October 4, 2020

Denying the authority for states to legislatively interfere with prices or private property will go a long way toward advancing peace and social harmony.

To the degree that the black lives matter movement orients on reducing the potential for abusive policing there is reason for liberty-minded people to strongly support these efforts. 

However, in contrast, by agitating for private property destruction, vandalism, and socialism, under the direction of ‘trained Marxists’, Black Lives Matter organizations should be denounced.

Those that actually want to improve the quality of life for black people need not be oriented on race, the principles of political economy are universally applicable.  Private property and free markets promote peace and prosperity while centrally managed command and control creates social strife, immiseration, ever-escalating conflict.  

Inequality is an undeniable fact of reality.  Every human being is unique and recognizing these differences is part of celebrating diversity or, at the very least, recognizing that material equality is a myth and unfit as a policy goal.  Likewise, natural resources are unevenly distributed across the surface of the earth.  So, acknowledging genetic and geographic inequality is the only baseline for a rational discussion.  

The real matter at hand regards the policies that enable relative peace, social harmony, and the elevation of living standards for everyone impacted by a proposed policy.  Matters of law, justice, and political economy have already been thoroughly flushed out and it is merely the legislative and regulatory deviations from these proven principles that generate unnatural ‘inequality’.  

End Minimum Wage

Minimum wage price floors prevent young people from getting entry level jobs that help them build skills as a pathway toward a better future.  Preventing potential employers from hiring inexperienced workers at low wages only raises the amount of productivity an applicant must demonstrate before making what they offer attractive.  

If people really cared about improving black lives they would agitate to remove the, assumed, power of the state from interfering with the price of labor in the job market.  These interventions devastate the prospects of young black people from entering arenas of legitimate productive endeavor.  

Limit Police to Enforcing Only Common Law

Rather than rallying against police tactics when making arrests, those that care about black lives should strike the root of the problem and call for limiting the enforcement power of the state to protecting life, liberty, and property.  

These are the common law principles upon which all social and religious viewpoints can agree.  Don’t hurt people and don’t take their stuff.  As Richard Maybury eloquently and concisely states, contract and criminal tort law consist of two simple, yet universally applicable, rules:

  • Do all you have agreed to do.
  • Do not encroach upon other people or their property.
  • The ‘war on drugs’ carries with it incredibly invasive authorities that enable the state to search and seize private property from every crevice of one’s home, every orifice of one’s body, and every facet of one’s life and business affairs.  

    Prohibition on arbitrarily declared illicit drugs creates a whole host of damaging effects, not only to the prices and types of drugs being sold in black markets but also to the incentives for young people.  

    As entry level jobs are made unavailable from minimum wage legislation and illicit drug markets drive up profit potential commensurate with increased risk, young black men are lured into perverse forms of entrepreneurship.  

    The war on drugs also creates perverse incentives for the enforcement officers as well.  Rather than protecting people and their property, enforcement officers are looking for sensational drug busts and are constantly angling for justification to get into someone’s pockets.

    Policies on the Path to Peace

    These two aggravating factors, minimum wage legislation and drug prohibition, are driving legitimate grievances in black communities.  Denying the authority for states to legislatively interfere with prices or private property will go a long way toward advancing peace and social harmony.  Especially for the long-suffering black lives injured by these unjust policies.

    Liberty Dojo

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