Kicking the Habit

Liberating Our Captive Giants

I recently “audited”, or sat in on a few weekly training meetings of Beacon Construction. This is a cement company started by my good friend’s brother. Recently these brothers got together, and the company has nearly tripled in value in the last two years. These weekly training meetings are a big part of their success.

In these meetings, 7:00 every Monday morning, they discuss safety, training, and business philosophy. Since each person’s life is an integral part of business, it’s also about personal growth, accounting, mentoring, and more. I wanted to come, not just for the free burritos, but for the sense of participation, the association, and to see just what they were up to.

Ben, the founder, is a stickler for the regulations. He wasn’t always. But with the growth of his customer base, the complexity of the jobs, and the number of employees, he’s landed squarely in the sights of the state and national regulators.

When my brain first woke to active observation and eventual participation in politics, I would have said that regulators are there to hold businesses and their owners to a hard line of quality and safety which the customers demand and without which they would suffer at the hands of greedy, careless and carefree capitalists. That’s what we’ve all been taught. Now, however, I know too much. Having run a traditional business myself for better than 15 years, I know what motivates a group such as national and state regulators.

The primary purpose of a bureaucracy is to support the bureaucracy. Still looking for the source of that quote. I find this to be eloquently truthful. Whatever the secondary and stated purpose of a bureaucracy (they are usually the same thing) the primary goal of any coercive monopoly, as has been true throughout all of human history, is self-preservation. Whether the stated goal is health, safety, roads, education, utility services, or the scientific advancement of the human race, it always takes a back seat to getting paid. This is the primary reason for governmental inefficiency, and the reason for my criticism of it here. Even more, I would love to replace it with something much better.

I have been a small business owner for years. Regulators are still very interested in my activities, and would always meet me more than halfway to obtain licenses, certificates of insurance, safety, and a plethora of additional permissions. Add employees to the mix, and a healthy profit margin, and the regulators become family, and not the nice kind. I’ll let you sort through your own childhood family reunion memories for the appropriate genetic analogy.

As I watched Ben run the meeting, I couldn’t help speculate on his motivations. He was meticulous in his insistence and exhortation that every member of his company understand and comply with the regulations. Safety concerns were cited. Good business sense was referenced. Agreement was actively sought. Then he dropped the bomb.

“If we don’t do all of this to the letter, they will shut me down. Getting ready for this last audit, I’ve never been so scared. Luckily, the actual auditor was pretty nice and only hit me with one easily correctable violation. If they had wanted to, they could have drilled down on any part of this and found non-compliance, and that would have been it.” I am paraphrasing slightly, but the content is correct.

It wasn’t safety, good business sense, or a desire for solidarity that drove these meetings, although they were and are valid secondary motives. The primary motives, as with any regulatory compliance, is the threat of the gun. They can destroy what he has built. They can stop his growth. They can make it increasingly difficult to operate. They can confiscate his property, they can send him to court, prison, and, ultimately, to the graveyard. That is why these regulators in their professional garb and calm manor are so confident, and so feared.

Well, what else can we do? Wasn’t my childhood perspective valid at all? Don’t we need to constrain these capitalists? Sure, Ben is a nice guy, but he doesn’t just naturally do everything that his customers, employees, and the community needs from his business. He has to be forced into doing it, right? If we take away the consequences of non-compliance, he could do shoddy work, abuse his customer and employee relationships, take advantage of people’s needs for a good solid foundation under their homes and vehicles. He could walk all over anyone, and who could stop him?

There is a great answer to this, and always has been. We know it. What I have been describing above is nothing more than the enslavement of Beacon Construction.

Is that too harsh? What is enslavement? Slavery is the state of being a slave. What does it mean to be a slave? A slave is a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.

Does the definition fit? Who really owns Beacon Construction? What happens if you take this process and alter it so it seems safer, but is in reality just the same thing? That is the beauty of democracy. Why does a slave remain a slave? In any job, here in the USA, we are free to walk away from any onerous job which doesn’t compensate us. We cannot be forced to go to work. The reason is that a citizen is protected from threats to their life, liberty, or property. If someone tried to enslave us, they must do so on the black market, not in the open. As soon as the threat is perceived by the community, the slave is freed, the slave masters punished, and the problem is solved. This is the new state of chattel slavery in this country. What used to be acceptable, and legal, is so no longer.

Now let’s look a little closer. What is being done in the open? What if, instead of a slave master, you replace that person with a governmental department, populated by a few bureaucrats for each city? What if they, rather than employing chattel slaves, instead just make a few reasonable safety, productivity, and good business sense rules? How would these rules be enforced? Well, we certainly can’t treat people like we used to treat slaves, because we’re so done with slavery. No whipping, no sale of people as property, no breaking up families, no castration, and no rape, beatings], or executions. What else can they do to enforce compliance?

How about fines for non-compliance? Great. Simple financial penalty. Easy, non invasive, civilized, and certainly not enslaving. Okay, now what if they don’t pay the fine? Well, let’s just increase that fine until they pay. If they know that late fees will compound until they have a huge burden to pay, then of course they will pay quickly, and those who don’t will just be punishing themselves more.

Hmm. But what if they ignore the fines? Well, then of course they must come before a judge and be told to pay. What if they ignore what the judge says, and still don’t pay? Or even worse, what if they don’t even show up for court? Well, then of course we have to use force. No beatings, no imprisonment, no threat of death. We just send some police to escort the recalcitrant to the court, and make them pay. Okay, well, what if they not only are willing to disobey the regulator, the judge, but the police as well? What if they hide, or don’t listen to the police? Well, then we have no choice. Let’s arm the cops, then we will have to threaten the business person. We’ll confiscate their property, take them from their family, beat them, taze them, imprison them--which is also almost guaranteed rape--and ultimately, we’ll have those cops shoot them in the face, if they continue to resist the will of the regulator and his or her just representatives, the police. But hey, at least no castration.

Do you see why I called it slavery? We can convince ourselves, and our children, that murder is not murder, theft is not theft, kidnapping is not kidnapping, assault is not assault, and extortion is not extortion. You just have to get lots of intermediaries involved and specialize each part of the enslavement process, changing the words we use. Instead of one slave master, we have a whole distributed supply chain to do the same job. Instead of one individual enslaver, we have voters to put people in power, we have legislators who determine what people should and shouldn’t do. We have lawyers who specialize in making and prosecuting complaints. We have judges to decide whose opinions should be followed, and to define appropriate punishments. We have a whole prison industry to take care of incarceration, including specialized parole officers whose who are specialized in taking the role played so effectively by Javert in Les Miserables. And we have an entire, well armed, connected, and organized police force to do anything from intimidation to assassination, with no consequences other than the possibility of some months paid vacation. Change murder to “resisting arrest”, change kidnapping to “arrest”, assault to “necessary force”, and extortion to “taxes”, and the transformation is complete.

All of the elements are still there, and that, my friends, is why Ben, of Beacon Construction, was crapping his pants about doing whatever the regulators wanted him to do, so that he could have their stamp of approval to continue working and building his business. Even under strict compliance, is he left alone? No. The best he can look for is to deal with annual inspections on hundreds of elements of his business, and each quarter, to give a sizeable chunk of his profits to said regulators and their fellows.

There are so many things wrong with this system. If, for a moment, we grant the continuing need for slavery in our modern society, there are still some moral-deal-breaking questions left unanswered. Why focus on business owners? Why a percentage from the most successful? Shouldn’t they be encouraged to reach a certain level of success where they must pay less? Why continue to punish the successful? Why should these particular regulators be in charge? Why these specific lawmakers, judges, police, and lawyers? Why should they rule? What gives them jurisdiction? What is jurisdiction?

I’ll take a moment and define jurisdiction for you. It is control of a specific territory. There is no difference from jurisdiction and gang territory. They are the same thing. Our present-day, modern gangsters reference social contract, the Constitution, and tradition. There is nothing consentual or voluntary in this, and never has been. There is no moral answer as to why the particular pirates we employ to rule us are there. The reason is simply that they have the guns and the PR to do it, so they do.

But do we really need slavery in our modern, present-day society? Is it a necessary element of civilization? Of course we chose business people to enslave because, not only do they allow it--it is hard enough to start a business without having to fight your community as well--but they are the source of our productivity. It doesn’t make much sense to regulate the homeless and the poor. Human societies have always taken from the rich to feed the poor. But must we still? Isn’t there a better way?

If you still disagree with me that slavery never dies, and that we no longer use it today, I will refer you to another article where I go into this proof in depth. For now, I wish to focus on the alternatives to slavery, which are rarely discussed. The reasons for this are not deliberate conspiracy. It’s not a secret. It is simply tradition. Our species, like every other form of life on this planet, evolved to become what it is. Humans have been enslaving one another ever since the dawn of recorded history. It’s what we do. Not all of us like it, but it has worked. It has survival value for our species. So does rape for that matter. But it is not the only way.

The human race has not only inherited a fine tradition of slavery from our evolutionary past. We have inherited the ability to think, at a level not seen in any other species on earth. Our imagination, communication, abstraction, and rational skills are unparalleled. With these tools in hand, we have begun to take control of our environment, and, to a large extent, to take control of our own evolution. We are the species who changes. We change ourselves and the environment around us, in order to meet our wants and needs.

Slavery is bred into us as a species. But something is changing. Lots of things are. We have more information being exchanged at a faster rate than ever before. We have access to the writings and media of bold thinkers who have risen above the average human thought process of day to day living, and have given us gems of wisdom for us to use and enjoy. We as a species now have access to the principles of peace, war, and enslavement. We know their history, and we know their roots. We can understand the source of wealth and prosperity like no civilization in our history ever has. The principles that got us where we are, are understood to unprecedented levels, and all we average folks have left to do is to notice where life sucks, and to look at the wealth of thought, information, and alternatives before us. Then we have to be brave enough to change once more.

Why do we allow and facilitate regulation, this latest form of enslavement? We are all on the payroll. We get the leavings of the stolen funds, and they go to fund our education, protection of what peace we enjoy, roads, communication satellites, entertainment, food, and almost any other aspect of our lives. Our entire economy is driven upon the redistribution of stolen funds. So we naturally stop looking. When the picture is ugly, we’re very good at pretending it doesn’t exist. The tragedy is that not only is the picture much more beautiful and attractive than we know, but that all it requires to make it real is to look. So let’s look.

People who look at the state of slavery in today’s society mostly go straight to despair. What can you do with thousands of years of tradition against you? What happens when you wake your brain up enough to see through the propaganda? It makes you want to take the blue pill, and never wake up again. But hang on. Stay awake for just a little longer, and it might just be worth being awake.

Back to Beacon Construction. Ben is a nice guy. So is his brother. They are innovative, kind, understand the connection between good customer service and profits. They treat their employees well, and want to help them succeed. Is all of this a result of regulation? Are there other factors at work?

What else is there to prevent those in business, those who imagine, build, and provide the services and products we all enjoy, what else besides enslavement is there to prevent these creative individuals from succumbing to their darker nature and abusing us all with their diabolically inventive minds?

First of all, what are we telling ourselves when we imagine that we not only can, but should control this most powerful segment of our population, through the threat of physical violence? Aren’t we saying that people’s nature is evil? Isn’t it implied in every regulation we accept that without such policies and punishments in place, our world would be much worse than it is now? What do we imagine an unregulated world would look like?

Actually, we don’t have to imagine. In fact, we probably, most of us anyway, can’t imagine it. The reason is propaganda. Governments and apologists the world over, and for all the centuries of our love affair with slavery have painted that picture for us. This is one of the first and most religiously maintained expenses by those who enslave. You must convince your host population that a world without slavery and forced compliance is far darker and more to be feared than any of the horrors parading through history and our modern lives. We have been told in so many ways, and in no uncertain terms, that the nature of humankind is evil, and that without firm controls, that wicked nature, combined especially with the most creative and productive among us, would lead us to unimaginable ruin and despair. We are told repeatedly, and have universally accepted the evil of slavery as necessity. Necessary evil. Is there any more concise phrase to better encompass the complete destruction of the concept of morality?

If we can entertain the concept that evil is not only not necessary, but is evil--is destructive to our happiness--then we can entertain the concept of freedom. More than war, hunger, poverty, theft, and assault, freedom in business is probably humanity’s worst fear. The great tragedy is that they are mutually exclusive. Even worse is that there is an infinite spectrum inbetween. Most of us are familiar with the Tyranny--Anarchy graph from high school. We were taught that tyranny is terrible, but that in some ways which we don’t really know but must imagine, anarchy is equally terrible. We were taught that human happiness, as demonstrated by the glorious founding of the United States of America, rests somewhere near anarchy, but several units towards tyranny. Thus was the minarchist philosophy taught.

Minarchy is the average American’s most familiar world view. The problem is that minarchist governments always result in gigantic governments. The American governmental machine is now bigger and more invasive in the lives of its citizens and the rest of the world as to be nearly unprecedented. But what if we looked closer at the anarchy side of that scale? What are the principles that govern human economics? Are there principles? We’ve been taught otherwise. We’ve been told often and loudly that human behavior is not susceptible to the natural laws that govern the universe and the other plant and animal inhabitants of our planet. Humans, we are told, are beyond nature.

But ask any psychologist this question and they will tell you the opposite. They may not agree with other psychologists, but they will all agree that there are most definitely principles that govern human behavior.

One of those principles can serve us in this particular case of regulation. We understand some principles well. The principles of human enslavement are that if you threaten a person with bodily harm, imprisonment, theft, rape, and / or murder, and can protect yourself from the same from them, then you can obtain work with no other form of payment that the removal of the threat. Is there another principle of human behavior that can replace this horror?

Yes there is. We currently place regulators in the position of power to shut down a business who does not comply with regulations. But there is and has always been a much simpler way of shutting down a business. That is a customer’s choice. We are drawn to the products and services provided by competent and consistent businesses. When quality, supply, and / or customer service is inconsistent or low, that business is in grave danger of being shut down by the laws of economic determinism. When regulation is absent, customers have no choice but to rely upon something else. That something else is reputation.

At a time when communication between people has never been easier or faster, this principle of reputation is ripe for application. Could reputation really, qualitatively, replace regulation? It could, and it has. Look at any new product, service, or even industry. Regulation is relentless, but slow. Many products and services and even budding industries will hit the market ahead of regulation. They are too new. Regulators need time to notice and pounce upon new entries in business. The truth is that the free market principles which have always governed human behavior include business regulation. In a free, unregulated, anarchistic (if I might be so bold) economy, the best product or service wins. It may take some time, as regulation does, to get established, but it happens. Humans are curious and lazy. Anything innovative, labor saving, and / or less expensive, is going to attract customers. The profits that those customers bring are the fuel to drive more innovation, and better products and services. Those businesses who provide poor quality and inconsistent or bad service will be punished by the market. Competitors will come along and provide something better, and the money will follow.

The problem we face isn’t that this isn’t understood. We are all pretty amazing experts at both the function of slavery and the function of the free market. There is nothing new here in our understanding. But what is new is how well and how many of us now understand. Our human population has been exploding for a couple of centuries. The number of us who understand these basic economic drivers, while still a small percentage, is statistically huge. The opportunity to create a real, pure American experiment is upon us. Let’s kick the regulation habit. It has followed us for just long enough. I propose that we acknowledge the process that got us to where we are. I propose that we acknowledge the new, changed state of the human world.

We know slavery. We are beginning to know freedom. We can see more clearly than ever the effects of both. It is becoming harder and harder to buy the propaganda of the ages. People are not evil by nature. Anarchy simply means “no ruler”. It is the absence of tyranny. That is the not-so-hidden reason why it was placed at the opposite end of the scale. We have been taught to fear freedom, and particularly the freedom of business owners, for as long as our racial memory extends. I propose that it is time, once again, for humans to evolve. Let’s begin the true great experiment. Let’s blow past minimalism, and the con game that it represents, and explore the extreme of freedom. Let’s trade regulation for reputation. If we insist on democracy, let’s try a completely decentralized democracy. Let each of us vote with our money. People are not evil. The free market has all the regulatory elements we could want, already inherent in its nature.

In my mind, I’ve started this process with Beacon Construction. What would happen if they were free to profit from their success, and to pay for their failure? I don’t think their commitment to customer service, to their employees, and to the growth and quality of their business would go down in a free economy. Safety is still important to success. All the things we want from a business we can hope to see grow in a free market. Everything we deplore in business we can easily punish by contributing to ever-growing and accessible reputation statistics, and by taking our money elsewhere.

If only in our minds for today, and maybe in reality tomorrow, let’s explore the extremes of freedom. Let’s make a start on kicking the regulation habit, and all of the crappy philosophy it drags along with it into our minds, once and for all. Let’s take our number one fear--the truly free business owner--off our list of terrors, and let it fall into its proper role as the most solid protector of our present and future happiness.

-Don Thornton
Red Pill Dojo

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