A common retort that libertarians, even minarchists, hear when criticizing ‘their’ government is “If you don’t like it, then just leave.” Indeed, residency is perceived to be one piece of evidence (among others, like voting, paying taxes, etc.) for one’s implicit consent to the state and its rules. Just leave. As if there are better alternatives. Or, as if ‘their’ country being the least bad option somehow justifies its government. Just leave. They make it sound so simple, don’t they? If only it were. Unfortunately, states are not so keen on letting their slaves get away so easily, free and clear.

So, my wife is from India and she recently got her U.S. citizenship. She had a permanent greencard (which cost us a couple thousand dollars and much hassle over several years to acquire, by the way, even for the wife of a U.S. citizen), so why would she want U.S. citizenship? Well, for one thing, even with a permanent greencard she wouldn’t be able to leave the country for a protracted period of time, say to return to India for an extended visit, without more hassle and the risk of being barred re-entry and losing her permanent resident status. Because India has not yet passed a dual citizenship law (and doesn’t seem likely to do so anytime soon), she has to renounce her Indian citizenship. Okay, fine. She can get an oddly named OCI (Overseas Citizenship of India) lifetime visa to visit India whenever she wants, however long she wants. That doesn’t sound so bad. But India’s 1967 Passports Act doesn’t make renouncing Indian citizenship so easy.

Indians acquiring foreign citizenship are required to renounce their Indian citizenship, surrender their Indian passports, and acquire a “Surrender Certificate.” So my wife has to mail her Indian passport to the Indian Consulate in Chicago and pay $175 (plus $20 for mailing fees) for the certificate. She has 3 months from the time she acquired U.S. citizenship to do so. And she needs copied pages from her U.S. passport, which she can’t apply for until acquiring U.S. citizenship, as part of the paperwork. If she misses this 3 month deadline, additional penalties begin to accrue. Yes, I say “additional penalties” because she is already being unjustly penalized by having to pay $195 and face greater hassles entering and exiting India. I’m not sure what the additional penalties are, but suffice to say they would further increase the costs of leaving India and renouncing citizenship. There are also penalties for foreign citizens traveling to India under their Indian passport. The minimum penalty appears to be $250 for each such visit, but penalties of up to 5 years in prison and a fine of up to $1,250 are mentioned as well.

But, no, that’s not all. There are more fees and paperwork to apply for her OCI lifetime visa. $275 and another $275 for our American born daughter’s OCI visa, plus mailing fees of $21. She also needs five passport photos each of herself and our daughter. Passport photos run you $10 on average and, of course, you can only buy them in pairs, so we’re looking at another $60 there. Of course, I need my own visa, but mine is good for only 10 years and I can only stay for up to 6 months at a time. I forget how much it cost as I got it several years ago. The Indian Consulate in Chicago reports that for a family of four, including two children under 18, recently naturalized, this whole process (renunciation of Indian citizenship, “surrender certificate,” and OCI visa) would cost:

1. OCI fees: $1,100 ($275 x 4)
2. Surrender certificate fees: $700 ($175 X 4)
3. Mailing fees: $23

Plus the cost of all the passport photos, of course — another $120 — for a grand total of $1,943. Just leave, eh?

No doubt the statist will respond that when he said you should just leave, he didn’t mean you should be able to return for a visit, much less acquire effective permission for permanent residency. Even granting his point for the sake of argument, that only subtracts the temporary visa or OCI visa fees, plus photo expenses, from the penalties of renouncing Indian citizenship while increasing or adding others.

The United States doesn’t make it easy to leave either. I’m not sure about India, but it appears the U.S. State Department doesn’t like the idea of letting people go stateless (imagine that!) and will not be “reluctant” to allow (!) expatriation (renouncing citizenship or permanent residency) until you have attained citizenship or legal asylum in another country, which of course is usually an expensive and complicated process. The U.S. is notorious for being unusual among nation-states in taxing its own citizens’ (and permanent residents’) earnings abroad, so it comes as no surprise that it imposes an expatriation tax if you’re worth enough. Even more outrageous, the U.S. government taxes the earnings of expatriates and it is against the law to renounce citizenship in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes. So much for one of the main reasons for “just leaving.” It is apparently possible to be granted credits and/or exclusions, but even so there are conditions that must be met and the fact that you have to file tax returns is outrageous. As the last link indicates, there are of course hefty penalties for filing expatriation and tax forms late or not at all. $10,000 for not filing expatriation Form 8854. The recent Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act signed by Bush in May 2006 is apparently a mixed bag and even applies retroactively to January 1, 2006 (isn’t that unconstitutional? naturally, the SCOTUS would side with the state itself on this one). The Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax Act of 2008, also under Bush, also appears to expand and increase taxes on expatriates in order to offset increased benefits to military ‘service’ members. To make matters worse, the U.S. under Obama has recently instituted capital controls hidden (naturally) in the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (HIRE; H.R. 2487).

I’m not a lawyer and am no expert on these issues — state laws, especially tax laws, can be quite complicated — so feel free to correct me or elaborate on any particulars.

What is clear is that it’s not so easy to just leave after all. Moreover, even when it’s possible, returning even for a limited time, much less an extended stay, is not so easy or cheap. There are other problems with leaving the country as well. It is not so easy to leave friends and family behind, find a job in another country, learn a new language and culture, move all your stuff, and so on. There are also U.S. tax penalties for cashing out of retirement plans early. There are probably more that I’m forgetting at the moment or have never heard of. All told, there is a hefty price to pay for leaving. Why should we have to pay such a price just because we don’t recognize the legitimacy of the state or certain of its rules?

But all this about the difficulty of “just leaving” is really neither here nor there. The difficulties undermine the statist’s position but they do not strike at the root. “If you don’t like it, then just leave” is not really an argument. “Just leave” just does not follow from “If you don’t like it.” Why should we have to leave? Why can’t we stay and complain? Seek to change things? Why should we be subject to laws, regulations, and actions to which we have not consented and that we consider to be unjust while we remain here?

“Well,” the amateur or professional social contract theorist will reply, “this land is our land. If you remain here, you are demonstrating implicit consent to the state and its laws.” Of course, this too does not follow at all. There can be many reasons why I might remain in a country other than consent to its state and its rules. Lysander Spooner long ago exploded social contract theory and the implicit consent justification of the state. There is also the fact that the alleged implicit consent is directly contradicted and trumped by explicit denial of consent.

But what I want to point out here is an even greater logical problem for this line of ‘argument’. As the theory goes, a state is justified if and to the extent that it has the consent of its people. Now, no state anywhere in history has ever had the unanimous, explicit consent of its people. So social contract theorists have had to settle for implicit consent and do not usually insist that it be unanimous. Nevermind that a majority consenting to or approving something does not in and of itself make that thing right, much less justified to impose on those who do not consent to or approve it. Social contract theorists will often make ‘reasonable man’-type arguments, putting forth conditions and propositions to which they think a ‘reasonable man’ would consent. Quite naturally there is much reasonable disagreement among even social contract theorists as to what constitutes a ‘reasonable man’.

As I mentioned at the start of this post, however, they will also often point to particular practices as evidence of implicit consent: e.g, voting, paying taxes, and our focus for this post, residency. The notion that residence demonstrates implicit consent unintentionally reveals that what we are dealing with here is actually a viciously circular argument. Behind the command “If you don’t like it, then just leave” is the hidden implication that society or the state has a prior claim to your land and property, indeed to all the land, property, and individuals in a given geographic area. The statist might respond to the obvious objection “Why should I have to leave?” with the claim that by coming or staying here you have consented to the state and its laws, but notice that this too relies upon the hidden and unargued for premise that society or the state has a prior claim to all the land, property, and individuals in a given geographic area. Why should we believe this? While common or public (i.e., jointly-held private) property is not necessarily precluded by libertarianism, it is quite a collectivist stretch to claim that ‘society as a whole’ owns (or owned prior to parceling it out) all the land in a given geographic area; here we must part company even with Locke. To say that the state owns (or owned prior to parceling it out) all the land in a given geographic area is to assume prematurely that the state is legitimate, that it could justly own anything, so it will hardly do to attempt to show that the state is justified by pointing to ‘evidence’ that presupposes that the state is justified.

Just leave? Sorry, try again.

Update: My brother-in-law, who just got his US citizenship, has informed me that the Indian Government recently decided not to charge the extra $175 for renouncing Indian citizenship, but only for people who got their US citizenship before June 1, 2010. Those lucky individuals who beat the cutoff will only be charged $20, unless they are even luckier and somehow already happen to have a “Cancelled” stamp on their Indian passport. See the text in red at the bottom of this page on the Chicago Indian Consulate’s website.

[Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.]

Ingredients

1 cup uncooked basmati rice
2 tbsp vegetable oil or ghee (clarified butter) or combination
2 14oz cans tomatoes (I prefer one can diced, the other petite cut/diced)
1/2 medium onion, diced
5 medium cloves garlic, diced
1 jalapeno, diced
1/2 cup Planter’s cocktail peanuts
2 tsp cumin seed
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1 tbsp coriander powder
1 tsp garam masaala (Indian spice blend)
2-3 tsp lemon juice
Some fresh ground black pepper, half dozen to a dozen twists of the pepper mill or so – I don’t really keep count
1-2 tsp salt, or to taste
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped (optional, recommended)
1 carrot, diced (optional, for extra nutrition, doesn’t alter flavor)
1/4 cup moong dal (optional, adds texture and nutrition)
1-2 tsp or more cayenne powder (optional, if you need more heat ;o) )

Substitutions: You can substitute curry powder (another spice blend, not the same thing as Indian curry) for some or all of the garam masaala, maybe for the coriander powder as well (haven’t tried) but you probably shouldn’t use as much curry powder as the recipe calls for of coriander powder. Jasmine rice may substitute for basmati rice; I haven’t tried it. I tried half vegetable oil and half extra virgin olive oil (good for your health) today and it didn’t change the flavor of the final product noticeably.

Notes: 1) If you live in or near a decent sized city, you can probably find a local Indian store that carries all the Indian-specific ingredients. 2) I prefer canned tomatoes because they’re more consistently high quality than the fresh whole tomatoes you can get at a supermarket, tastier and they don’t disintegrate while cooking. 3) I usually seed the whole jalapeno, or half of it. You never know whether you’ve got a strong one or a weak one. If it’s a strong one, keeping the seeds (where most of the heat is) could make the dish too hot for you or your guests, and hard to eat. It’s better to play it safe. You can always add cayenne pepper to taste later if it’s not hot enough for you.

Penzey’s Spices is a nice store with an online website from which you can order a wide variety of common and specialty, high quality spices, baking ingredients, etc.

Recipe

1) Start boiling rice. A rice cooker or pressure cooker is easier and faster than a regular pot.

2) Dry roast the cumin seeds on medium-high heat until light brown and giving off wonderful aroma, then remove from heat and set aside. You can include them whole later (see below), but I don’t like to bite into a whole cumin seed so I use a coffee grinder to grind them to powder. Warning! Don’t use the same coffee grinder for grinding spices that you do for grinding coffee beans, or vice versa.

Optional: Moong dal. Rinse a few times. Soak in hot water for 10-15 minutes until softened enough that you can pinch them in half with your fingernail.

3) While the cumin is roasting and the moong dal soaking, dice the onion, garlic, jalapeno, and carrot (opt). Keep an eye on the cumin though. You don’t want to burn it.

4) Heat a 9-12 inch saucepan/skillet on medium-high. Put in the oil/ghee. Then add the onion, garlic, jalapeno and carrot (opt). Cook until softened and onion is golden brown. Then add in the peanuts and moong dal (opt). Cook for a few minutes more. Stir occasionally throughout. Chop the cilantro sometime while all this is cooking; don’t add yet.

5) Add the tomatoes. Lower heat to medium. Then add remaining ingredients (except rice). Cook until tomatoes are heated through, 5-10 min or so.

6) Add rice and mix well. Serve and enjoy!

Serves 4-6.

http://www.local6.com/news/14505886/detail.html

Excerpts:

ORLANDO, Fla. — An argument that erupted between several Indian men during a cricket match in Orlando led to a shooting that seriously injured one of the players, according to police. Sunday, November 4, 2007.

Officers said Singh apparently became involved in a fight and threatened Devan Bascom, 37, with a cricket bat.

Police said Bascom then pulled a small semi-automatic gun and fired at Singh, hitting him at least once.

“The shooter was defending himself from an attack with a cricket bat which is simlar to a baseball bat but it’s flat,” Orange County sheriff’s Sgt. Spike Hopkins said. “For this man to bring a firearm to a sporting event is odd but then again, he has the right to do so. He has a concealed weapons permit and if, in fact, he was protecting himself, he was authorized by law to do so.”

Hat tip to Dick Clark for bringing this to my attention.

I have two book/movie reviews coming out in the Fall issue of Prometheus, the quarterly newsletter of the Libertarian Futurist Society. The first is on the Transformers movie and novelization, and here is the second:

Sagramanda: A Novel of Near-Future India
By Alan Dean Foster
Pyr/Prometheus Books, 2006, $25.00

Alan Dean Foster’s Sagramanda is a far better novel than his Transformers. While not especially libertarian, it is also far more so than his Transformers. Sagramanda is a science fiction techno-thriller set in the near-future Indian city of the novel’s title. In this, Foster’s novel follows in the footsteps of Ian MacDonald’s River of Gods and MacDonald indeed has a blurb on the back cover in praise of Foster’s novel and remarking on “the growing swell of writers realizing we may be living in the Indian Century.” As far as I can tell Foster does a good job of capturing the spirit and atmosphere of India. (My wife is Indian but she was unable to read the novel before the deadline for this issue.)

As a science fiction novel, Sagramanda is replete with scientific advances and nifty technological innovations, some military but most of a civilian consumer nature – from human-piloted cow removers designed to clear the streets of sacred roadblocks (gently and humanely, of course) to holographic avatar projectors that can superimpose images over their users, programmed with the complete Kama Sutra, for both instructional and entertainment purposes. In near-future India, futuristic and ancient technology co-exist side by side. Hydrogen powered cars are commonplace, as are camels as beasts of burden still. One character wields high-tech handguns loaded with explosive rounds and neurotoxin-filled syringets while another kills with a very traditional, yet for all that still very effective, sword.

As a techno-thriller, the central plot revolves around a revolutionary and potentially very profitable scientific discovery stolen from a powerful multinational corporation. We do not find out the nature of the discovery until the very end of the novel. All we know is that the scientist who stole it hopes to sell it to another multinational corporation for a huge sum and, rightly, fears for his life, for the corporation he stole the discovery from is willing to kill in order to get the information back. One of the main protagonists is that scientist, and he is a likeable and largely honorable fellow, with the glaring exception of his theft. Arguably, the scientist did not have a right to the discovery, seeing as how he was only one among others working under contract [probably including some sort of trade secret/nondisclosure/noncompete agreement] on the project for the corporation over at least a few decades [The discovery itself, being merely information, cannot be property. If I were to write this review now, I would say he was probably guilty merely of breach of contract.]. On the other hand, the multinational corporation he worked for is obviously not a completely honest or just business concern. Other major characters include the scientist’s beautiful yet tough fiancée, an Untouchable; his traditionalist father, who is out to kill him for tarnishing the family name; a enterprising villager who has risen out of poverty as a successful city shopkeeper; a sociopathic, yet perversely scrupulous, company tracker/hitman; a sword-wielding serial killer sacrificing innocent locals and tourists to the goddess Kali; and, finally, a man-eating tiger.

Foster tells a fast paced and entertaining story but, as I noted at the outset, it is not an especially libertarian story. That the main protagonist is a thief [or, rather, a contract breaker] is one reason. Another is that both government and business are shown in both positive and negative lights. Foster sees a legitimate role for government in regulating business, at least to some extent, and the city police are depicted as dutiful and efficient; on the other hand, Foster makes reference to notoriously corrupt Indian politics. It is really only in its portrayal of capitalism, business and entrepreneurship that Sagramanda can be considered to have any libertarian theme at all. Sagramanda is not an overtly political book, however. Small business appears to be shown in a better light than large multinational corporations but, again, we are not given an unambiguous picture of either as primarily good or bad. Popular entertainment and the businesses that provide it are both appreciated and criticized. Capitalism is clearly portrayed as enabling the rise out of poverty for those with the requisite ability, initiative and responsibility. Capitalism has clearly brought great prosperity to growing numbers of Indians and, for all its faults, even its excesses may only be so in the eye of the beholder.

I recommend Sagramanda primarily as an entertaining science fiction techno-thriller with an exotic setting, nifty technological innovations, and interesting characters. Experience the vivacious world of near-future India. Just don’t expect an unambiguous or overt defense of liberty and the free market.

From Taipei Times:

Enraged mobs from one of India’s myriad lower castes blocked roads with fiery barricades, stoned police and battled rival castes across a wide swath of northern India for a week to make a single, simple point: They want to be even lower.

With 25 people dead, the unrest spread to the fringes of the capital before the Gujjars — a class of farmers and shepherds — called off their protests.

They did so only after officials agreed to consider their demand to be officially shunted to the lowest rung of India’s complex hereditary caste system, so they can get government jobs and university spots reserved for such groups….

Discrimination under the system was outlawed soon after independence from Britain in 1947, but its influence remains powerful and the government has sought to redress discrimination against those on the lower rungs by setting up quotas for government jobs and university spots.

But instead of weakening caste affiliations, the result has been a fracturing of politics along caste lines, with each of the lower groups vying for its share of the quotas….

“Nowhere in the world do castes queue up to be branded as backward,” [the Indian Supreme Court] said. “Nowhere in the world is there a competition to become backward.”

Oh, they’re already backward all right. They just want to make it official and gain more special privileges. Can’t say I’m surprised, given the perverse incentives offered by the Indian government’s affirmative action programs.

Hat tip to David Bernstein of The Vololkh Conspiracy.