This article is a succinct summary of my revolutionary new political system Juristocracy. Juristocracy implements full freedom, including economic freedom, and corrects contradictions and errors in legacy semi-free systems, such as that of the United States. The full exposition of the system is contained in my monograph Juristocracy

Juristocracy is philosophically grounded in Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, particularly the following essays: The Objectivist Ethics (1961), Man’s Rights (1963) and The Nature of Government (1963). (All three are available in the book The Virtue of Selfishness.) It is economically grounded in works defending laissez-faire capitalism, particularly Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776), Carl Menger’s On The Origin of Money (1892) and several of Ludwig Von Mises’ works, especially The Theory of Money and Credit (1912) and his magnum opus Human Action (1949).

Summary of Intellectual Methodology

Juristocracy was developed using the analytic method that was consistently employed by Ayn Rand, and also used de facto by the economists cited. I call this the “objective-inductive-integrative method”. It is a fact and reality-oriented methodology, which has been shockingly absent in most areas of social science and economics. The essence of the approach is to apply an iterative process of:

1. Discovering and identifying the relevant facts for the context, and level of abstraction one is at;
2. Induce relevant abstractions, such as common features, in the facts;
3. Tentatively integrate the inductions to the point so far with existing knowledge known to be true by a similar objective, reality-centric approach.
4. Rigorously search for any facts that contradict the integrations so far. Any contradictions discovered in induction or integration must be corrected.

Philosophic Foundations

Ayn Rand challenged over 2500 years of religious and philosophic tradition in morality, particularly the widely held morality of self-sacrifice: altruism. She proceeds by observing that life is a metaphysically new category of existent, one that can only sustain the processes that make it alive by seeking and using the values its nature require, such as: sunlight, water, and nutrients for plants; food, shelter, and protection from enemies for animals; and (uniquely) for man, who has no built-in values like animals, using his faculty of reason to discover then find or produce the values he needs to survive. Those basic values are the foundation of her morality of rational self-interest, which is concerned with the needs of the individual person, not specific social ends. Rand rejects the altruist morality as completely inimical to the needs of man. She sharply contrasts benevolence (including things like donating to a charity, or helping others worthy of help) with self-sacrifice, which she characterizes as a trade of values for lesser values or no value. She argues that altruism in ethics leads directly to every form of oppressive government.

Rand identifies the social conditions that man needs to exercise his faculty of reason and act on it, so he may survive and flourish. It basically requires a social system in which initiation of coercion—force—is banished. This requires respect by everyone of individual rights, such as freedom of thought and expression, freedom to produce and trade, and especially the rights of property. She advocates laissez-faire capitalism as the only social system compatible with man’s needs, needs determined by his biological nature. She explains the need for a government as the agency that has a monopoly on the retaliatory use of force, such as against criminals, or to enforce judgements in civil suits, and a military to defend the country as a whole. Rand rejects anarchy of any variety, as do I. (I describe it as not a political system that can be taken seriously, but rather as a psycho-epistemological malady.)

Economic Foundations

Adam Smith was probably the first economist to treat the separate issues of concern in economics, with an overall treatise on these topics. He wasn’t correct in all instances, but the very many things on which he was correct are as applicable today as in 1776, and as sadly ignored.

The single most important work in the history of economics is Ludwig von Mises’ Human Action—a treatise that defends laissez-faire capitalism. It is a comprehensive examination of every branch of economics, along with refutations of interventionist or socialist positions. Especially brilliant was his analysis of money, for the first time identifying that it has economic supply and demand unique to its status as money, in addition and apart from its supply and demand as a commodity (for commodity money like gold.) He also shows why fiat is a terrible substitute for commodity money, and explains how hyperinflation occurs—a seemingly inevitable endpoint for all fiat currencies.

Perhaps the most important thing Mises demonstrates, is how the actions of an individual in a free market are based on that individual’s personal values, and how they are best served overall by the actions of production and consumption that the individual makes. The integrated market actions of all individuals results in a system that has the ideal allocation of production and trade, as arbitrated by the personal value choices of all participants.

A wise person (whose identity I forget) once pointed out that all forms of intervention, from the mixed economy to outright socialism are based on some individuals objecting the free choices and personal value judgements of others, and wanting to impose their own value choices on everyone by force. Politicians use such economic theories to justify their own power. “Bad economic ideas are always just a rationalization for power-lust.”

Summary of Juristocracy

I will first summarize the essential features of Juristocracy, that differentiates it from contemporary “democratic” systems. I will then briefly explain the reason for each feature. (Please note, the descriptions and explanations here do not replace their full exposition in the monograph.) Juristocracy is a comprehensive system of government to be applied to all levels of government in a country. Although not part of the principles, I do advocate a Federal State, with suitable constitutionally defined separation of powers for the Federal, State, County, and Municipal levels of government.

• government actions and departments are restricted solely to valid purposes of government related to defending individual and property rights: police, courts, property registries, a military, and of course, legislative bodies;
• a fully laissez-faire capitalist economy; i.e. the complete separation of government and economics (even roads are private);
• laissez-faire includes fully free market money and banking; the government is not even allowed to mint coins; banking is free and unregulated; (money emerges organically in a free economy);
• voluntary, conditional citizenship; citizenship is not awarded at birth, but must be applied (if desired) on reaching age; only people who demonstrate knowledge of several subjects related to freedom, as well as solemnly pledging to support freedom are eligible; citizenship may be revoked upon petition and hearing by a citizenship court, for cause;
• non-citizens have the status of legal permanent resident (LPR); LPRs enjoy full protection of their rights under the law, and may leave and enter the country at will; since global travel requires passports, the government will issue upon application a passport to LPRs, although it will list their residency status, not indicate citizenship;
• voluntary financing mechanisms for all government operations; coercive measures like taxation are constitutionally forbidden, as is takings (“eminent domain”) and the military draft;
• controlled borders with selective admission for both visitors but especially prospective immigrants; the criteria are similar to those for citizens: 100% support of individual rights, and limits on government action to solely protecting same; the citizens, via the federal government, may also place numerical limits on the rate of admission of immigrants, consistent with the rate the economy can supply sufficient housing and jobs
• I would hope this would be obvious, but: full sovereignty of the nation, along with defense of the country and its borders by military means; no surrender of sovereignty to international organizations, but the country will participate in specific organizations devoted to protection of rights that involve territory outside its borders, and will form treaties for purposes of mutual benefit with other countries, the standard always being the rights of all legal residents in the country;
• Juristocracy is not “isolationist”, but its military policy is strictly restricted to defending the integrity of the country from initiation of force by hostile countries, and such international actions as can be defended solely by reference to the clear rights and interests of the residents, and/or those required due to treaty agreements, which treaties themselves may only be based on the country’s interests, and benefits from agreeing a treaty; in particular, there may be no military operations based on altruistic or “humanitarian” motives;

In the sections below, I briefly describe the reason for each basic feature of Juristocracy.

(Extremely) Limited Government

Conservatives today who say they favor “limited government” still refer to a government of vast scope and actions. Government under Juristocracy is solely limited to valid departments and activities whose end is protection of individual rights and property rights. Because the government has the legal monopoly on the use of force, it loses its moral validity if it engages in actions that violate individual rights. Today, these interventions are primarily a plethora of welfare schemes, monetary grants to a wide variety of social and intellectual organizations and individuals, a dizzying array of coercive regulations violating the rights of production and trade, and even huge sums given to foreign nations and organizations.

“Limited” means limited. For the most part, this means the police, to enforce criminal law; criminal and civil courts; prisons; agencies of property registration, such as the land title office, copyright office, etc; a military; border protection; and not much more. There would be a legislative function, but nothing in any way like today. Once rights-protecting laws, such as a criminal code, statutes governing creation and operation of police, and so on are created, law remains fairly static. New laws, or amendments to existing laws, are really only needed when there are new developments, such as copyright changes to cover electronic media, and so on. In particular, there is no endless “lobbying” to enact measures that take from some and give to others, or restrict economic freedom to benefit some at the expense of others, and freedom generally.

There is a particularly pernicious aphorism often heard in conservative circles, “Government should only do what the private sector will not or can not.” This is the opposite of a principle. Instead, it sanctifies all manner of huge government projects that would never be funded voluntarily on the market. What this means according to capitalist theory, is that in their voluntary actions, individuals valued other goods and services higher than the service in question. Many services of vast capital expense, and huge scope ARE provided on the market; the reason is that there is sufficient aggregate demand. Examples are satellite TV and Internet services; jet airline transportation; massive corporations with bogglingly complex logistics that supply a huge array of goods to consumers (e.g. Amazon); and so forth. Conversely, people are not voluntarily willing to provide the fares that would enable profitable creation of things like high speed rail (such as in California), or space flights to the moon (although private space flight, for largely commercial purposes IS becoming profitable.) The con rationalizations are always the same: 1) it performs some useful or even argued as necessary “public good”; 2) its alleged economic “spin-offs” justify the public expense, for example a hugely expensive and unprofitable subway or train, that will enable “development” near the stations, and so on. The first depends on altruism for its justification, the idea that a needy beneficiary sanctifies stealing money from taxpayers. The second is nonsensical sleight of hand that basically tries to justify taking money from taxpayers, that they don’t get back, to benefit various private developers.

Laissez-faire Capitalism

Ayn Rand claimed that her morality of rational self-interest was the missing foundation upon which capitalism depends. Despite capitalism’s spectacular success at producing innovative new products, and raising the standard of living of all, Rand argues that merely utilitarian arguments for capitalism will have no power against more fundamental moral arguments against it, especially when almost everyone nominally agrees with altruism, even if it not the actual morality that informs most of their daily actions. Capitalism is based on self-interest, and can only be defended with reference to a moral ideal of rational self-interest.

Endless charges are made, and taught in our colleges, that capitalism has a variety of “defects”, which must be addressed by way of coercive government interventions. In every case, these “defects” are declared by people who don’t like what transpires when individuals exercise their personal value choices on the market, and would see the outcomes altered by replacing the value choices of individuals with their own. The reason we so desperately need full free market laissez-faire capitalism is the quantity of bad economic theories held so widely.

Free Market Money

The entire history of money is basically one in which the monopoly issuer or regulator of money, the government, engages in all manner of chicanery whose inevitable goal is enriching the monarch or government by inflationary means. For economies that have at a point a stable money comprising some commodity like a given quantity of a metal; the government typically enacts legal tender laws, and clips or drills out some of the metal of the coins. The law forces traders to accept a smaller quantity of the metal in trade for the same goods as before, by decree. The most extreme and pernicious situation is like that of today, whereby through a series of measures over time, the government completely replaces a valuable commodity that once was money, with worthless pieces of paper that it issues. It uses a variety of coercive measures like legal tender laws, and taxes on monetary commodities, to force compliance. Then the government, like today, constantly expands the supply of these notes, to finance its spending and debt interest. As Ludwig von Mises demonstrated, when a money is inflated in this way, those who get the new money first will typically still be able to buy things at their previous market prices; but as this artificial new demand spreads, sellers must raise their prices to compensate for the artificial new demand created by the notes, which has no corresponding actual expansion of production. Inflation.

Because of the seeming inevitability of governments to ravish the money supply, along with the fact that money is a purely economic phenomena that emerges organically in ALL division of labor economies, the government in Juristocracy is forbidden from participating in any aspect of money. It may not even issue metallic coins of the monetary commodity, because this represents the thin edge of a wedge. Money in a free market economy is typically handled by banks.

(Note: Bitcoin aficionados may chose to believe that BTC will be the money, but economic analysis suggests it will once again be gold. The free market will arbitrate.)

Although forbidden from being involved in the operation of money, the government can and should create special subsets of criminal law dealing with counterfeiting money and other instruments such as securities. Because these are basically crimes that affect everyone, the penalties should be more severe than common theft and fraud.

There is a debate in economics over fractional-reserve banking. Without going into unnecessary detail, this issue is easily addressed by requiring issuers of notes to clearly indicate whether it is a receipt for the commodity, thus not lent out, and not on the institution’s balance sheet, or whether it is basically a loan to the bank, with redemption conditions and no absolute guarantee of redemption. The market then decides the relative value of each type.

Voluntary, Conditional Citizenship

Contemporary and historical conceptions of government and the relation between it and citizens are simply wrong. The government of a country (state, etc.) is an organization; it is a unique type of organization in some respects, due to its necessary monopoly status, and its mandate to use retaliatory force; but in other respects, it has the attributes of non-economic organizations, such as sports clubs, intellectual societies, and so forth. Organizations have members, empowered to direct the affairs of the organization. In the case of government, these members are the citizens. But as we have shown, government has a very particular moral commandment: it may not initiate force against the innocent, it may only employ force in retaliation to initiated force, or to enforce civil judgments. Specifically, there is no right whatsoever for a government to initiate force for any purpose, social, economic, ideological, or otherwise. In turn, this means that the only people who may morally participate in things like law formation or amendment, or employing the mechanisms of force, such as judges, district attorneys, police, and so forth, are people who by both word and action, can attest under oath, that they promise to only influence government and exercise its power consistent with its only moral mandate.

The existing conception of a citizen, typically (and historically), is of someone who automatically becomes a citizen by birth in the country, and secondarily, as an immigrant, can apply for citizenship. It is the first one that is most problematic. First, this violates the rights of the individual, because the law deems a person to be a member of the government organization, whether they want to or not. And this unconditional membership is often used to justify coercive measures like the military draft, or compulsory jury duty. But the worst aspect, is that it gives a controlling voice to all manner of people whose explicit political philosophy involves extensive use of the government to violate rights. This is a moral abomination.

Juristocracy by contrast does not grant citizenship unconditionally; therefore the individual is not forced into an association which they may reject morally. More importantly, it excludes people who under automatic citizenship would try to influence government to violate rights.

Citizenship, as now, is also an option to legal immigrants, under certain preconditions, such as time of residency. But the same criteria of acceptance apply. In fact, current citizenship law and procedures are not too too far from what they would be under Juristocracy, except with more factual knowledge required, and the stricter criteria of support for rights, including support for laissez-faire capitalism.

There are few actual practical benefits to citizenship under Juristocracy, so many may choose not to apply. Most importantly, citizenship is required to participate in changes to the law (e.g. by selecting representatives or voting in a plebiscite), holding office, and some government jobs (remember: government is now small and focused). As an example, a police officer should be required to be a citizen; but support staff, grounds keepers, etc. need not be.

Voluntary Financing

“No taxation without representation.” Glad you brought that up. Juristocracy neatly solves this alleged dilemma by not having taxation. Very many, if not most, people instantly reject this element, before even considering the moral and practical case that I make. I’ll include some of both below, to help emphasize this is not some whacky “idealist” pipe dream, but an critically important, practical, and realizable elements.

I’ll start with the practical. Although it is difficult to prove at this point, because there has never been to my knowledge any government funded fully voluntarily, I strongly believe, and can make points to support it, that voluntary financing is the single most important and necessary attribute to keep the government’s size and spending in full check over the long term. I know that many believe, “We just need a better constitution this time, then it will stay small.” I argue in detail in the monograph why that is false. More important, is a fundamental difference between people when they are themselves paying for something of immediate and necessary need for their own interests, vs the psychology of “taxing everyone” and using other people’s money to pay for something new the government doesn’t do yet. For example: people have been polled outside a store, and asked if they support raising the minimum wage; most say “yes”; but then they are offered a contribution bucket to which they can immediately donate that will given to the workers. Virtually no one contributes. They are fine foisting the expense on the stores; but they won’t help fund it themselves.

Here’s an example of how this can work, for one important government function. I am quite fond of the idea of funding the police by way of a voluntary retail surcharge, that retailers and other public sellers of goods and services can sponsor. It differs from checkout donation prompts, in that the retailer commits to applying it to all customers, in exchange for being able to display signs and logos saying that they support the police via the small surcharge (e.g. maybe 2-3%, lower than existing sales taxes.) In these types of situations, people are typically quite happy to do their part for the necessary police services. It is voluntary, insofar as no business is compelled to participate, and there is no bias in service allowed by the police. But voluntary, as in an example, if anarchists want to have their own coffee shop that doesn’t participate, they are free to do so. But overall, there would be widespread adoption. But the most important thing this mechanism engenders is a completely different attitude by police toward constituents. They no longer are automatically paid; their paychecks depend on voluntary contributions, and if the police are abusive and unprofessional, there will be outcries from citizens, and it is almost certain at least some retailers will drop out, due to pressure from their customers. So this mechanism acts as a fundamental change and check on police power and standards. And the best part, is that this program could be implemented now, without the need for full Juristocracy. “Proof of concept.”

Ayn Rand suggested contract insurance as another means, which could easily fund at least the courts and prisons. For a small percentage of the overall contract amount, the insurance would guarantee some extra benefits in enforcement of breaches (those are subject to discussion and debate); but regardless, criminal fraud always remains an unconditional, enforced offense. Consider the vast sums regularly exchanged under contracts: retail and residential rent, and all commercial transactions in which the buyer pays not on receipt, but some time after getting the goods, which is a widespread practice; and finally, credit card purchases in which the card issuer basically lends the money to the buyer, with expectation of future repayment. The sums raised by even a small cost, e.g. 1-2%, would be enormous. And these amounts are typically born only indirectly by people like renters, credit card users, etc., so it those that have the most to lose who have it in their self-interest to protect their contracts, with the minimal additional expense.

Things like our current vast military expenditures might require delaying measures of voluntary financing, both for national security, as well as the need to better “right-size” the military. And given the collapse of the Soviet empire in a matter of a few short years, in some case of satellite countries, months, it is not unrealistic to hope that revolutionary change towards freedom could happen in the two most dangerous nuclear countries today: China and Russia. But the transition away from a tax-funded military could take some time, so as not to jeopardize national security.

Strictly Controlled Border Entry and Immigration

The citizens of a free, civilized county create and operate it for the rationally selfish purpose of protecting their rights, and those of the other residents. I demonstrate in my monograph that a free, peaceful, civilized, rational society is not created by laws and existence of police; it is a product of a certain set of rational ideas held by (hopefully) a large majority of the residents. Many people in the world, outside the country, do not have those beliefs; in fact in a vast majority of cases, they hold ideas diametrically opposed to freedom and protection of rights. We see factual evidence of the impact on a society of importation of even a controlled number of such people. The notion a society could survive allowing essentially unlimited entry of such people, is demonstrably false.

The fact that an “open border” is impractical, proves it cannot be moral or an ideal (using Objectivist standards of forming ideals and theories.) It doesn’t automatically provide formulation of the correct ideal, but I flat out can declare that no person who believes and advocates an “open border” is doing so morally; by this meaning, they can only do so by evading clear factual evidence that even modest implementations cause disastrous results.

I explain the correct ideas in my monograph. In essence, I explain that a country as a whole is a form of non-economic property, with very many attributes under the control of the members of the government, the citizens. They are empowered to make rational laws, create the machinery of government, participate in its operation and so on. A country is not some big social program devoted to sacrificially providing the benefits of a free country to foreigners who understand nothing about what it requires, both ideologically and operationally.

In short, the citizens of a Juristocracy have both the moral right and the moral obligation to establish criteria of entry for visitors and (especially) immigrants to insure that people with beliefs contrary to a free society are excluded from entry. Other rights that residents possess, such as freedom of association, and freedom of producing and hiring, must be exercised in the context of the fundamental right of citizens to establish objective and necessary conditions of entry. A benevolent implementation of Juristocracy will provide categories of entry and immigration, with emphasis on enabling residents to best exercise their rights in areas such as hiring people and especially more personal areas such as family and marriage. But if someone wants to a hire a foreigner who is a raving mystic opposed to a free society in their beliefs, or someone wants to import and marry a raging communist, tough.

National Sovereignty and Self-Interested Military Policy

A country under Juristocracy is sovereign. Its domestic aspects of government are created to protect the individual rights and property rights of the residents.

The proper purpose of the military of a free society is to protect the country (and its carefully curated allies) from invasion and attack. Most specifically, the military is not morally justified in actions that are purely altruistic, sacrificing the expensive hardware and most especially lives of its service people in an effort purely to help other countries or groups, with no self-interest of the homeland at play.

As recent examples: the First Gulf War was justified; Kuwait was just a trial balloon that Saddam enacted to see if he would be opposed. He would have certainly then have invaded Saudi Arabia, putting our critical oil supply at risk. Conversely, Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq were not necessary wars; cost us trillions and extensive casualties, including deeply psychologically scarred, and physically damaged soldiers. And replacing Saddam with “democracy” resulted in far greater terrorist risk to America than Saddam did. And remind me… who’s running Afghanistan again now???

The militaries of countries like the United States and NATO allies are huge and expensive almost beyond comprehension. I put the blame for the current situation squarely on the shoulders of Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. Those presidents both had the ability to insure that Russia (and later China) did not get the atomic bomb. The world would be a dramatically safer place today if they did that, and the obscene military build-ups would not have been needed. Free countries are no military threat to each other. (It’s been awhile, for example, since France invaded England… etc.)

I will admit it may not be possible to voluntarily fund such behemoths, for the moment. However this does not prevent strictly reducing the use of military force for purposes only in the clear self-interest of the nation. It may be possible to devise a hopefully not long-term hybrid, in which aspects of the military budget are still financed with some form of taxation, but other aspects, say troop financing, are voluntary. This would provide a check on expanding troop sizes for inappropriate purposes. Again, spending is vastly better controlled when people are contributing for their own clear self-interest, as opposed to compulsory taxation, in which for practical purposes they don’t really get a say.

Conclusion

I hope this summary of Juristocracy has been helpful and informative. I do urge everyone to read the full monograph, particularly those who may take umbrage with one or more of the defining features of Juristocracy. The monograph contains a full exposition of why I reject a variety of aspects of contemporary political systems, and the full reasoning that supports each element of this new system. If you’re going to roast (or even support!) me, at least please read the full exposition.

Thanks for your interest!