoes being sold, and all he has to do is kill some kids! Too bad he didn't read the contract before he signed it!

With all the madness going on enter Buy Mistui, who is unfortunately witness to one of the shootings. Helped out by the barcode tatooed agent Jennifer Government, they both end up on the path of a sociopathic businessman as another cast of colorful characters are sucked into the mayhem. From a militarized NRA gunning for Government agents, companies trying to crash each others servers, to shootouts on the Burger King floor, its a total madhouse as sales come before lives!

Written in 2003 it has some pre-internet vibes which do date the story. But it does really capture consumerism gone mad as corporations have license to do whatever they want since unless you have money, you can't really bring them to task since the government has no right to tax in order to set a budget.

This really complicates the life of Jennifer as she has difficulty going after the bad guys when they do bad things. She's being constantly asked where the money is going to come from, whether she could do things to cause less collateral damage (and therefore expose the government to lawsuits) and if she's sure she can even bring the executives to justice if she has the evidence. Money doesn't grow on trees after all. Meanwhile, if you have the cash the Police can investigate crimes or prevent them preemptively, but it will still cost you. And if there's an emergency, have your credit card number ready so you can pay in advance before they respond!

Other than the murder investigation, the main conflict is between two major loyalty programs taken to its logical extreme. US Alliance and Team Advantage compete against one another to have the biggest consumer base on the block, and John Nike is determined that his side, US Alliance, is going to win big. He is going to wipe out the competition.

As this is written as a satire the humor comes from the over the top situations and unlikely circumstances our many poor characters find themselves in or the ridiculous extremes they will go to in order to get the win. I had quite a few laugh out loud moments, especially as one poor side character Billy Bechtel kept running across Jennifer Government in the worst ways possible. All the poor man wants to do is go skiing! The outlandish desire for consumerism people showed was pretty funny. Late in the novel Jennifer and her partner Calvin are running through a riot and Calvin keeps getting distracted by the good deals he sees.

Its a funny story with a very satisfying conclusion and I genuinely want a laugh about our society and consumerism. Really takes the piss out in an enjoyable way. If you want a laugh in this mad modern world, very worth a read.

With the stories out of the way; why do I think they portray the same society? In worlds where the market is unchecked and money talks, what do you think would happen? Stay tuned for Part 2 as I launch into a much more long winded explanation!

Objectivism vs Libertarianism

Recently on the alternatehistory.com chat board I posted a question about Objectivism vs Libertarianism. It was a simple matter about how I felt Objectivism and Libertarianism shared many qualities, and how I think Objectivism is simply a vicious outgrowth of libertarian ideas. I have recieved some good comments and they got me thinking about the two ideologies.

While libertarianism is a much broader political scope and ideology that encompasses almost the entire political spectrum Objectivism is a much more narrow and self-centered ideology that encompasses ones own view of the ones self and advocates purposely thrusting that view on society as a whole. I may have been in error when I made a broad sweep about libertarianism and Objectivism being the same, so I most likely goofed in that respect.

I do, however, believe that Ayn Rand's opposition to Libertarianism came from the fact that she unrepentantly grasped onto many of the ideas of the American right (mainly right-wing Libertarianism in the US) and used them while crafting her own personal ideology without giving credit where credit was due, hence why she called libertarianism 'my ideas without teeth [paraphrased]' and was always immensely hostile to them. So hard right libertarianism certainly shares a number of qualities with Rand's works and if compared, really is Rand's works wirhout teeth.

That being said on a second note there is a wonderful new TL on that website which takes Rand's beliefs to their logical conclusions. The TL is masterfully done and catches Rand at her worst. It starts off when Rand has entered a phase of deep depression following the writing of Atlas Shrugged when she is approached by none other than that infamous con-man L. Ron Hubbard and advised on where she may be able to get the worlds 'best and brightest' to a place where they can be free. There they will flourish and be better able to explore their opportunities. Its dark, but morbidly humorous to anyone that find Ayn Rand objectionable. I highly reccomend it.

Link: http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=235733

Freehold by Micheal Z Williamson: A Review

Though it may seem that this blog is becoming something of a review site I am mostly reading books that are interesting and don't exactly conform to my own political views which makes them both interesting reads, and important learning material for an author. It can help an author avoid littering their work with his or her own political beliefs. And while Freehold is an author tract, it doesn't exactly read like one, which is why im comparison to my previous review of the book "Enemies Foreign and Domestic" this stands out as a superb example of how one can avoid serious author tract and write well at the same time. So I feel that it is important to follow up a resoundingly bad novel with a, while not A grade material, a novel that is still miles ahead of the previous work I read. So without further preamble I present to you Freehold.

The Story:

Set in the 26th Century we are treated to the view of Earth after it has been united under the administration of the UN as a one world government. We have a brief, well done and to the point opening describing the main character Kendra Pacelli and her mundane and mainly bureaucratic role in the UN Protection Forces. As the novel begins she has just returned from Mtali (a world divided by a multi-sided civil war) and is returning to her mundane job in the megacenter of Minneapolis. However, she is alerted by a guard and former lover that she is going to be arrested and interrogated regarding a scheme which involved selling millions of dollars worth of war material to the competing sides on Mtali. Kendra, having been involved with the logistics unit which the material was from is going to be rounded up with many others. She flees and in the midst of the investigation decides to run to the only planet where the UN cannot reach her, the Freehold of Grainne. After forcing her way into the embassy she is granted asylum and sent to Freehold where she becomes immersed in the society and deals with both her own struggles of getting used to Freehold and with the looming threat of the UN coming after her and the Freehold itself.

The Good:

The story is reasonably well paced and only drags at some inopportune moments. The characters are well fleshed out and believable and rarely the type of cardboard cut out caricature's that ideological rants usually present (Atlas Shrugged, Enemies Foreign and Domestic) people as. Rob Mckay, the books main love interest, is an interesting example. He is a typical Freehold man who is polite but extremely forward in his approach and has some grope happy moments but is otherwise an ok guy. He is a military veteran and has many friends because he 'saved their ass on Mtali' which shows a connection between society and the military in a pleasant way, Kendra herself has to go through almost 400 pages of a learning curve when she gets to the Freehold and never does get quite used to it and the culture shock is written well and very believable. It is attacked from all angles and it shows you how really alien this society would be. I liked that Williamson emphasized this fact instead of, as many authors do, simply assume that society will always be familiar and much like the 21st Century Western World (or mostly America) as we know it. It made for good friction between the characters and for excellent plot points.

As for its ideological tract the novel is not in your face about it. Naturally the society is portrayed as superior to Earth's for a variety of reasons. But it strikes you as a (somewhat) believable society that is fun to read about and interesting to examine, and might be one that a few people would want to live in. I'm not one of those people, but to each his own.

Then we have the character dialogue which is well done and thankfully actively focuses on the plot as much as it does the ideological talking points. Each character is fleshed out and given some screen time to establish their ideas and views on a particular situation. There is even one heartbreaking scene which shows a soldier from the UN with similar values to Kendra later on in the novel who you can actually feel sorry for and emphasize with, a rarity in most idelogical rants.

Then we have the brilliantly written battle scenes. Williamson puts you right in the thick of the fray and makes each individual firefight a gripping experience and has a well done great big battle near the end. I literally could not put the book down during this point and stayed up a considerable portion of the night finishing it. So points to him there for sure. War is described in the most brutal and unflattering of terms so I enjoy the fact it is not glorified and the intellectual honesty of the author on that front.

The Bad:

Unfortunately the book doesn't get a complete pass. While I understand this was his first novel there were some bits that were completely uncessesary. For instance the middle of the book consists of what seems to be the obligatory boot camp montage in great detail for over a dozen chapters. It was well done but it still seemed needlessly detailed and stretched out. If this were a book completely dedicated to military science fiction (ala Starship Troopers) then I would be more understanding, but it is not and thus the scenes were long, somewhat boring and had effectively little to do with the plot at large. I was irked by these after the swift beggining and pace up till that point. It is stated that this intense training is different from the UN, but this could have been shorter. Similarily with the obligatory sex scenes that seemed to pop up out of no where. Kendra is seduced inside a week by Rob and is having threesomes with another character, Marta, by the end of the first quarter. Kendra has had sex before but is portrayed both as unused to lesbianism and as a practicing Catholic to boot. They seemed more devoted to just pointless sex for emphasising the 'free love' ideology of the Freehold rather than anything else.

Speaking of Marta, this character seems to embody the worst about Freehold society. She is completely intolerant of any society other than her own, has a moral superiority complex, and is extremely naive. Marta, like many Freeholders, is completely convinced of of the moral superiority of her society and many times she seems to stop just short of reffering to other cultures as barbaric. Many other Freeholders hold a notion of themselves as being superior to other cultures and lay ridiculous criticisms on the representatives of other worlds. As author tract goes this is insulting to the reader and is especially annoying when the Freeholders criticize societies for not coming to their aid when they explicitly mention that other planets have no ability to intervene militarily. So any criticism seems hollow at best and petty at worst.

And unfortunately the UN is portrayed as evil almost exclusively for the sake of being evil and antagonistic towards anyone else with values other than their own. While I can agree on the point that too much berueacracy is a bad thing, and to much political correctness would have horrible effects on society I just can't find the incredibly polite, sexually sensitive, and almost pacifist (since most UN soldiers and people respond with horror to the idea of killing people) society as one willing to engage in the kind of imperialism that the UN attempts to enforce. They made for poor villains but it still gave a narrowly defined enemy for the reader to wish defeated. The other villain of the series, Tom Calan is just as poorly characterized and ironically highlights the extreme mercenary attitude that would most likely be prevalent in Freehold society. That of an extremely cuthroat and the ability to hold a grudge. He is simply badly portrayed and is genuinely uninteresting to read about, much like any unsypathetic secondary character.

I could go into other critiques of the Freehold system and various political ideas but that is not really applicable here.

In the end the book is a good read and I did enjoy it minor issues aside. It is good science fiction even with the ideological motivation. Libertarian science fiction would probably describe it best. Although jarring at points it is still a good read and I recommend it to anyone looking for a bit of easily read escapist science fiction. All in all I give it three point five stars out of five.

An aside:
The best part is one does not even have to buy the book as it was published by Baen and can be read for free online or downloaded as a PDF and is available here:
http://www.baenebooks.com/p-162-freehold.aspx

Enemies Foreign and Domestic: A Review

Enemies Foreign and Domestic is book one in a series of the same name by author and general gun nut Matthew Bracken. The story is set in "America in the near future" following the steps of one Ranya Bardiwell and a certain Brad Fallon (a sort of author expy). The follows them as they attempt to uncover a conspiracy behind a terrorist attack and the subsequent attempt to ban guns.

Terrifying isn't it?

I read this book through a link found on the website SurvivalBlog (a wonderful website for disaster prepardness, if not so much for politics) and began taking a look at it online. The first few events in the book are actually fairly intriguing. The prologue details a horrifying terrorist attack where a sniper fires into a crowded football stadium and the resulting panic and stampede of horrified spectators results in the collapse of the structure in a manner similar to what one sees in soccer riots, which ends in the deaths of over a thousand people in horrifying detail. This event truly did serve to suck me in and captivated me with its sheer horror and the well thought out plan by this terrorist, which we then learn may be part of a sinister conspiracy.

Sadly this turns out to be one of the most exciting and reasonable incidents in the book. We then see a case of monumental stupidity on the part of government and law enforcement officials in the part of contaminating evidence and breaking multiple layers for the proper handling of a crime scene in order to prevent just such contamination. For instance the local police chief accepts the attackers wallet while not wearing gloves and the president actually orders that the shooters weapon be brought to him. This is the kind of action that would get a politician impeached yet it completely passes under the radar of anybody (even the otherwise 'smart' protagonists).

It then follows a short battle in the Senate where a very strange law is passed outlawing 'assault rifles' which is in reality a wide ban on anything that looks remotely threatening. During the proceedings a female senator is attacked by an anti-gun supporter for some reason. Then we join our spectacularly bland and almost author-expy Brad Fallon whose life goal is to build a sail boat and sail away. He's only almost an author expy because he believes in sailing away rather than fighting to save America, otherwise his opinions and goals go hand in hand with the author's(especially his fascination with sailing and guns, he really likes harping on those). He is a bland and rather unremarkable character who spends much of his time fantasizing about bikini clad women, who is then targeted by the FBI to spy on a gun club which is a militia front (composed of men in their sixties no less) because he is seen with them exactly once in a coffee shop. That's some fine police work gentlemen!!

We are also introduced to the ATF agents who are behind the investigation. They are typically evil and in a (not so) suprising twist are masterminding the events behind the stadium massacre in order to get guns banned and make the ATF more powerful than the FBI! To do this they decide to run a dirty war like in Argentina or Brazil by murdering or kidnapping gun store owners and labelling them as militia fanatics. They make rather lackwit villains who are remarkably unintelligent and are constantly reffered to as being men with no discipline and are very trigger happy, and they prove it too. Despite the fact that they openly discuss planting evidence and framing people the rank and file still believe they are fighting 'militia gun nuts' and not blatantly murdering people. That was one of the issues that I could not get over while reading this book. The bad guys know their framing people yet still believe they are fighting the admittedly non-existant militia? Seriously? But I digress.

We then meet Ranya Bardiwell whose father is shot and killed by ATF goons burning down his gun store. The ATF then leave amazingly detailed forensic proof of their involvement in the form of 10mm casings from their guns and distinctive boot prints at the scene. (Also apparently malt liqour is indicative of liberals, these bottles indicate they are the people who threw the molotov cocktails that burnt down the store. I still don't understand that either). Ranya then swears revenge and goes on to attempt to blaze a path of bullets and assasination across Virginia and South Carolina against the Feds.

This is where the book mostly meanders into interesting action sequences followed by various detailed instructions on how to plan political assasinations. Then of course are the anvilicious moments where the author repeatedly reminds us that liberals are hypocritical idiots and there is no such thing as a free country outside America. The main characters repeatedly state that they cannot run anywhere as there will never be anywhere as free as America. There is no detailed reason for this and one is forced to assume that it is mostly because they won't be able to own their beloved guns if they go to Canada or Europe. I sympathise with their plight...not in the slightest. Another point which the author enjoys driving home is that most people are blind sheep (or sheeple as the common term is) who blindly follow the news and do no critical thinking of their own and will instantly cringe at the sight of a gun or attack freedom loving Americans who support the Constitution at the drop of a hat.

Indeed the author enjoys flaunting the superioty of gun owning, libertarian, Constitutionalist, conspiracy theory, and Christian Americans (I add the Christian part tenatively as they talk about faith but rarely even reflect on the moral issues of their actions or pray for that matter). I add conspiracy theory because the author constantly states that the Branch Dividians at Waco were burnt alive on purpose and the Ruby Ridge incident was a government slaughter rather than a colossal f**k up by poorly trained agents. The author explains these through a web server known as "FreeAmericans.com" where various liberty loving Americans gather to discuss how the government is infringing upon their rights and how the FBI, ATF, CIA ect are secret police thugs who intend to take away their rights. Brad Fallon is particularly guilty of this as he is constantly berating regular people for not thinking about these things. Not to mention anyone who is even assumed to be liberal is mercilessly mocked by the main characters. A particularly ridiculous incident is when Ranya comes across a boy researching the Civil War and asks if he is researching 'the War of Norther Agression' much to his confusion while she keeps referring to it as such, then assuming he was only staring at her breasts. I doubt the author actually meant to have a liberal character come off as reasonable and probably smarter than his main character but it reads that way.

In fact the author goes out of his way to make liberals look stupid or foolish. In fact by reading this book we can easily discover the authors prejudices such as:

• Smoking pot = stupidity
• Piercings are only worn by liberals or sexual deviants
• All liberals secretly hate the Constitution and are secretly 'socialists' who know nothing about freedom or good government
• Illegal immigrants are parasites who barely speak English
• Illegal immigrants also seek to steal American jobs and support a break away socialist state in the South Western US known as Aztlan
• People who don't own guns want them banned and constantly look for ways to get them banned
• The Federal government is mostly staffed with incompitents who don't care about freedom or liberty
• Lesbians seek to steal children from married couples
• Muslims are inherently violent and are all crazy
• Muslims are also mostly hypocrites and hate mongers who want to impose Sharia law on Americans, anyone else is just a terrorist
• Political correctness only serves to protect Muslin terrorists and Black Nationalists (or a combination of both) and serves to encourage Muslim racism
• Also any of the above are very willing to engage in rape

Sadly this is just a taste of the racist and ridiculous comments that Mr Bracken enjoys spouting.

The novel is boring, repetetive and filled with card board cut out characters with no depth who seek to drive home the authors flawed ideas about gun ownership and the evils of Muslims and political correctness. Mr Bracken also suffers from a crippling case of 'write what you know' and unfortunately seems to only know how to describe sailing, guns, racism, how evil liberals are, sex, and the idea of America being the best nation on Earth. If you come across any of his other works I assure you that this will become immediately apparent.

Now some will undoubtedly ask why, if this book was so appaling, I bothered to finish it? The answer is quite simple, I got it for free on Kindle and the little I could read of the prologue intrigued me. Once I got deeper in I was horrified by the right-wing reactionary hate that the book preached. It also serves as a perfect example of how not to write what you know and how not to get your ideas across.

From me the book recives a one star out of five.

Guns and Liberty

I recently attended a presentation offered by a university group of mine called 'LOL' standing for 'Love Of Liberty'. The presentation was offered by Solomon Friedman a pro gun advocate and laywer in Canada. The presentation was called "Firearms: The Foundation Of Freedom". It was a good presentation, mind you much of the content was when Mr. Friedman explained the many redundancies in the Canadian firearms laws.

Now I personally support the individuals right to bear arms (barring military hardware of course, a category which to me includes fully automatic assault rifles simply for the sake of consistency) and for a law abiding member of society to hold them. I have seen very little reason for someone to wish to abuse their right to bear arms nor have I routinely heard of legally registered firearms being used in criminal acts. The presentation did make the valid point that a criminal is not going to get their firearm registered before he kills someone or commits a robbery. Indeed we see murders and muggings commited with knives and crossbows for heavens sake, banning guns does not decrease crime.

The enlightening legal facts presented in the talk were interesting but the presentation itself was, in my opinion, an atypical gun owners argument which was unoriginal, poorly thought out, and offered me very little incentive (especially as a non-gun owner nor would I imagine this having any effect whatsoever on someone in the opposite camp) for any support to allow firearms to be more readily accessable.

You see I do respect Mr. Friedman as he had a wonderful grasp of the law and statistics in crime and other variable facts about how guns did not increase crime but rather did show some evidence for decreasing it, which may be difficult for some people to believe. Though to that I give you one of Mr. Friedman's best arguments, the 'bowl of M&M's argument'. If you are presented with a bowl of M&M's and informed that just one of them is poisoned, are you going to reach in and grab one? You may, but a less reckless person would move on to the next bowl. The same can be said for presenting your average criminal with a town where many people have guns, he will most likely go after those less able to defend themselves rather than those who will.

But the meat and potatoes of Mr. Friedman's presentation did not revolve around those arguments. Luckily for those present I was at least sympathetic to their goals else there may have been more dissention from myself and others. But the mainstay of the presentation revolved around guns preventing tyranny, yes that old libertarian (and rather uniquely American) nugget. Despite gross evidence to the contrary all across history at showing how an armed populace simply does not outright prevent tyranny, Mr. Friedman listed some tyrannical regimes that had disarmed their subjects. The Soviet Union, the PRC (China), Guatemala (with the disarment of the Indians), and of course Nazi Germany and its disarment of Jews. I constantly hate seeing these hollow, misguided, and rather foolish ideas thrown around.

If I may cite two of the examples. The Soviet Union for starters, Friedman's presentation mentioned the twenty million worked to death or killed in the gulags (which is only scratching the surface really) of the Soviet system. The idea that having an armed populace would have prevented such mass arrests or imprisonment forgets two harsh realities. One was the long brutal war fought during WW1 which the Soviets had promised peace for (much to the happiness of the population) and the second is the following Russian Civil War which ravaged the country. There was armed resistance to the Soviet regime many times early on in its inception and throughout its history. People still had hunting rifles, and in some cases even hand guns. But maybe not the majority of the population. Even if they had what chance did they stand against the Red Army and the ruthless regime behind it? To answer that question, none. I shall explain what I see as the foundation for liberty in a moment, but now on to my pet-peeve example.

The almost standard example for the horror of disarming citizens is Nazi Germany. I had hoped against hope that this would not be shown as an example but sadly stereotype and apparently predictability proved me wrong. The example of Nazi Germany is one that explains the Jews were explicitly disarmed and forced to be segregated. Now I must again point to the painful portion of history where we can see what most likely would have happened to an armed Jewish population that did resist the insane Nazi regime. Kristallnacht was an orgy of violence, arson, and murder instigated by the Nazi regime when a Polish Jew shot and killed a Nazi official. The films and personal testimony of that horrible night stand out as a stark reminder of why racism and tyranny should never mix. But they also serve as a window into what would have happened had the Jewish population resisted in such a violent manner. Thanks to the prejudices, and ignorance of the time it would have been an even more wholesale and horrifyingly willing slaughter of the Jewish people in Germany.

Similar was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, valiant and heroic though it was, it was sadly and ultimately doomed in the face of an all to willing Waffen SS to exterminate everyone involved. These brave and liberty loving men, women, and children all fought heroically but in the face of elite and vicious SS killers were ultimately doomed going up against a modern military machine.

The reason I hate these arguments is that is spits on the memory of all those slaughtered by tyranny. It says 'Oh if only they had been armed, they could have fought' and in retrospect many did, but they ended up no better than those who did not resist. That kind of ignorance only breeds a sense of reactionary thinking which in some ways is no better than making a freedom fighter or terrorist. I despise that kind of argument as it ignores the stark brutal reality that these people faced. As for the Nazi regime it took the power of an alliance of the entire world to crush, and the Soviet system did eventually rot from the inside, but it was not brought down by armed resistors in any way.

Thus is the premise, even the title of the presentation flawed. A firearm is not the 'foundation of freedom' nor is it a great equalizer in the face of tyranny. I can understand the weird thought that comes to mind in many from the cushy and drastically oversimplified view of the American Revolution, but that forgets the valiant arms of French and Spaniards who drew away the eye of the British preventing the utter collapse of the American rebels. In that naive view I suppose those who believe this can be forgiven, but the idea of applying such to the different regimes around the world is pure folly.

To end this, I shall briefly detail the true foundation of freedom. The foundation of freedom does not, with added emphasis on does not, lay in violence. Instead it lies in, political will, popular will, honest government, checks and balances, and just as importantly a service sworn to the people and state. Political will is the want and desire of the people for fair and honest government, popular will is the desire of the people to excersise the right of democratic ideals in a country. Checks and balances is a government which has been given a set of restrictions on its power and ability to excersise power (like those laid out in the Amercan Constitution, or the Monarchy in the British Parliament). Finally there is the service sworn to the people and state, much as a member of Her Majesties armed forces swears an oath of loyalty to the crown for reasons of political neutrality so to does an American serviceman swear an oath to ensure the same thing, much like any government service member. A neutral army and civil service is an essential check and balance in maintaining a free government, which is one loophole many tyrants have worked into their governments. Hence why the very political militaries of the Middle Eastern dictators continue to support tyrants and why the Libyan armed forces were split allowing them to fight the despot Gadaffi head on (with foreign intervention of course). So while the right to bear arms is important, it in and of itself does not make for the foundation of liberty or a fair and honest government, rather other more political measures are necessary.

While I respect Mr. Friedman and his agenda, I do not respect these lame duck and blatantly false assertions that many of the pro-gun crowd are forced to fall back on. I would insist that they stick to tried and true statistics as Mr. Friedman presented in the presentation regarding crime and others about institutional rights (which we Canadians unfortunately do not have). All in all I support the ideas, but the message is flawed.