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Libertarian
Libertarian
Uncompromising advocates of liberty and free markets, The Sovereign Society believes that individuals are born sovereign over themselves, not as chattels of governments. We refuse to bow down to government, to submit to bureaucratic demands for ever higher taxes, greater controls and increased regulation. And because we don't feel limited by arbitrary borders, we seek out the best financial opportunities the world over because we believe true sovereignty lies in the individual. You are responsible for your actions and you deserve the fruits of your labors.
The articles below originally appeared in our montly newsletter, The Sovereign Individual and will give you all the basics, but you may need professional help to guide you along the way. You can learn more about individual sovereignty, offshore asset protection, and tax havens in The Sovereign Individual each month by becoming a member of The Sovereign Society. Click here for details on membership.
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Liberty: The Highest Good
By John Pugsley
“I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty.” – H.L. Mencken
The Sovereign Society is founded on the shared beliefs of its members, and one of those beliefs is this: “Individual liberty is the highest good in any society.”
Considering the futile attempts of historians to explain the unending line of nations that have risen and then fallen in human history, it is not surprising that many advocates of individual liberty are pessimistic.
From Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War through Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, right up to Jared Diamond’s recent best-seller, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, historians describe an endless parade of nations and empires that rose, flourished, and were buried in the landfill of time. As I read news of the continuing destruction of personal privacy and freedoms, I wonder at what point the American experiment will follow Athens, Rome, Great Britain, et al., into that landfill.
In spite of 4,000 years of puzzling over the solution, philosophers, historians, and social observers have failed to recognize the solution to the inexorable cycle of birth, expansion, and collapse of nations. Instead, they continue thinking the solution is to rearrange the chairs of state, and continue to wait for the benevolent super-hero to lead them to peace and prosperity.
Power tends to corrupt. Whatever the system of government, each depends on handing the reins of power to some individual. The founders of the American Revolution, wise men steeped in political history, reached only slightly farther than those before them in concluding that the solution lay in hobbling those granted the reins of power with constitutional checks and balances that limit the ability of the state to interfere with individual liberty. These restraints, too, have failed. And no wonder. Individuals demonstrate endless creativity in cracking codes, picking locks, breaking out of prisons, and subverting restraints meant to control them. Thus, devices meant to limit government succumb to human ingenuity. Those handed limited power under any government exploit flaws in the system until it falls to corruption and failure.
Fortunately, the answer to the question of the rise and fall of nations does not depend on the discovery of the perfect government structure or on finding incorruptible leaders. The answer was articulated in the same year the founding fathers penned the Declaration of Independence. In An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations, Scottish economist Adam Smith postulated that the very individual self-interest that is thought to be at the root of wars and which has been used as the rationale for government, is itself the solution to this age-old dilemma.
Smith wrote:
“Every individual…generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it... He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention…By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.”
As I penned years ago in my book, The Alpha Strategy, like the Wizard of Oz, the state presents itself as all-powerful, benevolent, the source of wealth, and the protector of the rights of all. Political leaders parade before us with pomp and ceremony, in one era borne about in gilded carriages, in another era carried in shining, bullet-proof limousines. They ponder the deep problems of the world in the secrecy of awesome marble temples, counseling with the wisest of the sorcerers, the highest priests of wisdom and knowledge from the greatest universities. Deified by the masses, they smile before the ovations of the crowds, here and there blessing a few of the fortunate with a word, a memento, an appointment. They talk of greatness, of honor, of foreign dangers, and, of course, the need for individuals to sacrifice their liberties for the safety of the nation. And still, the nations rise and fall.
What, then, is the answer? Should we revise and redesign the political process, and continue to hope for honest government? Should we campaign, vote, lobby, protest, and demonstrate?
It is an attractive thought, but how does that course differ from what has always been tried? No matter how forcefully the bad guys are thrown out of office, they always seem to be replaced by another group who turn out to be equally bad, if not worse. The political experience in the United States certainly confirms this pattern. The country has had endless changes of faces in local, state, and federal offices for over 200 years—yet individual freedom deteriorates year after year.
Certainly, there are many ethical, moral individuals who refuse to use government as a means of plundering their fellow citizens, and the world is better because of them. But the idea of building a moral oasis in the desert of theft, such as the mythical Galt’s Gulch, is utopian in itself. The average member of the masses is not wise enough to value the benefits that a totally free society would bring many years in the future, over the immediate gain he might get through government subsidy and regulation of his competitors. Trying to convince the masses to abandon government favors by appealing to their longer run self-interest is as futile as trying to convince a five-year-old child not to eat sweets because of the danger of diabetes in old age. Humans are shortsighted and selfish (which is not a condemnation, but a fact of evolution). Each will tend to take the shortest path to achieve his goals, and any solution to our social problems must be consistent with this inherent human quality.
Barring an untimely end to our species, evolution suggests that the invisible hand is the only way to guarantee the end to the rise and fall of nations. And the only way that the invisible hand can work its magic is for individuals to be free. Individual liberty is the highest good for our species. The answer and the goal is a world in which all individuals are sovereign.
John Pugsley is Chairman of The Sovereign Society and the author of many books on economics, investing and politics.
Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Sovereign Individual?
By John Pugsley
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. —George Bernard Shaw
On the cover of Thomas Hobbe’s 1641 book, Leviathan, a benevolent giant wields a sword and scepter, his body covered by small figures, all looking inward to his greatness. The caption, a quotation from the book of Job 41:24, reads: Non est potestas super terram quae comparetur. “On earth, there is none his like.”
While the Book of Job referred to God, Hobbes referred to the sovereign state. He argued that whether a monarchy or democracy, the state should be accepted as the ultimate authority and protector of all.
One hundred and fifty years later, the founding fathers of America repudiated Hobbes’ idea that the state should be sovereign. Individual liberty became the dream. From health care to education, from financial security in retirement to dealing with natural disasters, individuals relied on their own ingenuity and the help of kin and neighbors. The “sovereign” state was small, unobtrusive, and relatively benign.
Sadly, the individualistic spirit that built the nation is no longer evident. Reverting to Hobbes’ belief in an all-powerful state, Americans have accepted that government should not only defend us, it should be responsible for all of our needs. Generation by generation, individuals have been indoctrinated to believe that government will protect them from harm and guarantee the basics of life.
Members of The Sovereign Society clearly recognize the evil masked by Leviathan’s smile. We know that the state is not our benefactor. Instead, it is the greatest threat to our assets and our lives. However, becoming a sovereign individual is not without costs; costs that make most people afraid to question the role of government. If you really want to follow the principles of individual sovereignty, then you must be ready to shoulder the responsibility.
Are you ready? Consider what this means in just a few areas of your life, such as health care, financial security in retirement, and personal safety.
“Free” Health Care Comes at a Steep Price
The allure of “free” medical care is easy to sell to voters as health care costs skyrocket. But, U.S. advocates of national health insurance ignore its track record in other countries. Wherever it has been tried, writes John C. Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, “rationing by waiting is pervasive, putting patients at risk and keeping them in pain.’’
It’s not hard to understand why. Health care, like any other product or service, is subject to the laws of supply and demand. When governments decide that health care is an “entitlement,” available at little or no cost, it should come as no surprise that the demand for it soars. Nor should it be surprising that, since government health care budgets aren’t unlimited, increased demand leads to increased waiting times to obtain care.
In Britain, with its much-vaunted national health care service, delays for colon cancer treatment are so protracted that 20% of cases considered curable at the time of diagnosis are incurable by the time of treatment. In Canada, a lawsuit was filed in 2004 against 12 Quebec hospitals on behalf of 10,000 breast cancer patients who had to wait more than eight weeks for radiation therapy.
Are these the models we wish to emulate? If not, how should a sovereign individual approach health care? First, admit that no matter how dire your need, you have no right to demand that government or any other person be compelled to help you. Second, purchase private health insurance to pay for your health care in the event of sickness or accident. And, should you choose not to purchase health insurance, be prepared to take financial responsibility for whatever future medical catastrophe might occur. To be a sovereign individual is to accept that your need is not a claim on the life or property of anyone else.
The Anti-Social Insecurity System
How about your need for financial security in old age? Around the world, most industrialized countries have decreed that your financial needs in old age are the responsibility of government. In the U.S., most people approaching retirement age think they can depend on Social Security payments or government-insured pensions to support them. Are you one of those people?
Social Security, the world’s largest government entitlement program, began in 1935 with the promise that it would end poverty in the aged and disabled by guaranteeing a steady income. Today, with tens of millions of recipients, the beneficiaries of Social Security have become the biggest political lobby in America.
As one of my early mentors pointed out, a more accurate name for this program would be the Anti-Social Insecurity System. It will eventually fail because it is mathematically and actuarially unsound. Funds collected are called “contributions” that supposedly flow into a “trust fund”. In point of fact, “contribution” is simply a euphemism for money stolen through taxes. Nor is the money held in trust. Our contributions are used to pay today’s beneficiaries. There is no chance that changes can be instituted that will allow the Social Security promises to be kept. It is a financial tsunami headed for our shores.
Again, it’s not hard to understand why. At Social Security’s inception, 140 workers were available to support each retiree. By 1980, that ratio had shrunk to 3.2:1. Today, it’s about 2.5:1 and by 2030, it is projected to shrink to 1.5:1. To finance benefits already promised to retirees, much higher payroll taxes, much lower benefits, or both, will be necessary.
Nor do private employer-sponsored retirement programs offer a panacea, particularly since the government is deeply involved here, too. The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC), the federal agency that insures private pensions for 44 million workers and retirees, just reported that its 2005 deficit totaled almost US$23 billion. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, because U.S. accounting rules allow companies to declare bankruptcy and transfer their pension obligations to the PBGC. Its deficit is actually about US$100 billion if you weigh the full impact of these liabilities, with more to come as companies with huge pension obligations, such as General Motors, consider bankruptcy.
Again, what are the implications for sovereign individuals? Relying on any pension plan that someone else sets up for you, whether the government or a corporation, is simply foolish. Sovereign individuals look in the mirror and say to themselves, “the buck stops here.” They accept responsibility and sacrifice over the years to create their own retirement fund, independent of the promises of employers and government. Individual sovereignty requires individual responsibility.
Can the Government Protect You from a Natural Disaster?
Natural disaster followed natural disaster during 2005. Perhaps disasters on the scale of the Asian tsunami or Hurricane Katrina are the ultimate raison d’etre for ceding responsibility to Leviathan.
But, can government be relied on to deal with such crises? The record is clear. A common thread was apparent in all of last year’s disasters: government failed.
The public outcry in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was particularly revealing. Just to name a few:
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The government should have ordered mandatory evacuation sooner.
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The government should have built stronger levees.
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The government should have sent in more troops to restore law and order.
In this line of logic, everything connected to a natural disaster is the government’s responsibility. But as Katrina clearly demonstrated, governments fail—consistently—to deal with the aftermath of natural disaster.
What’s a sovereign individual to do? Choosing to live in areas prone to tornadoes, earthquakes, or hurricanes carries risk. If private insurance companies consider the risk too great to bear, as is the case in areas where flood insurance is unavailable except through government, be prepared to suffer a loss. Don’t call on Leviathan for help. Instead, choose your living accommodation to be as resistant to whatever natural disaster might strike as possible. Stockpile food, water, ammunition, and other necessities. Don’t even think about whining if government doesn’t come to your rescue.
Ad infinitum
Do you expect the government to educate your children? To protect you from terrorists? To guarantee your job? To protect you against corporate fraud?
The record speaks loudly. It can’t. Sovereign individuals recognize this and pay the personal costs to prepare for all contingencies.
Sovereign individuals stand opposed to Leviathan. By demanding the freedom to choose the course of their own lives, they accept the responsibility for the consequences of those choices. Do you have what it takes to stand on your own two feet and accept complete responsibility for your choices?
What’s Wrong with the Fourth of July?
By Jack Pugsley
Last year marked the 230th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, and as is the custom, the anniversary will be feted with fireworks, flags and parades.
Celebrating independence from foreign rule is not unique to America. A few years back, I celebrated the 4th of July, in Fort Lauderdale. Crossing to the Abacos the following day, I joined the Bahamians in celebrating their independence from the Brits on July 10th. I happened to be in Grenada on February 7th last year, as Grenadian soldiers and sailors, performed their annual ritual of deliverance from British rule.
It’s the same around the world. Mexicans celebrate independence from Spanish rule on September 16th. Zaire celebrates its independence from Belgium on June 24th. Algerians from France on July 5th. From the Ukraine to the Philippines, and from Vanuatu to Turkmenistan, country after country celebrates liberation with military bands, flags and enthusiastic crowds singing national anthems.
Yet, to paraphrase Rousseau: “Man frees himself, but everywhere he is in chains.” If independence is cherished and celebrated worldwide, why isn’t man free? Why do people rebel, free themselves from tyranny, then fall victim again, in an endless cycle?
I submit the seed of the problem may lie within that great template for independence, the Declaration of Independence itself. No doubt you can quote its stirring words:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
And then the muted but ominous conclusion: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…[W]henever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to… institute new Government.”
New government? Aye, as Shakespeare would say, there’s the rub.
Consider the American Revolution. Just a decade after the Declaration liberated individuals from one powerful central government, the Constitution created another. And so it has been around the world throughout history. Today, governments formed to replace those toppled by rebellion consume their citizens’ lives much more than their predecessors did. Government is like the android in The Terminator: if the tiniest speck of it is left after it’s destroyed, it reforms itself.
It doesn’t matter what form of government is thrown off. One population celebrates when a benevolent king replaces a tyrannical king. Another, when a secular leader replaces a religious leader. Or, as in America, people celebrate when the monarch is deposed and the people elect their own ruler under the concept of a republic or democracy. No matter, it seems. Monarchy, dictatorship—communism, none have lasted. Even democracy hasn’t solved the problem.
Observing parliamentary elections in England, Rousseau observed: “The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people make such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it.”
What’s wrong with the Fourth of July? It celebrates a pyrrhic victory. People think they will be free if they exchange one set of rulers for another. Yet, it hasn’t worked. The failure is people celebrate a nation’s independence from foreign rule, rather than their own individual independence from the rule of any other person. No man (or woman, Hillary) has a mandate from God or from the universe to rule over others, whether he or she be king, queen, czar, fuehrer, or president. No one is endowed with rights superior to anyone else. This is the true heart of the American credo.
When the ultimate declaration of independence is drafted, tested and in place, it will not refer to the independence of one nation within a world of sovereign nations, but to the independence of each individual within a world of sovereign individuals. While nations will continue to pass in and out of the revolving door of independence and subjugation, a personal declaration of independence is for all time. When you make your declaration that you are a sovereign individual, that truly will be the day for remembrance and celebration.
Whose Property Are You?
By Jack Pugsley
For the past eight years, those of us here at The Sovereign Society have relentlessly harped on the need to defend against the escalating attack on private property by governments. If you harbor any doubts about the urgency of implementing a plan for self-defense through international diversification, recent cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court should be a wakeup call. In two stunning rulings, the Justices continued a 150-year evisceration of the Constitutional barricades protecting individual rights.
In one case, Kelo v. City of New London, the court upheld the New London, Connecticut, city attorney’s assertion that the local government could forcibly seize private property for the purpose of commercial development. The rationale was that it benefited the public because it helped raise “significantly more taxes.” As retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Conner pointed out in her dissenting opinion, “all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner.”
The only people standing between your home and a developer that wants it are your local politicians. Do you trust them to be immune to temptation? All too often we see mayors, councilmen, planning and zoning board members, and building inspectors herded into court houses and jails for extortion and accepting bribes (among assorted other crimes).
Sadly, the ruling is not without precedent. In his book, Sweet Land of Liberty? The Supreme Court and Individual Rights, Henry Mark Holzer, a now-retired professor of Constitutional law, documented Supreme Court rulings stretching as far back as 1866 that took away individual’s rights to control access to, as well as the use of, their own land, homes, and commercial properties—all in the name of the public interest.
Is there a link between liberty and private property? Holzer thinks so. “One infallible barometer of how much freedom there is in a country is the extent to which citizens control their own property, be it one-family houses, condominiums, farms or raw land…” The Kelo decision puts one more nail in the coffin of private property. A man’s home is his castle, on lease from the government.
In a second case, Gonzales v. Raich, the issue was whether individuals have the right to control their own bodies. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that anyone distributing medical marijuana could be prosecuted, despite claims their activity was a “medical activity.” The recent case dealt with the broader issue of whether marijuana users could be subject to federal prosecution even if use was legal under state law. The Justices ruled that people who legally use marijuana for medicinal purposes under state laws can still be prosecuted under federal drug laws.
Based on this ruling, federal authorities confirmed that they will continue to prosecute anyone who uses, grows, or distributes marijuana. To publicize their commitment, in late June, federal officials raided three California medical marijuana distributors, searching homes and businesses in the San Francisco Bay area and seizing nearly 10,000 marijuana plants. Nothing, including pain and suffering, will interfere with the federal government’s control of your body.
There is a common thread running through these decisions. The rights of the individual are consistently subordinated to the needs of the public, and the government decides what constitutes the needs of the public. The government’s position is that you, your body, your thoughts, your money, and your home are not your property—you and everything you have are owned by the community. In their eyes, you are the property of the sovereign state.
This idea is the antithesis of our position at The Sovereign Society. The central tenet of our credo is that individuals are not the property of the government; all of us are and should be sovereign unto ourselves.
In his pamphlet, Common Sense, a stirring document that ignited the American Revolution, Thomas Paine had the temerity to challenge the almost universal belief in the divine right of kings. Here at The Sovereign Society, we challenge the right not just of kings, but of any government to own and control the lives and property of the individuals within its borders. We are aware that challenging the sovereignty of the state is profoundly disturbing to a world in which we have been indoctrinated since birth to kneel before its authority. To those who doubt that such a world should or could ever come to pass, the promise in the opening to Paine’s classic essay (only slightly re-worded) provides the answer:
“Perhaps the idea of individual sovereignty is not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure its general favor; a long habit of not thinking the sovereignty of the state wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. And reason will ultimately lead to a world in which individuals and not states are sovereign.”
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