Vermont, privacy, and liberty

This Politically Dissident column originally appeared in The Exponent (University of Alabama in Huntsville), Vol. 33, No. 20 (February 14, 2002). Digitized issue: UAH LOUIS archive. Reproduced here courtesy of that archive.

“TAX ME MORE FUND”: $3 as of 1-14-02

If it weren’t freezing cold three hundred days out of the year, Vermont could be a nice place to live. On the days you don’t have to worry about your eyelashes freezing together, the scenery is gorgeous. Vermont’s state government also cares about the privacy of its citizens and generally comes down on the side of liberty. Most recently, a Vermont consumer protection law requiring an opt-in policy for sharing consumer information went into effect.

One of the most frequently cited of Vermont’s pro-liberty stances is every Vermont citizen’s right to carry a concealed weapon with no permit required. This may seem shocking, but the FBI’s crime statistics for 1997 placed Vermont at about eighty percent below the national averages on violent crime and murder. It may seem counterintuitive, but Thomas Jefferson knew better more than two hundred years ago: “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms … make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” Activists in Missouri have started an initiative to repeal the state’s CCW (carrying of a concealed weapon) laws and named it “The Vermont Project” after the state whose pro-liberty position they hope to emulate.

As for the response to Vermont’s new pro-privacy law, even Miss Cleo could have predicted the response from certain lazy and unimaginative corporations who have no desire to be weaned from the ample teat of Mama Government. A collective of insurance industry trade groups has sued to block the law, alleging that the changes will increase the cost of business and harm consumers. These goons give us capitalist pigs a bad name. A real capitalist—a Warren Buffett capitalist—treats his customers, employees, and shareholders right and doesn’t have to run tattling to the government when he doesn’t get his way.

The issue of financial privacy is a matter of basic principle. When I was very young, I noticed all the commotion surrounding the Reagan–Mondale presidential race. I remember asking my mom whom she voted for, and she told me that it was none of my business because votes are private. We also learn at a young age that the amount of money someone makes is no one’s business. The practice in the financial services industry of sharing and selling consumer information goes directly against this expectation of privacy, but we permit it either because we don’t know about it or because we’ve fallen for the silly debt-culture notion of improving credit.

Financial privacy is also important from the perspective of protecting one’s property. The scourge of financial information sharing is the unending flow of credit card solicitations. They’re annoying, but they’re also dangerous. To obtain a credit card in your name, a potential identity thief only needs to steal one of those pre-approved offers from themail. Read any account of identity theft, and you’ll find that it’s not a trial you’d ever want to endure.