by Alan Bickley
Since I am busier with other matters than I ever thought possible, this will be a short comment. In the past month, we have heard that various rich and well-connected people have had their bank accounts closed, seemingly because of their dissident political opinions. The same has happened to other people who are much poorer and without connections. Twenty years ago, the same happened to the British National Party. There is a simple libertarian response to this.
No one has the right to coerced association with anyone else. If someone comes to me and asks me to provide him with services, I have an absolute right to say yes or no. If I am uncharitable enough to dislike the colour of his face or what he does in bed, so much the worse. I may lose valuable business. But it is my time, and it is my choice. If anyone starts a whine about the horrors of discrimination, he should be ignored. We have an absolute right to discriminate against others for any reason whatever.
This being said, the position becomes less clear when state power of some kind is involved. Banks in this country require a licence from the State to operate. This protects them from open competition. It also gives them access to services and information from the State that are not given to other persons or businesses. If a bank finds itself in serious financial difficulties, it has at least a greater chance than other large businesses of being saved by the State – by a coordination of support by others or by direct financial help. The State has also made it illegal for many transactions to be made in cash. If I try to buy a car with £20,000 in cash, the car dealership is obliged to refuse my business, or to make so many enquiries that accepting my business is too much trouble. In effect, anyone who wants to spend more than a few thousand pounds in cash is obliged by various actual and shadow laws to use a bank account.
So we have privileged corporations and an effective legal obligation for people to do business with them. This entirely changes the libertarian indifference to commercial discrimination. The banks are a privileged oligopoly. The banks compete for custom among a public that is free to choose one bank rather than another, but that is compelled to choose some bank. For this reason, since the relevant laws will not be repealed, it is legitimate to demand a new law to offset some of the effects of the others. Banks should be legally obliged to accept the business of any person or group of persons without question. Limitations on what services are provided must be justified on the grounds of previous financial misconduct as reasonably defined. For example, it should be permitted for a bank to refuse an overdraft to someone who is or has recently been bankrupt, or whose spending habits are obviously reckless. Perhaps it should be permitted for a bank to refuse to lend money for purposes it regards as scandalous as well as commercially unviable. However, a representative of the White Persons’ Supremacy Foundation, or the Vladimir Putin Appreciation Society, should be able to walk into any bank and open an account – with no questions asked. If an account is refused, there should be a legal obligation on the bank to provide a full explanation of the refusal. If the refusal is not made on valid commercial grounds, there should be a right of appeal before a tribunal which does not award costs, and this tribunal should have the power to grant punitive damages against any bank found to be discriminating on any grounds but the validly commercial.
The refusal of banking services is only the beginning of a new and sophisticated totalitarianism. What the banks can do can also be done by supermarkets, by Internet service providers, by hotel chains, by airlines and railway companies, and by utility providers. There is indeed a good case for insisting on a law forbidding any organisation that has the privilege of limited liability from any but obviously commercial discrimination.
The long-term goal of a libertarian is a society without state coercion. In the meantime, there is no reason for libertarians to avoid joining in demands for regulatory laws that limit the full oppressive potential of the present order of things.
Funny you should mention the Vladimir Putin Appreciation Society, as I happen to be a member. The sole member, it seems.
However, to return to the topic in question, this episode, though inconvenient to Nigel et al, has the potential to be highly beneficial in the long term, if it hastens the wider adoption of Bitcoin. Bitcoin solves all of the problems with banks – you effectively become your own banker, and can transact anonymously (or at least pseudonymously) peer-to-peer, without needing anyone’s permission and without the government tracking what you are doing.
When the Central Bank Digital Currencies are forced upon us, the government can programme it to suit their current fads. Once you have used up your ‘carbon allowance’ for the month, you won’t be able to fill up your car, or buy a steak, or fly away to some distant shore. The government will simply turn off your money, as they will do if you displease them in any way. If you leave your designated ‘fifteen-minute zone’, you will find that your money won’t work.
CBDC’s are every tyrant’s wet dream, and Bitcoin, as Christine Lagarde once said, is the “escape raft”.
I don’t know why I am being labelled ‘Anonymous’? I am Hugo Miller.
Perhaps you haven’t logged in
“a good case for insisting on a law forbidding any organisation that has the privilege of limited liability from any but obviously commercial discrimination.” That seems a brilliant case to me as it is not a person doing the business but a government sanctioned virtual being authorised to carry out a business and therefore it should be run as a business not able to refuse anyone on other than commercial grounds.
Of course if they are trading as themselves (whether as an individual, partnership or non-limited company) they are people and so should have the right of full freedom of association.
“a good case for insisting on a law forbidding any organisation that has the privilege of limited liability from any but obviously commercial discrimination.” That seems a brilliant case to me as it is not a person doing the business but a government sanctioned virtual being authorised to carry out a business and therefore it should be run as a business not able to refuse anyone on other than commercial grounds.
Of course if they are trading as themselves (whether as an individual, partnership or non-limited company) they are people and so should have the right of full freedom of association.
I am Hugo Miller
No, I’m Hugo Miller.
I am Spartacus.
No, I’m Spartacus, and Hugo Miller. Joking aside, soon it will be “I’m Sean Gabb” – the authorities are desperate to capture him and make an example of him.
“And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.”
We’re not completely there yet but getting damn close to it…the beast is a combination of government and religion…
[…] the Free Life blog, Alan Bickley considers the recently reported rash of prominent (and not-so-prominent) critics of the British […]
“Paging Winston Smith. 6079 Smith W, please report to nearest speakwrite.”
This is the essay I needed to read on the subject. I entirely agree with its contents.
I just wish Dr. Gabb wasn’t an outlaw. I appreciate that as leader of the English National-Libertarian Revolutionary Command, he is wanted by the authorities and has had to change his name to Alan Bickley, but the media could have been a bit more considerate and not given him that annoying squeaky dubbing of his voice whenever they release his defiant video speeches from his karstic hideout in Deal. ‘No oxygen of publicity for terrorists’ and all that, but it’s worse than Gerry Adams’ dubbed voiceover.
Though inseparable from Dr Gabb, and of a like substance, I must be regarded as a distinct person
Libertarianism is an apolitical nonsense ideology and it is increasingly clear that you are not a libertarian at all – a mark of your intelligence.
On the scaffold, King Charles I said:
“For the people. And truly I desire their Liberty and Freedom as much as any Body whomsoever. But I must tell you, That their Liberty and Freedom, consists in having of Government; those Laws, by which their Life and their gGods may be most their own. It is not for having share in government (Sir) that [9/10] is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a soveraign are clean different things, and therefore until they do that, I mean, that you do put the people in that liberty as I say, certainly they will never enjoy themselves.”
This is as thorough a demolition of libertarianism as any that has been since, he was proven absolutely right by the events that followed his execution, and he states it in more poetical terms than the American academics who invented libertarianism in the 1960s as a reform movement within – not a revolution against – the bureaucratic system of FDR.
How so not a libertarian?
Your emotional outlook is nationalist and your political outlook is monarchist.
By the latter I mean you wish to win political battles at the price of breaking with libertarian precepts rather than lose them while staying consistent with libertarian precepts.
Functionally libertarianism is an intellectual spook that persuades smart and good men to lose political battles rather than win them, for the sake of keeping what they believe to be logical consistency and the approval of other political losers with a similar outlook.
You, fundamentally, want to win. You are also a very smart man, so you are able to present the exceptions to libertarianism – exercises of monarchical power – that you support as somehow endorsed by libertarianism, but let’s be under no illusions that libertarianism has no defence against organised entryism coordinating “private” institutions for tyranny.
What you want is for the king, who is the ultimate stockholder in the realm, to wield his sword against those who are the enemies of the nation and the workers of iniquity. This can only be done successfully in an arbitrary way, as gaming rules against their purpose is the source of this enemy’s power. Whether you recognise that consciously or not, you understand it.
[…] or mitigation of the bad laws his Party inherited. A few months ago, I discussed how the banks were cancelling the accounts of political dissidents. I noted that the answer was easy – a quick statutory instrument compelling financial […]