A Tale of Two Flags - The Dollar Vigilante Blog -

A Tale of Two Flags - The Dollar Vigilante Blog -
 couple weeks ago while visiting friends in the San Francisco Bay Area, I found myself driving north to Berkeley with a friend to spend the evening wandering Telegraph Ave. To get there we decided to take I-880 North along the East Bay. This route takes you past two interesting complexes: Solyndra and Tesla Motors.
For an anarchist, driving past the Solyndra buildings (now for sale!) provides an entertaining and highly visible example of the failure of central economic planning, which goes well with the terrible rush hour traffic on 880 caused by the socialist road system.
Even normal people often find the Solyndra situation funny, they just don’t understand exactly why. Of course my friend and I discussed this briefly as we drove by. She observed it as yet another failed program of the Obama administration, but did not indict the state itself as the more fundamental cause. It’s a start though. Baby steps.
The Tesla complex is a bit north of Solyndra and much larger. They are not bashful about their brand and have TESLA written in massive letters on all of their buildings. My favorite aspect of their complex however is the flags out front. On the tallest pole, the American flag, on the middle pole, the California flag, and on the shortest pole, the Tesla flag. I thought about this for a second and commented to my friend how awesome it was that so many Bay Area companies have their own flags out front. Notably,  Apple used to fly a pirate flag in front of their campus in Cupertino, hence “Pirates of Silicon Valley.”
Upon my comment about the Tesla flag, my friend said that she thought it was a bit ostentatious of them to put their flag right next to two “real” flags. I could feel my inner anarchist twinge a little and as gently as possible I explained that the Tesla corporate flag IS the real flag and that the ostentatious ones were the two flags representing theft and violence. Tesla’s flag represents a business that only exists through voluntary exchange, subsequent wealth creation, technological development, and ultimately human progress. The two other silly flags that happen to cutter their yard represent institutions based solely on coercion. Tesla Motors offers electric cars on a take it or leave it basis, only ultimately succeeding if people like what they have to offer. By contrast the State of California and the United States Government present you with a different offer: your money or your life. If you choose not to buy their product (the main one being murder of foreigners) you are either kidnapped and locked in a cage or murdered for resisting. They even go as far as to codify how their symbols of theft and murder (their flags) are to be displayed, stating that they should be flown higher than symbols of peace and prosperity (i.e. private flags).
After explaining this to her I commented that, “Once two of those flags go away we’ll have it made.” Indeed, I have long-term hope for parts of the United States and California in particular. There is a strong anti-state sentiment among many technology moguls, with people like the late Steve Jobs going so far as to point out to the Cupertino City Council that if they want to make things difficult for Apple (the largest target for their expropriation) he would simply move the company elsewhere.