A libertarian Breitbart?

How did Breitbart get so influential? Can libertarians pull a similar trick (or is it necessarily compromising)? Can the libertarian movement co-opt the anti-establishment sentiment that fuels the Trump campaign? Is there a libertarian version of Breitbart -- an 'in your face' culture warrior media outlet. Maybe Anitwar.com? Reason just doesn't seem angry enough. Is the problem that libertarianism will never find an establishment patron who will encourage its growth, thinking that it can be controlled. Or is the problem that libertarianism can never have the same visceral, thoughtless motivation as the desire for a "strong leader."

open borders advocacy

I've long figured that anti-nationalism (or post-nationalism) is likely the most productive approach to moving humanity towards a brighter, freer future (both here and abroad), and of course, open borders are a key component of that.

I've come across some open-borders advocates, and am documenting them here:
open borders website
open borders facebook
open borders discussion on Freakonomics radio

What are some contemporary resistance movements?

Hi all -- I need to crowd-source some information. In honor of Trump's possible coronation, I want to bring attention to current resistance movements around the world. But first, I need to get a list together. Nominate whomever you'd like, but they are most interesting to me if they are civilian led, popular enough and dedicated enough to have a realistic chance of toppling an oppressive regime. I'm not too interested in  counter-culture movements that fashion themselves as resistance, or militant groups that have been pushed to the margins of their society over the course of years.

Heres' what I can think of:

• Zimbabwe. "This Flag"
• Venezuela. The opposition... (with some in their Congress)

Recent past:

• Color revolutions (e.g. Ukraine). Russian liberals.
• Arab spring
• Umbrellas in Hong Kong
• Turkey's civil resistance (could use the anti-PDK or pro-PDK movements, though pro-PDK resisted the establishmet of a new oppressor) 
• Anti-Apartheid

I'm sure I'm missing something...

Johnson's tax plan is not libertarian

A progressive rips Johnson for the regressive nature of his tax plan. He's criticizing from a progressive (Sandersnista) perspective, but the tax plan is not libertarian either.

It's disappointing that the Libertarian candidate would give so much weight to this sales tax idea (the "fair tax"). At best, it is a massive distraction from real libertarian issues. It can't even be justified as the price of winning financial support from the Koch brothers. I can only assume that Johnson, like many conservatives, has a savings fetish and thinks that "libertarianism" is synonymous with capitalism (i.e. rules that favor the owners of capital). But at the end of the day, Johnson is proposing to expend massive political capital just to play an accounting game.

Johnson is also banking on the fact that income tax enforcement is particularly intrusive, though I doubt a massive sales tax would be much better. On a more substantial level, I believe that progressive taxation (higher rates for the wealthy) is more libertarian than other tax systems that raise the same revenue. This is because a person with more money (all else being equal) faces fewer constraints from losing any given amount of money. This is true even for losing the same percentage of their income -- it is worse to take 10% from a person with a thousand dollars than to take 10% from a person with a million dollars, even though the later involves 10x as much money. With this reasoning, it's clear that reducing taxes on the poor should be the first financial priority of libertarians. Lest we are worried about being unfair to the rich, they are fully capable of advocating for themselves in government.

Ni una mas deportacion

I'm starting to see what the response will be if Trump starts mass roundups of immigrants...

On June 27, four activists were arrested for blocking the roads to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Downtown. More than 100 people calling for a moratorium on the deportation of all undocumented immigrants looked on as the activists were taken into custody.

Ni una mas deportacion

I'm starting to see what the response will be if Trump starts mass roundups of immigrants...

On June 27, four activists were arrested for blocking the roads to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Downtown. More than 100 people calling for a moratorium on the deportation of all undocumented immigrants looked on as the activists were taken into custody.

 

Right-libertarianism and left-libertarianism

After reading another sloppy take-down of libertarianism from a progressive (which of course emphasizes the "right-wing" currents in libertarianism), I was thinking of a concise way to distinguish left-libertarianism from right-libertarianism. Here's what I came up with:

• Right-libertarians believe that the goverment is democratic.
• Left-libertarians believe that the government is elitist.

This phrasing makes the distinction quite stark when you think about the implications of being "anti-government", and actually implies that there is substantial conflict between the two wings of the movement. Luckily, I think mainstream libertarianism is pretty "centrist" by this standard, believing that the USA's government has both democratic/populist and elitist aspects, both of which cause problems.

While there is also a "right/left" divide among libertarian cultural issues, these don't have a substantial impact on policy preferences (except abortion), so the divide I'm focusing on above is more about theories of power relationships (e.g. economics and social status). I see Ayn Rand as the quintessential right-libertarian. My impression is that these libertarians think that a free market would largely be organized around the same principles as today's economy -- the main difference being greater productivity as populist parasites are shed. In contrast, left-libertarians typically expect a radical restructuring of the economy as the existing large-scale organizations collapse without state support and are replaced by bottom-up organizations that give workers much more influence over the economy.

Anti-gun libertarianism

Following the massacare in Orlando, the mainstream responses are either anti-muslim or anti-gun. And of course, these are presented as diametric opposites -- to the mainstream politicians, supporting gun ownership implies demonizing "dangerous" minority groups, and supporting these minorities implies being opposed to free ownership of guns. I suppose everyone wants to have a simple solution to the problem of human violence.

So is there anything for libertarians to say, aside from "that's life"? Apparently the standard libertarian response is pro-gun -- that if more (LGBT) people were armed, the gunman would have been stopped sooner. In this case, it may be true that more guns would have limited the carnage, but that protection would come at the cost of more gun accidents and crimes of passion -- which really are the main causes of gun injuries.

Anyway, I'm sad that I can't find any defense of anti-gun libertarianism. By "anti-gun", I mean libertarians who oppose gun controls (of course), but see guns as a pointless danger in our society, that ideally should be less common. From where I stand, most people (and most gun owners) are unlikely to ever be in a position where having a gun will provide meaningful protection. Holding this opinion puts me at odds with the "pro-gun" crowd that sees guns as vital tools to maintain security -- both personal and communal (not to mention recreation and productive hunting). It also gives me nothing to say about the political response to massacres. Saying "this isn't the time for politics" sounds evasive. Saying "the risk of being hurt in a mass shooting is minuscule" sounds cold. So I guess there's nothing to say -- and just cede the political moment to the gun-control advocates (because I will not refrain from disputing the bigots).

Authoritarians hiding behind LGBT violence

This is why I love Glenn Greenwald:

Stop Exploiting LGBT Issues to Demonize Islam and Justify Anti-Muslim Policies

what more can I do

As the Trump crisis unfolds, I've even had the thought that I should learn how to shoot... just in case. I'm nowhere near the point of buying a gun, but maybe I should get the slow part out of the way so that I know how to handle one when needed. I probably won't follow this path -- the time and expense is too great given the likelihood that I will ever need a gun. And there's the fact that picking up a gun has a tendency to make people dislike you, so that they don't listen to what you have to say and may even shoot at you! And since it's very unlikely that I will personally be put in a life-or-death situation (particularly, one that a gun can get me out of), the question is whether that is really the right way to help others who may be placed in a life-or-death situation.

On the bright side, I dug up a couple of my favorite bloggers:
bPsycho moved to wordpress, and Radly Balko moved to the WaPo!

hello again

Well, I'm back.

As the Trump crisis unfolds, I've been drawn back to the left-libertarian blogosphere, looking for ideas for how to respond. My thoughts have been turning to direct action -- which I thought would only be an issue if Trump got elected and the mass-deportations started (or if his supporters feel emboldened to terrorize immigrants -- win or lose). However, it looks like some others have decided that direct action is needed even before he's elected.

I hope to write up some thoughts on that topic in the next week, and I hope I'll be able to get some feedback from my old crowd (whomever is still around). Unfortunately, my real-world demands haven't let up any, so I'm not sure I'll follow through.

Anyway, here's a variety of things I've had on my mind relating to the Trump crisis:

1. Electoral. Can Johnson split the Republican vote? Is he a good advocate for liberty (from the left-libertarian perspective)?
2. Organizing. Should I be getting more involved in local organizations so that there's a network in place in case the shit hits the fan? What types of organizations? Neighborhood? Libertarian Party? Refugee support? Local politics? What communities are most likely to feel the brunt of Trump and his fans?
3. Resistance. At what point do we need to take direct action against injustice. What approaches will be the most effective (while also avoiding personal risk and escalation)?
4. Free trade (this is tangential to the Trump crisis): I need a good write up of how modern trade agreements are efforts to bias the market is favor of capital. I found some stuff with RadGeek, but I don't think it went as far as it could...

Scanning the web, here's what I've found:

• Relevant blogs that are still active: C4SS, RadGeek, Bleeding Heart Libertarians, EFF, my favorite communist.(I'm sad to see that Ruling Class has been inactive for a year -- he opened my eyes to a lot of issues). Will Reason be useful in the Trump resistance? What about The Intercept? And maybe the conservative Front Porch Republic?
• The Dividist provided me with some good anti-Trump propaganda (and a reminder of how bad his election could be if he has  GOP Congress)
• Evolution of digital currencies (as medium for international transactions). Bit in China. RipplePay.

Hindsight is the playground of propaganda

I have previously been critical of manned space exploration as being nothing more than extremely expensive political propaganda. A new history book recounts what Americans thought of the Apollo program and shows how it has taken decades for the propaganda to really saturate our culture, to the point that every American knows the name of the first man on the moon, and politicians speak of space exploration as though it were the obvious measure of a society's greatness. Thank Ford for state-run schools!

Many people see space exploration as part of a culture war. According to a review in the Economist, NASA's chief saw it as the flag-bearer for "Squareland", in its contest with "Potland". According to an editorial in Space Review, the contest was between rationalism and neo-romanticism. Unfortunately, space exploration never represented true rationality, but instead of the religion of rationalism, where the achievements of science are used to induce a mystical awe among the rabble and legitimize power relationships both within and between nations, as illustrated by both the USSR and post-war USA.

Of course the cops want the citizenry disarmed

The nanny-statists (i.e. progressives) love to crow about cops who support more restrictive gun laws. They see this as a fatal blow to the position of the law-and-order statists (i.e. conservatives) who try to pass themselves off as rugged individualists. Of course, the true individualists respond by saying "well duh, what did you expect". The question is whether the gun nuts will recognize that being a white male no longer makes them an authority, and that authoritarian statism is no longer in their own interests (if selling their souls was ever in their interests).

While the police and City Hall continue to blame lax state and federal gun laws, criminal justice advocates say that the problems in Chicago are more fundamental: The proliferation of poverty and lack of jobs.

Rage against the machine...

Are they talking about us, dear reader?

Clicking Their Way to Outrage (NYT)

A 2013 study, from Beihang University in Beijing, of Weibo, a Twitter-like site, found that anger is the emotion that spreads the most easily over social media. Joy came in a distant second. The main difference, said Ryan Martin, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, who studies anger, is that although we tend to share the happiness only of people we are close to, we are willing to join in the rage of strangers. As the study suggests, outrage is lavishly rewarded on social media, whether through supportive comments, retweets or Facebook likes. People prone to Internet outrage are looking for validation, Professor Martin said. “They want to hear that others share it,” he said, “because they feel they’re vindicated and a little less lonely and isolated in their belief.”

Death of a Scientist: Sasha Shulgin

We have lost a great scientist --Alexander Shulgin. I call him "great" not because of any groundbreaking insight he had, but because of his determination to explore and report on a part of the world that others would willfully ignore. In the mold of scientific legends, he pressed on with his investigations despite ostracism and harassment.

He has left us with many writings, but as far as I know, the capstones are PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story, and it's follow-up TIHKAL: The Continuation.

A reasonable way to air grievances?

The recent hub-bub over protests against commencement speakers (Haverford, Rutgers, Smith, Harvard...) has got me thinking about what is a reasonable way for people to air their grievances. To start, let me start by saying that I find the protests at Haverford to be reasonable (this is the only one I've looked into). Given that this all started with the "Occupy Cal", I should also say that I didn't consider that protests strategy to be reasonable.


So, what makes a protest reasonable? Basically, it comes down to how disruptive the protest is and how severe the grievance is.

For the Haverford protest, I consider it reasonable because the disruption was minimal and the grievance was meaningful. The Haverford protest consisted of nothing more than a letter. After the school administration invited Birgeneau to speak, about 30 students and 3 faculty (at a school of 1200 students) sent him an open letter saying that they'd prefer that he not come. At worst, this was mildly rude, but the protesters had a meaningful greviance against him -- his support of the police who violently broke up the Occupy Cal encampment (shown above). Since Birgeneau bowed out, we can't know whether they would have been more disruptive if he came, and as it stands, their protest was well within reason.

The widespread criticism against these protesters (from the academic and media elite) seems to rest of a few silly misrepresentations of the situation. First, they act as though any politicization of commencement is disruptive to the event. However, the reality is that the act of inviting a commencement speaker is just part of the influence game that university administrators play, and issuing invitations to these influential speakers is in fact a political act. If administrators don't want a political commencement, they should not invite people who fashion themselves as leaders; invite more humble people. There's no surprise when this elite network closes ranks to protect one of their own against criticism.

The second misrepresentation is that this is somehow about "academic freedom". Nothing could be further from the truth -- these are about accountability for how certain people wielded power. Anyway, it is impossible for a person holding such a privileged podium as a commencement speaker to simply be regarded as  another person expressing his views. In this unique role with a captive audience, the speaker is representing the institution.

So now I'm thinking about how to scale grievances in order to evaluate what a reasonable response is. Birgeneau does not match the "liar, thief, murderer" description that I apply to many politicians (though Rice arguably does), which is expected given his distance from the levers of coercion. However, he did still have some power and can be judged for how he used it.

Social structure and group identity: cliques, hierarchies, and open networks

A little spat over group identity (and stereotypes and prejudice) in my family inspired a semi-formalization of some ideas that I have about how we organize our society.

My impression is that people commonly think in terms of three organizational ideals: cliques, hierarchies, and open networks.

Clique: This is probably most common among traditionalists -- our social position is defined by membership in a few closely knit groups: family, religious congregation, fraternal organizations, neighborhood, school, etc. To the "cliqueists" These groups are the basic organization of society, and the higher levels of organization could themselves be cliques (e.g. religious communions, cities), but not necessarily.

The cliquists often criticize other forms of organization as "atomistic"

Hierarchies: Our role is defined by dominance/subordinate relationships (e.g. employer/employee). All other relationships are secondary and readily broken in response to changes in that primary relationship (e.g. when we move to new cities due to job assignments). I think that this is the primary target of the "atomistic" criticism.

Open network: Our role is defined by a large number of one-to-one relationships, which are typically in flux. The realities of life introduce some structure onto this network (e.g. neighborhoods, families), but we tend not to think of the relationships in terms of these structures. This is closer to being the cosmopolitian/individualistic ideal. The risk is that this structure may not be stable and devolve into hierarchy if a single relationship (e.g. the job) develops excessive importance and other relationships ore not organized in a way to provide alternatives to that dominant relationship.

blaming the victim

Joe Biden said:
"No one ever asks the person who got robbed at gunpoint in the street — why were you there, what were you doing, what were you wearing? What did you say? Did you offend someone? "

I'm baffled at why people feel the need to exaggerate the situation like this. When I read something like this, my immediate thought is "you are wrong; we do 'victim blame' for other crimes", and my opinion of the speaker immediately drops, and I consequently am more skeptical of their claim. This obsession with combating victim blaming also inhibits having a conversation about how our society allocates responsibility to protect people from crimes.

Back to the first point -- we do expect people to take responsibility for their own safety, and there is always a bit of resentment from others who feel that they are having that responsibility shoved completely onto them. For instance, whenever items are stolen, cops regularly ask whether they had been secured. I remember being taught to be discreet if I'm carrying more than a few bucks in cash, and to always lock up anything valuable. More explicitly, I remember a high school teacher talking about a student who had been mugged, and saying that he (a middle class suburban kid) had no business being in "that neighborhood". Same goes for getting mugged while staggering home drunk. I can also recall situations where a victims' suffering was dismissed due to the perception that he had offended his attacker (though racism may have played a part in that).

Given the reality of victim blaming outside of sexual assault, we should be more careful to indicate how victim blaming is more excessive and less reasonable for sexual assault than for other crimes.

We also need to distinguish between victim blaming as a way to excuse the criminal (which is always vile) and 'victim blaming' as part of a discussion of who has responsibility to prevent crime. The latter is  a legitimate discussion, though it needs to be handled in a tactful way with the understanding that the victim is probably already obsessing over what they could have done to avoid the crime (especially if it was an assault). Reflexively hiding behind the 'victim blaming' accusation can have some perverse effects, such as when neo-conservatives used it to shut down any consideration of whether the actions of the US government could have contributed to the 9/11 attacks. As with how 'victim blaming' is used in the sexual assault debates, the neo-cons conflated the victim-criminal relationship with the victim-protector relationship, and acted as though blaming someone for failing to prevent the crime is equivalent to excusing the criminal.

Talking to kids about race

(peekaboo)

The recent bullshit brouhahas about race ("Is Santa Clause white?") have gotten me thinking about how to explain it to kids. I'm sick of words like "black" and "white" being treated as meaningful categories, when they are just the remnants of an system of exploitation.

I found several websites providing advice on how to speak to kids about racism, and describing scenarios about how the discussion might come up:

parenting.com
katie couric
civilrights.org
Hand-in-hand parenting

One thing I will not do is tell my kids that "we're all the same on the inside". I find that idea to be demeaning; we are different, and it is our differences that make society work by allowing us to complement each other's strengths and reducing the competition that occurs when we all seek the same thing.

I'm hoping I'm lucky enough to get a straight-forward question from my kids, like "Joe says he's white, what does that mean?"

My answer might go something like this...

"Long ago, a group of greedy people wanted to steal from other people. They labeled their victims "black" because of how they looked and called everyone who looked like themselves "white". They said that it was okay for whites to steal from blacks. These greedy people were in charge for a long time, so they convinced everyone else to use labels like "black" and "white". They aren't in charge anymore, but people still use those labels because they've gotten used to the labels. Now those words are just a quick way to describe how a person looks, but they are sloppy words and you should be more detailed when describing what a person looks like."

The Freedom vs. Security vs. Profit tradeoff

People often parrot the "freedom vs. security" as though this were a self-evident dichotomy. Leaving aside the fact that a slave has no security, the most glaring omission here is that security can often be attained through just putting a little effort into it. However, at the end of the day, someone doesn't want to absorb the costs of securing their facilities, so they turn to the state to assure security through strategies that impose on everyone else. All too often, this "someone" is some corporation whose bosses are just looking for a way to funnel billions of extra dollars to a bunch of people who already have more money than they could ever spend. This is how the ruling class works.