There was an article by Eric Peters on his site (also linked at LewRockwell.com) asking and answering whether it is wrong to work for the government.  Peters thinks it is immoral to work for the government, regardless of the job, because government can only pay you through funds that are first taken by force or the threat of force.

I understand the sentiment, but I don’t agree with it.  I take a closer stance to Walter Block, although I don’t necessarily encourage libertarians to seek government employment and government handouts just for the sake of doing so.

I always find it interesting to read the comments after an article, and this one is no exception.

One of the commenters arguing against Peters’ position pointed out that he drives on the government roads.  Peters responded that he owns 8 cars and he more than pays his fair share.  Other commenters misunderstood the point of this comment, thinking the original commenter was claiming that libertarians should not drive on government roads.

But that was not the point at all.  The commenter was trying to point out the hypocrisy, saying that Peters thinks it is immoral to work for the government in any way, yet it is not immoral to drive on the government roads.

For libertarians who think we need to be so pure as to never work for the government and never collect any government welfare, I like to ask them a question.  What would they do if they lived in a totalitarian state like Cuba or North Korea?  What if there were no jobs outside of government?  What if they could only get food from a government run food store?  Would they refuse to work and refuse to eat, thus avoiding being labeled a hypocrite?

I don’t think any libertarian should feel guilty working for the government or accepting government handouts, as long as they are not promoting it.  It is not hypocrisy.  They are just doing the best they can in the situation that has been dealt to them.  I didn’t advocate the big government society we live in today and neither did most other libertarians.  It isn’t our fault that our choices are limited.

I don’t think libertarians should accept jobs where they would directly harm others or directly take from others.  I don’t think libertarians should sign up for the military.  A job at the IRS is a little less clear.  But I would rather be audited by a libertarian IRS agent than a non-libertarian IRS agent.  I suppose if I lived in Afghanistan or Iraq, I would rather have a libertarian military guy receive orders to open fire on my house than a non-libertarian military guy.  At least the libertarian military guy might refuse the orders.

Still, I don’t really think the military or the IRS is any place for a libertarian.  You will just be asked to do things that are completely against your beliefs.  If you work as a teacher or a librarian or a garbage collector for the government, it is not quite the same moral quandary.

Because the government today is so big and invasive, it is almost impossible to find a profession where it isn’t related to the government.  Does Eric Peters think nobody should be a doctor because it is a cartel that uses government rules and licensing to keep out competition?  I suppose that would also leave out any other medical profession like nurses and therapists.  I suppose it would also be morally wrong to work for a daycare because you have to follow stringent government guidelines that act as a barrier of entry to other entrepreneurs.  Where do we stop?

Again, libertarians didn’t ask for the system that we have.  What happens if 90% of all jobs are with the government or related to the government?  Should we limit ourselves to just the 10% remaining out there?  At what percentage is it ok to get a government job, if ever?

As long as you aren’t advocating government programs and government jobs, then I see nothing morally wrong with getting what you can.

I am not a fan of government schools.  It is really just welfare.  Government schools are like food stamps, except they are also for the middle class, and even sometimes the rich.

To be clear, I don’t blame anyone for sending their child to a government school, particularly when there are so few other options.  The government forces you to pay for the schools, along with everyone else, so there is certainly nothing morally wrong with using them.  It is your decision on whether you think it is best for your child.

The government makes it very difficult for middle class families to homeschool or send their kids to private school.  Not only do they take a lot of your money away from you, but they also regulate schools and limit competition, thus limiting your choices and also making it more expensive.

I think the main problem with government schools is simply that they are run by the government.  They are bought and paid for with money that has to be extracted with the threat of force.  This in turn creates a whole host of other problems.

But I want to tell you the problem with government schools, outside of the fact that they are funded through immoral means and that attendance is compulsory.  I want to discuss the educational aspect.

Many libertarians make the mistake of criticizing government schools on the basis that kids are not learning enough.  They will talk about test scores and how American children score much lower in math and reading in comparison to many other countries around the world.  But the problem with this is that they are comparing American government schools to foreign countries with mostly government schools.

Here is the problem with government schools from an educational standpoint.  The problems with government schools is not what children aren’t learning; the problem is what the children are learning.

From an education standpoint, if anything, children are probably taught too much in the way of academics.  And they are all taught the same thing at the same age.  You don’t need to teach complicated math to a 3rd grader, especially when they aren’t interested.  In a couple of years, they could probably pick up the same thing in about 10 minutes.

My biggest problem with government schools is what they are taught.  They start them young.  Every day starts off with a pledge to the flag.  They pay homage to the state in many ways.  They are taught to be good little citizens and to trust and love their government.  They are taught to worship the military and all it stands for.  They are taught to follow orders and obey commands.  They are taught to not think outside the box.  Their creativity is stifled.

They are also taught socialism in many schools where all of the kids have to put their supplies in a general bucket, where they are then divided up equally.  It is not sharing.  It is compulsory.  It is perfect symbolism of the government.  They are taught a lesson against property rights.

This is only a small fraction of what goes on over the period of 12 years or more.  I won’t even get into what they teach in history and economics.

But I think libertarians should be careful in how they criticize the government schools.  They should be criticized for moral reasons (they are tax funded).  From an educational standpoint, they should be criticized for their indoctrination.  The problem isn’t that kids aren’t learning enough.  It is that they are learning too much, and much of it is propaganda.

Some of the brainwashed kids will never be cured.  For some, it will take many years to deprogram.  We all go through it.  It is harder for some than others.

I always like to hear people say, “but I went to a government school and I turned out fine.”  How can you ever tell if you are brainwashed?  Part of being brainwashed is not knowing that you are brainwashed.  It is realizing that you were brainwashed that actually starts the process of reversing it.

This could make for an interesting philosophical discussion.

Janet Yellen made her first appearance in front of the Senate for her confirmation hearing.  While she was lightly challenged, there is not much question at this point that she will be confirmed as the next chair of the Federal Reserve.

Yellen said that we are in “a virtually unprecedented situation”.  She was referring to the unemployment rate, but she should have been referring to the Fed’s monetary inflation.

Yellen said, “We know that those long spells of unemployment are particularly painful for households, impose great hardship and costs on those without work, on the marriages of those who suffer these long unemployment spells…So I consider it imperative that we do what we can to promote a very strong recovery.”

Haven’t you already done enough?  She is certainly right about struggling families, but this is due to two main factors: big government and Fed policy.  Of course, the two go hand in hand.  If it weren’t for the Fed, the government would be more limited in how much it could spend.  And if it weren’t for the government, the Fed would likely not exist, or at least not in its current state.

On top of this, Yellen said that she doesn’t see any major bubbles right now.  She said, “Stock prices have risen pretty robustly, but I think that if you look at traditional valuation measures…you would not see stock prices in territory that suggests bubble-like conditions.”

This reminds me of Greenspan and Bernanke, who both said that there was no housing bubble.  Yellen’s comments almost want to make me heavily short the stock market at this point.

While I think that Janet Yellen will be a figurehead and will not be solely responsible for our future monetary policy, I do think she is symbolic of what we have.  She is certainly no better than Bernanke and it is possible she could be worse, if that is possible.

Yellen is a lot like Paul Krugman.  The Fed has been increasing the monetary base by $85 billion per month for almost a year now and this is still not enough.  She thinks the Fed needs to keep stepping on the monetary accelerator because unemployment is still too high.  It never occurs to her that it might be the Fed’s monetary policy that is contributing to the continually high unemployment rate.  It never occurs to her that it was the Fed’s policies that led to the high unemployment rate in the first place.

Janet Yellen is a perfect Keynesian.  She believes in more government spending and more monetary inflation.  I don’t know what to expect from her if price inflation goes up.  I do know that we are already in a mess and she is inheriting it.  At least her and her Keynesian policies can take the blame when everything blows up.

The Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, just keeps getting better and better.  As long as this thing is in existence, I don’t think there will ever be a shortage of jokes for late-night comedians, or for commentary on this blog.

I have actually been quite surprised at just how much of a boondoggle Obamacare has been so far.  I expected it to be a disaster, but I figured it would take longer for the disaster to come to fruition.  But instead of looking at this as a disaster, I look at it as an opportunity for educating others on how government programs never live up to their promises.

The latest news is that, as of early November, just over 106,000 people had chosen a health insurance plan from the new “marketplaces”.  About three quarters of the people who signed up did it through a state program.  Only about one quarter was actually through the federal website.

These numbers are absolutely abysmal, at least from the standpoint of the Obama administration and Obamacare supporters.  We live in a country of over 300 million people.  It is usually the Democrats who are crying that 40 million (or pick some random number around there) Americans are without health insurance.

If only about 100,000 people sign up each month, then every American should be insured in about 33 years, assuming the population doesn’t grow at all.

Another way to look at this is that one person has signed up for every 2,900 people or so living in the U.S.  So if you talk to 2,900 people, then you should find one person who has signed up, statistically speaking.

But the news just gets better and better.

This figure of 106,000 people doesn’t mean they have actually paid for anything.  It just means these people have put a plan in their “shopping cart”.  Based on this reasoning, I guess Amazon can now count quarterly sales for products that people placed in their carts but never actually purchased.  Amazon, just like Obamacare, can just assume that if someone placed an item in their cart, that they will eventually pay for it.

This article says that almost one million people successfully applied for insurance during the first month, but had yet to enroll in a specific plan.  Doesn’t this make it even worse?  It means that people didn’t like what they saw.  It means people were shopping for a product, but found that the products were too expensive for what they were worth.

Obamacare is Obama’s legacy at this point.  It is a joke, just the way Obama’s presidency has been.

Obamacare is going to end the career of many Democrats next year.  Unfortunately, we will get Republicans in their place.

There were recent reports that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is going to attempt to ban trans fat.  From a personal standpoint, I believe that trans fats are generally harmful to people’s health and they should be avoided as best as possible.  With that said, I am also a libertarian who believes in voluntary choice.

There are so many things wrong with this, it is hard to know where to start.

First, how did the FDA ever get the power to do something like this.  This whole thing provides a perfect example of where the government has gone completely wrong.  The FDA should not have the arbitrary power to create new laws and regulations.  This is the same with any of the other agencies of the government.

That is why I support the Write the Laws Act, sponsored by DownsizeDC.org.  Congress should not be delegating their authority to other bureaucrats, who are basically completely unaccountable.  If a terrible law is going to be passed, it should at least be done by the people who supposedly represent you in Congress.

Second, this is obviously a moral outrage for anyone who has a libertarian streak.  It doesn’t matter if trans fat is harmful.  Smoking can be harmful too.  Drinking alcohol can be harmful.  Eating too much pasta can be harmful.  Skydiving can be harmful.  This doesn’t mean any of this should be banned.  Consenting adults should be able to do what they want as long as they are not infringing on others.

Third, supporting this FDA move could be really dangerous in setting a future precedent.  In the article linked, there is one particular sentence that really caught my attention.  It says, “Trans fat is widely considered the worst kind for your heart, even worse than saturated fat, which can also contribute to heart disease.”

This is just terrible science and the government and the establishment are full of junk science.  While I agree that trans fat is bad, saturated fat is not.  In fact, saturated fat is quite beneficial and plays a vital role in keeping the human body healthy.  I specifically try to eat foods high in saturated fat for the benefits.

If you disagree with me on saturated fat, that is your right to do so.  But are you going to tell the FDA to ban saturated fat next?  Don’t try to shove your faulty science down my throat.

And this leads to point number four, which is, who gets to decide?  Why do the bureaucrats at the FDA get to decide what I can and can’t put into my body?  What makes them so special?  In fact, they have an incentive to help their friends who lobby for this junk science, which often benefits pharmaceutical companies, certain food industries, etc.  Who gets to decide what is healthy and what is not?  The bureaucrats have already decided that saturated fat is bad for you and, in my opinion, they are absolutely wrong.  The information they put out on some things is not just wrong, but the opposite of right.

In conclusion, if you think it is unhealthy to eat food with trans fat and you want to avoid it, then don’t buy it and don’t eat.  But we should never advocate the use of force to impose our ways on others.  That should only be done through persuasion.

Libertarians are often accused of not caring about the poor.  People not well versed in libertarianism, and even some who are, like to portray libertarians as wanting a dog-eat-dog world, where only the strongest survive.  But ironically, it is a libertarian society where the weak can survive and are most likely to prosper.

Also ironically, for those who like to support government solutions as the answer to our societal problems, you are the ones who are devastating the weak and the poor, whether intentional or not.

Big government kills.  Some things are obvious.  We can see direct killings when it comes to wars and other attacks, such as drone bombings.  This is the government killing people directly.

There is also indirect killing.  One example is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  The FDA provides false assurance for many drugs that can be quite dangerous.  At the same time, the FDA will keep some drugs, sometimes potentially life-saving drugs, off of the market for years.  The drugs cannot be made available to the public until the FDA approves it, making sure their own backsides are covered.  Meanwhile, people die waiting for the drug to be approved.

In addition, you don’t know how many potentially life-saving drugs never come to the market because it is not worth the expense of getting FDA approval.

But I was also reminded this week of another way that government kills, although indirectly.  There was a devastating typhoon (basically a hurricane to Americans) that struck the Philippines.  The death toll is estimated to be at least 10,000, but it is impossible to tell right now due to the destruction.  People there will probably continue to die due to dehydration, hunger, disease and all of the other related problems from the devastation.

If a similar storm hit the U.S. in an area with a similar population, there is no question that you would see death and destruction.  But it is unlikely that the death toll would hit anywhere near 10,000.  So what does this have to do with government?

The reason that a place like the Philippines is more devastated when a storm like this hits, is simply because it is a poorer place.  The construction of houses and buildings is not nearly as good in general.  In addition, it is harder for people to escape the storm when they are really poor.  I do acknowledge that it is easier to go inland in the U.S. as compared to a place like the Philippines that is all islands.  But still, a lack of wealth means less mobility for people.

Now some might say that the better construction in the U.S. is because of the building codes.  Some would actually credit government with the better construction.  But people who cite this have everything completely backwards.

The only reason the U.S. is able to have stricter building codes is because it is a wealthier country.  It is a long history of relatively free markets and strong property rights that have led to the great wealth.  Two centuries of savings and capital investment have led to this great wealth.

If the government in the Philippines were to enact building codes as strict as in the U.S., then either most people wouldn’t follow the law or else most people would be living without any shelter.  It isn’t that people don’t want stronger houses to live in.  It is just that most people simply cannot afford it.

There are any number of examples where big government leads to death and destruction.  This storm that hit the Philippines, which is basically still a third-world country with some modernization in the big cities, showed a good example of how poverty can lead to death.

I contend that a libertarian society would be a very compassionate society, aside from the fact that aggressive force would not be allowed, even by government.  I contend that a libertarian society, in which property rights were respected and free association was allowed, would lead to greater prosperity and far less poverty.  It would mean a better life for most people and it would lessen the tragedy we see in this world.

There was an article recently about a boy in 4th grade who was not putting his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance.  The teacher actually grabbed the student’s arm, telling him to put his hand over his heart.

One of the best ways to defeat something politically is to make it the subject of jokes and laughter.  So it is good news for lovers of liberty that Obamacare, along with its infamous website healthcare.gov, is the laughingstock of the country right now.

At the Country Music Awards, Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood spent over a minute on stage making fun of Obamacare and the website.  They finish it off singing a little tune about the slowness of the site and how 6 people have signed up.  The crowd was mostly laughing and clapping, although I think there were a few that didn’t appreciate the humor.

Of course, if this little skit had been put on at the Grammys or Academy Awards, I don’t think the response would have been quite the same.

But Obamacare is a major theme of the late-night comedy shows.  It is just too easy to make fun of right now.

Meanwhile, Obama has just come out with an apology to the American people.  He said, “It means a lot to them.  And it’s scary to them.  And I am sorry that they, you know, are finding themselves in this situation, based on assurances they got from me.  We’ve got to work hard to make sure that we hear them and that we’re going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this.”

This is actually quite remarkable, when Obama was going around lying just a few days ago.  First he lied about people being able to keep their health insurance when Obamacare was being promoted a few years ago.  Then he lied a few days ago about his first lie.  He was trying to convince people that he never assured people they could keep their current plan, even though he is on camera saying it many times.  And now he is apologizing for his false assurances, which just a few days ago he was saying he never gave.

This is a complete train wreck and I couldn’t be happier about it.  And what is now a joke will become anger on the part of the American people.  We can make fun of the terrible website right now.  But wait until middle class Americans, who are already struggling to pay their bills, have to fork over hundreds of dollars a month for a lousy insurance plan that probably doesn’t even cover that much.

This is good news.  I still think there is a chance that Obamacare could be repealed.  Obama backed down on Syria.  He just backed down about his original lies.  If the political pressure is strong enough, we could see Obamacare go down in flames.  That would be a victory for liberty.

Some people who don’t follow politics much might not even be aware that there were elections across the country on November 5, 2013.  Aside from electing politicians, the voters also got to decide on many state ballot measures.  The results are interesting to look at, just to see the pulse of the country.  You can get a decent idea of what happened here.

In Colorado, there were 11 counties that voted on the issue of secession.  5 out of the 11 counties voted in favor of it, or at least in favor of pursuing it further.  This does not mean these 5 counties will secede.  It means it can be pursued further.  It would be a secession from the state of Colorado, not from the U.S.

Regardless though, the fact that 5 counties had a majority vote favoring the idea of secession is a good step in the right direction for libertarians.

Another positive thing for libertarians is that  a few cities in Main and Michigan had ballot measures to legalize the possession of marijuana.  The voters approved the measures.  Again, it might be more symbolic than anything at this point, but it is still a good sign of a shifting of opinion towards drug legalization.

On the bad side, New Jersey voters approved (with about 61%) an increase of the state minimum wage to $8.25 per hour, which is $1 more than the federal minimum wage.

On the issue of minimum wage, this is something where America needs a lot of work still.  This isn’t just a question of economic ignorance.  It is a question of freedom of association.

Minimum wage laws are preventing people from voluntarily associating.  Starting in January, if someone wants to offer work to another person for $8 per hour, then he will be in violation of the law in New Jersey.  It is prohibited by the state.  The person hiring (the employer) is willing to pay $8 per hour.  The person who needs a job is willing to work at that particular job for $8 per hour.  If that weren’t the case, then no law would be necessary.

The minimum wage laws simply outlaw employment.  They destroy freedom of association and the freedom to work.

I think the whole concept of freedom of association has been lost on many Americans.  It doesn’t matter if you are dealing with economics or social issues.  Having the government force people to do business and having the government prohibit certain people from doing business is just bad policy.  It doesn’t matter whether you personally think it is a good idea.  You should not force voluntary consenting adults from choosing what to do with their own life and their own property.

In conclusion, the election results are a mixed bag for libertarians.  But I think there is some progress and I think there has been a little bit of a shift in public opinion on some issues.