Looks like the government’s had enough of online poker:
Three largest online poker sites indicted and shut down by FBI
More about the guy behind it all:
Meet The Boy Genius Who Just Took Down The Online Poker Industry
Oh, good. I’m happy they are here to protect us from that menace. Taxes are the price you pay for civilization, after all.
/sarcasm
Clearly this Texas Hold 'Em stuff is a threat to national security!!
This shows in what ways the Internet does not change anything. When it comes down to money or exchange of actual goods and services, the Internet is nothing more than a glorified telephone. However, where the Internet remains outside of the control of the authorities is in intellectual “property” and expression of ideas in general. In this domain, the internet is inherently un-controllable but it’s funny to watch them try.
Clayton -
I heard this on the radio tonight. Why does the government want involved in everything?
I once read this article, forget who wrote it, but it said that when someone goes to the store and doesn’t purchase Wheaties, the Wheaties company does not come after the consumer and force him to purchase their product or risk imprisonment. Why does the government do this?
I understand that there are bad people in the world, but with fear mongers like Alexander Hamilton during the Constitutional Convention defending “reasoning” for big government, they make us feel like without the federal hand in absolutely all business and commerce that we would somehow starve. Rubbish!
I’m not an anarchist, so I won’t pretend to be one, but when the FBI wants to get its hand involved in online poker, of all things, and shut down the three biggest online poker sites, you have to wonder what they’re doing with the money they’re stealing from us.
This had been a long time coming.
Ever since Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, these sites have been operating money laundering operations to pay their American customers. It was a black market before UIGEA, and now it’s easy as cake to paint these guys as mobster-like crooks that “didn’t pay their fair share” and “made billions in profit without regard for the law”.
Oh, and I’m sure this had nothing to do with the fact that Harry Reid failed in pushing legislation last year that would have granted the Vegas-based casinos a legal monopoly on online poker in the US. Since the silk glove of legislation did not work, now it’s the iron fist - expropriate, shut down, imprison.
Hurry up.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
-H. L. Mencken
There goes 2k on Pokerstars that I probably won’t be seeing again. Live poker games are going to be a lot harder for a while, too.
@liberty student
Not for me, liberty student. I’m one of the “archaic” ones on here that believes government, or more specifically law enforcement, in some sense, is a necessary evil. However, in discussions with some of the self-proclaimed anarchists on here, I have more in common with you than not in common.
I define anarchy as being a complete absence of government and man-made law. I know, I know…the anarchists on here define it in terms of a lack of a monopoly of power, which doesn’t necessarily exclude legal ramifications for actions. I just view it to be too idealistic to work.
Competing security forces adhering to competing law would make a lot of complications. Reminds me of the old west in a way.
I do believe that without government or some kind of order that many cities would end up like the New Orleans after Katrina. People would loot, and in my opinion, from anarchy comes either a police state or a gangland, neither of which is ideal.
I also realize from many discussions on here that people make a vast distinction between anarchy and chaos, and I admit that my definition of anarchy inevitably leads to chaos. I suppose I’m closer to being a minarchist, but one thing I’ve learned of myself is I ought to avoid taking titles. I don’t seem to work well with identifying myself with systems. I suppose one could simply call me a non-conformist in all aspects of my life.
Naturally, I make a huge distinction between non-conformity and anti-conformity. I suppose in one sense I am conservative because I believe in the original vision of America as being a confederation of independent states free to run themselves, which is similar to the Mises definition of anarchy (although probably not exactly the same). On the other hand, every political test I’ve taken over the years says I’m a right leaning libertarian.
Hope I didn’t go too far off topic.
It’s not archaic to believe in necessary evil. It is a contradiction.
Sure you do. We’re brilliant and you are quite reasonable. It’s a good mix.
It’s a shame you feel that way, since law originated in the market, before the state. The state co-opted law. It didn’t found it.
The old west you refer to is a creation of hollywood and popular mythology. Without competition, there can be no liberty. If you want to insist that slavery is necessary, that’s ok, it will be hard however to believe you are really for the individual and for freedom.
And yet the US government was in control of that entire situation. Interesting isn’t it, that you think that no government would be like the worst of having government. Contradiction.
The middle of the road is not a safe place to drive.
The label matters less than what you believe. If you’re for necessary evil, that’s cool. Just recognize the mental gymnastics necessary to believe evil is necessary because you don’t think man is virtuous enough to try to be free. You want flawed men to rule flawed men because you don’t think flawed men can rule themselves. 
The land of the free.
@Brutus: I think that government is a necessary evil for the time being. Because people expect chaos to follow the absence of the State, chaos would follow the sudden absence of the State and I think the historical record is conclusive on this. In other words, chaos after the collapse of the State is a collective, self-fulfilling prophecy. I don’t think that chaos is compatible with a healthy social order (in large doses, that is… a little Woodstock or Burning Man is probably good for society), hence, I do not desire the sudden absence of the State.
That said, I do desire the expeditious eradictation of the State. Therefore, the question for those who believe the status quo social order is immoral is what is the most expeditious route to eradication of the State? I think the most expeditious route is that laid out by Hoppe - secession. The secessionist has every advantage in a political, legal and moral argument with a unionist. The unionist has to be an apologist for naked political ambition and has only one resort: slander. Slander can work, especially when the skids are greased with lots of political buy-outs. It damn sure worked against the Southern States involved in the Civil War. But slander can be defeated by eschewing political power - lock, stock and barrel. And that’s precisely what LvMI promulgates, sound arguments for political secession and other means of peaceful resolution of political disputes without engaging in lobbying and power-seeking.
The Civil War is very instructive in this regard. It began as a dispute between two groups of unionists each vying to be top dog. When the Southern states could not get their way within the union, they reasonably proposed secession. The central government would tolerate no secession, however, since they would no longer be top dog. So a bunch of Americans were forced to go die on battlefields fighting a war between one group of barons and another group of barons. It’s the same damn story every time. While both the central political unit and the would-be seceding political unit are political (and, therefore, aggressive/coercive), the seceding political unit is proposing a peaceful resolution of the dispute while the central political unit is using military force to maintain political union. This naked exercise of power is precisely the weak point in the whole edifice of political unionism.
I’m working through Van Creveld’s Rise and Decline of the State and I’m getting through the Middle Ages where the Catholic Church virtually ruled Europe from about 900 to about 1450 but then saw a pretty dramatic reversal of its fortunes. It’s a grand story of a long process of political centralization followed by a long process of political disaggregation. By the 17th century, the Church’s power in many parts of Europe was obliterated. Many monarchs which would once have had to kiss the Pope’s ring were ruling their territories as if the Pope did not exist at all. The rights of the Catholic clergy were diminished, especially in England after Henry VIII. The “Holy Roman Emperor” to whom the temporal rulers of Europe were supposed to be subject slowly receded away into a corner of Europe, a minor monarch among many great monarchs. While the dynamics involved were superficially different (a lot of it involved the politics of theology, denominations and so on), the essence of this process remains relevant today. Since at least the 19th century, we have been witnessing a steady decline in the number of political units on the globe. Political units are being aggregated into larger and larger blocks (European Union, African Union… someday soon we’ll be hearing about an American Union, etc.) If we can figure out how to harness the avarice of territorial rulers and turn it to the good end of political disaggregation, we may be able to do some real damage to the steady march toward a One World Empire.
Clayton -
I think the first question that should come to mind on this subject is, “Cui bono?”
I think Mises had a good point in that everything ultimately rests on the ideology and beliefs in the people – maybe that’s why he initially seems to have supported majoritarian democracy over anarchy (that’s my impression from reading the first couple hundred of pages). People, for whatever reasons, have urges to either be led or to lead others. Awareness that free market thinking is beneficial is not intrinsic but must be learned. Governments ultimately rest on the consent of the governed so if everyone thought like an Austrian the state would either not have come into being or would not be the Leviathan that it is today.
Problem is that most people don’t think like Austrians. Part of it is because the previous generation has statist leanings, and people go to schools where they are taught statist thinking. However, all of this had to have a root somewhere. My guess is that coercion and aggression were beneficial at some point in history, and beneficial for long enough for us to have developed instincts for them. They would not exist otherwise. Talk to anyone who hasn’t read much about economics or freedom and just goes with their gut instincts, and you hear the genesis of the state. Freedom must be learned and must be believed in if it is to become a reality.
Since changing ideology is a slow process, changing the balance of power will be necessary, too. No matter what philosophy you believe in, systems get implemented and enforced by people in power. If one person has all of the power in the world, then you have to do as he says whatever his beliefs. One good thing is that the amount of free market that we’ve been allowed to have has been enough to make huge pushes for this – information, for one, is under less of a grip than it used to be. In any other time in our history other than recently, I don’t know how or if I would ever have discovered Austrian thinking.
I also think secession would be a good path to go down toward. It’s something that many people can believe in (as opposed to the idea of abolishing the state in its entirety) and it works toward decentralizing power and thus giving people more control over their own destiny.
It will take a long time if ever to convince people of the merits of Austrian thinking and of the benefits of the absence of the state under the world as it exists at the current level of technology, but expand technology dramatically and what happens then? What happens when AI has more intelligence than the human race? What happens if you have 3d printers able to prefabricate pretty much anything you need? What’s the role of the state in such a world other than being a tool of pure aggression? Surely most people would see that medicare, social security and other such “features” of the government are outdated in such a world. At that point maybe people could then see the government as nothing more than a tool for some people to have power over others, and would no longer see it as something serving their own interests which is what most people think today.
The important question and one which I don’t know is whether technology will either decentralize or centralize power overall. We are only beginning to see the seeds of a technological revolution in the physical world starting with a military that is slowly being automated. While the Internet has been a great tool for freedom, I’m not convinced that the future trends will actually decentralize power and thus promote freedom. The Orwellian vision of a network of spies listening and watching you whereever you go could easily become a reality.
I’m hopeful that technology will help drive ideological change, as people see the state more clearly as the tool of aggression that it is and as technology gives people more choice and possibilities, but also skeptical that the state won’t co-opt technological progress for itself as a tool to become more pervasive and dictatorial. Information can be free in whichever sense you want that to mean, but we all still live in the physical world with real physical boundaries.
P.S. “This is Sparta” We are treated better than the helots in today’s world in most places, at least.
The stupidity of bureaucrats and government officials will never fail to astound me. Fully legalize online gambling, slap some moderate tax on it and reap the profits without too much effort. Napoleon got it: when his step-son, Eugene de Beauharnais, asked him permission to ban lotto from the Kingdom of Italy because he considered it “immoral”, Bonaparte harshly reprimanded him. “Don’t mention it ever again in my presence! We get over a million gold livres out of lotto from the Kingdom of Italy alone!” was the Emperor’s final answer. Who is the genius here?
These days being one of millions of kids spending 24/7 on moms computer classifies you as a “genius”.