The market does not address every human concern, only the exchange of goods and services. The economy encompasses more than the market, and there are some human dimensions that are neither economic nor market. Building a house is a economic event, selling it is a market event. If it burns down, it is an economic event, but not a market event. And then far more important, is the feelings of the person whose house burned down, and that psychological dimension is neither market nor economic.
Love is neither market nor economic, but charity is an economic event, in which the market plays no role. There are certain human needs the market has nothing to offer, such as companionship, or is enhanced by economic actors, and not market actors, such as hospitals, schools, bridges, etc.
An economic event which supports a free market, but is not a market-provisioned aspect to life, is justice. If we can only have a free market in anarchy, how can we have justice in anarchy? To get this right we must define anarchy correctly, and that is no + king, or no state in modern terms. And to reiterate, to have no state does not mean no government. Anarchists love government. It's just the state we do not need. With this in mind, let's look at a big justice problems, the larger issue of the larger criminal conspiracy, and combatting large scale criminality.
Probably the largest criminal enterprise (outside of banking) in USA is the illegal drug business. Now any narc will tell you the business is fed by welfare payments, and drug activity is greatest at the time the funds are dispersed by the state (as are Walmart sales). The money is then laundered and generates state and federal taxes and the illicit gains go to fund off-record activities of spooks, who use it largely for terrorism. It is a symbiotic system, the progressives get their “programs” and the fascists get their terrorism. Good state government is about working together.
Further, the one drug that is most effective in separating a person from his personality is crack cocaine, a drug that someone had to purposefully develop. Who did so and why, at whose direction can be known. But to even ask the question is to be called a conspiracy theorist, which is one of many inquiry-killing epithets.
So let’s look at an unspeakably awful crime, in fact a conspiracy, and in which the facts are not in dispute. Not a conspiracy theory, but a conspiracy in fact. One case is the Tuskegee experiments.
There is no dispute that from 1932 to 1972 the United States government ran medical experiments on Americans of African ancestry in which the United States Public health Service and the Center for Disease Control studied the effects of syphilis untreated. They did this by duping citizens who trusted the government into believing they were being treated for syphilis.
Never mind that the world already knew, by thousands of years of experience, what happens when syphilis is untreated. The progress of untreated syphilis was well known. Never mind that we already had a cure. The scientists and doctors went ahead, these victims were denied the help needed. Help others were ready, willing and able to offer.
This went on into the 1970s. Beyond the civil rights movement. Beyond the Great Society initiative. Beyond Dr. King’s assassination. Into the Watergate scandal. Never did conscience rise to the level of concern. This was just pure evil, visited on a trusting populace.
How evil? When WWII broke out, 250 of the men tried to volunteer to fight for the country they loved. When the army found out they had syphilis, which was news to the men, it rejected them until they could take the cure. The Public Health Service policy was these men would not get a cure. Science was paramount.
Many of the people acting in managing the program were Americans of African ancestry, who went on to high government positions. It is always true that people are willing to sell their own down the river, Americans of African ancestry selling Americans of African ancestry, Irish selling Irish, Jews selling Jews.
Although most Americans were unaware of the program, thousands of Americans were aware, and did nothing. Doctors, nurses, statisticians, researchers and so on were quite aware of what was going on. Journal articles were written, and the information was spread worldwide. Some people objected, but they were either ignored or found their careers stymied. The Japanese and Germans learned from USA about conducting medical experiments on people without their consent, and they embraced and extended the practice in the wars that occurred after the USA introduced the practice.
The Tuskegee experiments ended only in the state shakeup that followed the disgrace of Richard Nixon, in the 1970s. Eventually, some checks were cut, survivors paid off, and end of story, move on, nothing to see here. Bill Clinton apologized, what more do you want? But no one went to jail, or for that matter, executed.
Although by any standard the practice was criminal, no one was ever convicted of a crime. Therefore, the practice continued in other ways and other places. Medical experiments on uninformed patients continue to this day, no doubt. It is still legal to do so. The practice of running medical experiments on USA citizens without their consent is still allowed by law. When you visit a doctor in USA, you have no assurance whether or not he has selected you for a secret medical experiment.
Along these lines at every doctor visit since they were young teens my daughters have been urged to accept Gardasil injections. I’ve read the science and so have my daughters. The injections make no scientific sense. Never mind it was developed for another disease, never tested on young teens, and the developer paid by Merck has expressed serious reservations. Dr. Diane Harper, lead developer of Gardasil says, “Please push for full disclosure in consent forms so that parents and potential vaccinated persons can weigh the benefits and risks of the HPV vaccination from their own perspective.” Women selling women down the river.
If the drug companies do this in the open, I wonder what they are doing secretly, under USA law?
As a practical matter, the Tuskegee experiments were so long and so large, prosecuting the criminal actions of all of the participants would probably take the resources of the entire federal criminal justice system for a very long time.
To whom can we turn? Obviously not the state. Not lawyers, they work for the government. Not academia, they are govt controlled. Not religion, they depend on the state for money and for their tax exempt status. They agreed to stay away form politics. Who, labor? Bought and paid for by the state. Medicine? Never happen. Who? Absolutely no one. We are on our own.
Just as the state criminal justice system keeps alive the murderer and rapist, so it does the scientist fiend, not only by protecting, but by supporting the fiends. How can we possibly combat such institutional evil? There is apparently no internal mechanism to check state evil, and no external mechanism either. What to do?
When South Africa liberated itself from apartheid, it had such a backlog of unspeakable crimes to deal with, it had no means to deal with the magnitude of the participation and the enormity of the crimes There was a brief and shining moment of transition when there was anarchy in South Africa. Taking a page from Jesus’ playbook, South Africa set up truth commissions: you will not be prosecuted for anything you admit to. As to all of the past crimes, the answer was to be forgiveness, upon confession.
Of course, being a human endeavor, it was a controversial process, especially for those who wanted revenge. Not everyone was granted the immunity, but the process largely worked, and its application more universally is indicated.
Although South Africa struggles, it is progressing. Neighboring Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) had no such truth commissions, and it descends into chaos under the excess state interventions of Robert Mugabe and his crew.
Immunity from prosecution is a common practice in criminal investigations in USA, so this is nothing new, but it is used to get a bigger fish, or a false conviction, but not to get to the truth.
In USA we have instituted a series of truth commissions or sorts in the past, and on one controversy in particular, the Kennedy Assassination, there have been two major and several minor truth commissions, the Warren Commission and the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations, Both generated more questions than answers. What is missing is the blanket immunity from prosecution that will give people a reason to talk.
What we could institute in USA is not “truth commissions” of a half dozen people looking over documents and then announcing “Kennedy was killed by a lone nut”, or “911 was the work of two dozen Saudis”, and at Tuskegee, “mistakes were made, time to move on...” or “it’s for the children...” but a system in which independent trained forensic scientists and historians take sworn affidavits, subject testimony and evidence to forensic science, and weave them together into a complete story of what happened. A library is established in which all evidence is stored with analysis and reports, available to professional and amateur alike. Even the Vatican “secret” library is open to its enemies. All of the evidence and analysis is woven together into an entire picture of who what where when and the perpetrators can answer the most important question, why? Why a Tuskegee? The why is the imponderable, what the rest of us do not know, cannot even surmise. If we get the actual perpetrators to answer why, then we know what the rest of us are dealing with.
Although in South Africa criminals went unpunished by the state, that is not to say they have gone unpunished. Although immunity from prosecution is nice, to confess to murder, false imprisonment, kidnapping, theft, and so on does have a dampening effect on one’s future, and justly so. But confession is good for the soul, and forgiveness is a healthy thing. And whether believer or not there is the nagging recollection “vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.”
With a truth commission the state, in getting to the truth, will not be able to prosecute anyone, but the people will know what happened and who did what. In the degree the people shun the perpetrators is the degree the perpetrators will be punished. In a free market capital punishment is exile. In a free market economy a killing is adjudged by society, not by the state.
Twenty Five years ago a trio in Cowchilla, California kidnapped 26 kids in a school bus and buried the bus, demanding $5 million ransom. The kids escaped. The kidnappers were caught and received life in prison, compliments of the taxpayers. Because of the state, the kidnappers knew their lives were not forfeit if they got caught. This is a comfort to those contemplating a crime. If we had no state, the kidnappers would spend their lives wondering when the father of one of the kidnapped kids would catch up with the kidnappers. An enraged rancher can be a terrible nemesis to contemplate. Especially if one has seen tools that ranchers call handy. We can imagine the kidnappers lives being short. Then a rancher who whacked a kidnapper would face adjudgment of the community, whatever that may be, but expect it to be pitch-perfect.
You object this sounds like Hatfield and McCoys, or Afghanistan. That would be a false dilemma, ignoring the fact that most justice is meted out independent of the state. State law enforcement calls free market justice “unsolved mysteries.” The state merely claims credit for all the good that happens.
But alas, we have a problem in the case of USA. Truth commissions work after one system fails and before the next is set. It is only when there is no state, pre-resolution, that a truth commission can work.
A failed state, like nazi germany, is overpowered by invaders, who use the very failed politicians, absent a few suicides and executions, to rule the failed state. The Qing used the Ming, the Mongols used the Boyars, the allies used nazis and Japanese imperial troops to rule their winnings. After the fall of communism, KGB agent Putin became president of Russia. This is just how it goes with states, and indeed, ordained by God it seems. For all of his crimes, and the changes of regime in his times, King David stayed in power. Israel suffered, and King David even got to choose from a menu of punishments how Israel would suffer for King David’s crimes. It is ordained in 1 Samuel 8.
When one state conquers another, when one falls and the victors assume power, the last thing they want to lose is the old set of criminals. This makes the South African transition all the more remarkable.
In USA “the people” might set up truth commissions independent of the state, in an exercise in self-government, but we can anticipate the first people who confess to any crimes will be prosecuted by the state, since the state is not obliged to agree to any deal citizens may make among themselves. Private citizens cannot make a promise to criminals that the state will not prosecute the criminals if the criminals confess. In fact one can anticipate that the powers that be would defend their prerogatives and harshly prosecute the first person who was to confess anything. Take that, truth commission!
Look what the state does to mere whistleblowers, people who do the work prosecutors are not inclined to do. Whistle blowers find themselves being punished by the state. Daniel Ellsberg may be famous, but for every free Ellsberg there must be 100 army corporals who revealed state wrongdoing, rotting in solitary confinement, losing his mind, while he has not been charged with any crime. It is now legal in USA to so treat whistleblowers. Take that, whistleblower.
It actually gets worse. Note the US govt offered its own sort of truth commission, although in a corrupt way, with WWII human experiment perpetrators. Those who among the defeated nations who conducted medical experiments on humans during the war were not prosecuted, as long as their shared with results with the United States authorities. Such nazi and Japanese scientists went on to work for the US government. They were rewarded for their crimes. A state made powerful by war, becomes all the more corrupt. The state actually protects malefactors from the consequences of their actions.
So we can see that we cannot control the state, but we can have justice IF the state fails. Making the state fail is only possible through violence, and that is never a legitimate action.
So we see when the chaos of lawlessness of the state finally caves in, and we have the benefit of anarchy (an + archy = no king), we can finally approximate justice. But we have this standoff: the state will not ever correct itself.
We cannot effect change through the political system, because the state has instituted widespread election fraud, to assure its self-preservation. The situation may seem dire, but there is a way. Lazlo Ladany points out in his lifelong study of communist China, the regime will change to retain power. Himmler began ransoming Jews out of Germany in a bid to save the regime.
One nonviolent way to threaten the powers that be is through jury nullification. Jury nullification is part of the fabric of our system to assure that the people, as represented by twelve citizens, has the final say in any dispute between an individual and the state. Jury nullification could be applied in every instance in which the state tried to prosecute someone who had confessed at a truth commission..
People could create a website where people vow to nullify any prosecution of anyone who is in the truth commission system. When there is a critical mass of potential jurors who vow to nullify any state conviction, then the state will have no power. When prosecutors can no longer get a conviction, the state will co-opt the system. The state will begin to defend itself by turning on the malefactors who need prosecution.
Now people will say this is silly, there is no way this will work. Probably true, but movements are made of impossible goals. And life is a journey, not a destination.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
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