NAIS and Counter-Economics
The last great false-hope of the minarchists, Ron Paul, has called attention to the latest statist aggression in the field of agriculture, the National Animal Identification System (NAIS):
The House of Representatives recently passed funding for a new federal mandate that threatens to put thousands of small farmers and ranchers out of business. The National Animal Identification System, known as NAIS, is an expensive and unnecessary federal program that requires owners of livestock – cattle, dairy, poultry, and even horses – to tag animals with electronic tracking devices. The intrusive monitoring system amounts to nothing more than a tax on livestock owners, allowing the federal government access to detailed information about their private property.
…and urges libertarian activists to waste their precious time and resources on debilitative, state-worshipping political pseudo-action:
…there’s still time to tell the Senate to dump NAIS. Please call your Senators and tell them you oppose spending even one dime on the NAIS program in the 2007 agriculture appropriations bill.
Agorists know better:
But using New Libertarian [ed: agorist] analysis, one can predict the likely outbreak of statist aggression and move to head it off by exposure or even defend or evacuate the victims. One can also predict the probable outcomes of deviations by libertarian groups and either head off the sell-outs and disasters or win respect for one’s foresight and that of New Libertarianism from potential recruits. Let the State be the forest fire; the NLA [ed: New Libertarian Alliance or Revolutionary Agorist Cadre] are the smoke-eaters who know how it burns, how to firebreak, how the winds of change affect it, where the sparks may fly, and finally, how to extinguish it. — Samuel Edward Konkin III, New Libertarian Manifesto, Chapter 4 “Revolution: Our Strategy“
Radical libertarians would be more effective urging the small ranchers about to be squeezed out of business by this manifestation of statist monopoly capitalism to prepare to covertly defy the NAIS system, study the libertarian philosophical basis for understanding why such acts would be ethical and develop tools and strategies for doing so profitably — the counter-economic approach of revolutionary agorism.
Small ranchers could, for example, take a fresh look at smaller and easier to hide breeds that require less grazing space and were specifically bred for mountain terrain, like the Dexter. They could, in theory, look to exotic solutions such as possible use of homebrew robotic aerial drones to drive herds or alliances with hacker groups to render herds “invisible” to satellite surveillance at the database level.
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Hey Brad:
You know your counter-economics, all right, but not your cattle. Dexter’s aren’t bred for mountainous terrain (cattle stick to valleys in any event), and unless you’re a small rancher aiming for self-sufficiency, you’re not going to make a living off of them. Which is really the whole point of NAIS - to drive all small commercial producers out of the market and leave it for the corporate agribusiness boys.
NAIS will be enforced at the slaughterhouse level - you will not be able to get your livestock commercially processed without that RFID tag and the accompanying paperwork. You’ll still be able to slaughter and eat your own animals, of course, and sell to local friends and colleagues, but forget selling to your local restaurant.
And while black (and grey) markets sound great in theory, until you have a critical mass of consumers resisting statist aggression as well as producers, you’ll have naught but a critical mass of starving producers. I oughta know: I are one!
None of my animals are registered, nor is my “premises ID” in order. I’ve just said “No!” to the thieving bastards, and will continue to do so as long as I’m able - that is, until the men in the brown shirts show up and tag the critters themselves.
In the meantime, despite my philosophical qualms with Rep. Paul and other “vulgar” libertarians, I will continue to bitch at the Congress and the USDA and anyone else in earshot, if for no other reason than as a (probably futile) first line of defense of my land and my livelihood.
Be well,
Dave Haxton
MacRaven Weblog
http://www.haxton.org/weblog
@Dave — pardon my ignorance. I was going by sources that describe Dexters in ways such as “They originated as a hardy breed of small mountain cattle run on small family holdings“. I’ll bow to your expertise, but I would hope you could see how I became misinformed on the matter of a particular breed of cattle and forgive my error.
Of course, the difficulties you mention are very real and I congratulate you on refusing to register your herd.