Agenda for community control of the internet

The Internet is an odd industry. On one hand, there is often a low cost of entry for service providers which favors small firms, but there is also immense efficiencies of scale that favor legacy firms (e.g. network effects) -- and to top it off, there is immense value added by internet-focused activities. At the moment, most of this added value is being captured by a few big tech terms, who have become so powerful that they are even upending our political systems (at least in the USA).

With all this going on, there is negligible and ineffective regulation, and I see little promise that the state will establish a sustainable status quo like they did for the early 20th century utilities (water, electricity, etc). So this realm is my favorite target industry for a bottom-up revolution. 

I've been trying to figure out how I can contribute, recently being inspired by Bookchin's 'libertarian municipalism', even though I don't buy into the full package. But it does seem to be onto something in emphasizing the local community/municipality as the natural unit of political organization, with larger-scale organization being handled by confederation -- and that Internet services are the most tractable industry to organize according to these principles.

While I've been thinking along these lines, I discovered that the Tech Learning Collective is moving in these same directions -- with the focus of taking control of our broken communication systems as a defensive move against the new wave of despotism in America. (h/t C4SS).

I've excerpted the core items from their agenda below, with my own thoughts after that:

One: Become your own Google (Contacts, Calendar, Docs, etcetera).

Most of the common services that most people use for many of their day-to-day needs, such as keeping phone numbers synchronized across multiple devices, planning their days with a digital calendar, or drafting documents can be easily accomplished without involving large companies or sums of money. Abandon the search for “a more trustworthy alternative” to Google by providing the services you need for yourself. Just as one might learn to grow a small portion of one’s own food in a garden or greenhouse, commit to increasing your digital self-reliance over time as you hone your digital green thumb.

Be prepared for this to take some time. If you’re unsure where to start, join us for any workshops that sound fun to you! There’s no need to change all your habits at once. Instead, take note of the many daily activities that don’t require an Internet connection or even a Web browser to accomplish at all. Then simply, well, simplify.

In some cases, such as intra-office file sharing, streaming music from a personal library, or loading your favorite e-books to read at night, a local network rather than a connection to the global Internet is very often sufficient. Install a home-brew server to fill this simple role. It’s like the digital equivalent of potting a clipping of your favorite herb on your windowsill. The more you care for it, the more it will reward you.

In those situations where the Internet is truly necessary or dramatically more practical, Free, Libre, and Open Source Software is capable of providing many more features than those offered to you by the data-mining corporations, and more privately. There’s no need to code new apps or even to learn much if anything about how to code at all. Since there is so much existing software available already, nearly every imaginable need is accounted for. In fact, internally, Tech Learning Collective operates on self-hosted Free Software tools, like a CalDAV server for meeting schedules and reminders (replacing our need for Google Calendar), and an XMPP server for group chats (replacing our need for Slack).

Very soon, you will have taken your first step into a larger world.

Two: Gather others and practice connecting and communicating securely with them.

Once you can provide for even some of your own digital needs, you will find that you have surplus capacity (extra disk space, compute power, and/or bandwidth) that you can provide to others. (At Tech Learning Collective, we use old models of the cheapest computers available, such as the single-board Raspberry Pi, and we still have plenty of room to grow.) Use this excess as an opportunity to bring others you care about along in this journey with you. If they’re like you, pay it forward by showing them how to set up their own home-brew server as you did. Otherwise, share the excess by inviting them to make use of the services you once provided solely for yourself. The more you share, the more you’ll be continuing to hone your skills as a system administrator, becoming an ever more practiced and experienced “digital farmer” or tradesperson.

Things change dramatically when you begin to involve others, so you’ll have to start considering inter-user protections in a way you haven’t had to before. Security becomes (even more) important. You’ll have responsibilities not only for your own data, but someone else’s, too. This should feel new and different to you, because it is. Practice communicating about what, when, and why you’re taking certain actions that may affect other people, and do it using secure and private communications channels, like Signal Private Messenger groups or, of course, a self-hosted chat or federated microblogging service.

Three: Embrace physical proximity by interconnecting individually-owned infrastructure.

The Internet collapses the experience of distance because every location in cyberspace appears to be no further than any other location. Resist the temptation to abandon the physical realm, and thereby the Earth, by focusing instead on interconnecting your home-brew server or local network with the home-brew servers or local networks of those around you. This enables local coordination on local infrastructure, rather than on Facebook’s, which is a key step towards a community-owned and surveillance-resistant network.

Making such connections can start as simply as sharing your Wi-Fi password with a neighbor in exchange for splitting the monthly Internet bill, but soon you’ll want to go faster and reach farther. Replace weak wireless signals by running physical Ethernet cable across apartments (an easy task in older multi-family houses) or practice “roof-hopping” over longer distances in your neighborhood with more specialized radio equipment. In Detroit, for example, you can work with the Detroit Community Technology Project to gain hands-on experience doing exactly this. Many other cities have similar opportunities, and in those that don’t you can start your own more modest internetworking projects.

Once you reach your physical limits, use Virtual Private Networking (VPN) or Tor (Onion service) routing to connect your fledgling network with a more geographically distant friend’s, creating a proper (lowercase-i) internet among yourselves. You may need to piggyback on the existing (capital-I) Internet for this, or you may not, but in either case you’ll be building physical and digital power above and beyond merely electoral and representational power.

At this stage, you will likely benefit from installing Internet-like infrastructure, such as Domain Name System (DNS) servers. Since these are your own, you need not adhere to the familiar “dot-com” or “dot-org” domain names, nor must you register with and pay an external company for permission to be known by a given name. On your internet with your friends, everything is free.

Four: Grow communities by extending infrastructure and strengthen community power by building coalitions.

Reject the idea that successful mobilizations must be large, or that to do anything meaningful you must first do it “at scale.” Instead, build coalitions with neighbors and others in your locality by building on relationships already established through earlier work building physical infrastructure together. You can coordinate public actions that are small at first and scale over time as you gain experience working on and solving problems collectively. Coalition means scaling out, not scaling up.

When Trump lost last weekend, he didn’t just lose one election. He lost many individual State elections. What we witnessed this past week was only possible because of a cooperating coalition of individual actors and institutions moving in concert. That cooperation is what every lowercase-d democratic institution is in its essence. The same principle holds for the Internet, and that principle is the reason the Internet still has the potential to serve as a foundational platform on which we can continually choose to refute fascism. But not if we do so only on Twitter. Not if we limit our toolkit only to ballot boxes.

 

The actions I was thinking of are not quite so 'ground-up' and these, but are more about at least bringing Internet-based services (especially social media) under the control of distributed (and possibly, local) administrators.

• City level ISP; wireless networks
  
• City level email services
• Decentralized/federated discussion boards (like NextDoor perhaps, but more focused options are available too)
• Face to face file sharing (via SD cards and flash drives) -- copy entire digital libraries at once.
• Local ID/certificate servers (OpenID?).
  

 

 

what is cultural marxism

 The idea of 'cultural marxism' is the big fad on the American right these days. I made the mistake of trying to figure out if there's anything to it, or whether it's just another bizarre conspiracy theory.

Since Tablet magazine normally publishes coherent essays, I'm taking this essay as one of the better arguments that there is something meaningful to the term (regardless of whether it is used coherently in typical online discourse).

Having read half the essay, I'm not on my way to being convinced.

The argument seems to have three steps:

1. post-Marx marxists decided that culture mattered. That it was shaped by the ruling class to support their political agenda.

2. The marxists then determined that they would have to challenge the cultural hegemony of the ruling class.

3. Somehow this brings us to the modern American left (with some sort of intolerance for ideas that support oppressive institutions).

The first point is trivial. It seems obvious to me, but maybe that's because I'm influenced by Marxists. But I'm pretty sure this idea can be found as far back as the US slavery abolitionist movement (where F. Douglas described how Christianity was shaped by slavers to support the institution of slavery) and the French revolution (again, where the church was seen as an extension of the state). It probably goes back much farther. Another critic noted Hobbes. Maybe the Reformation too. I'd expect you could even find this attitude in the ancient world...every revolutionary will find that traditional culture was an extension of the traditional ruling class. And the mechanism is easy enough to see - the ruling class has the resources to create cultural artifacts and to promote and deliver these artifacts to an audience. There are plenty of examples from history of the elite judging culture by whether it will put the wrong ideas into the heads of the lower classes...and making efforts to purge dangerous ideas from the culture.

The second point seems trivial too. Of course the Marxists would recognize this. Here is the watered down conspiracy theory. They were pretty open about their intent to challenge the status quo of culture. I'm sure they did it with some amount of success. But it's a huge leap to suggest that Marxism is the only (or primary) source of criticism of traditional American culture.

Attempting to make anonymous online donation

I recently attempted to make an anonymous donation online. It was a bit of a pain, here's how it worked for me.

1. Purchased a Walmart gift card in cash at the store ($50, $4 purchase fee).
2. Registered card on Walmart website. I tried to use Tor, but got blocked at the Captcha test -- for some reason Tor is often incompatible with Captcha. I ended up registering with Firefox -- after the fact, it occurred to me that I may have been able to route my Firefox traffic through Tor. I used the store's address as my "billing address". Even though Walmart claimed that the card was activated immediately, it took a few hours before their website recognized it as an active card.
3. Created an account on Patreon (the recipient was using Patreon). I used a pseudonymous email address for this -- I expect this email could be tracked back to me with a little effort, but I don't expect anyone would expend that effort. I'm only slightly concerned at repercussions from this donation -- not due to current laws, but due to a growing disregard for free speech, such as with the anti-BDS laws. I was able to create the account using Tor (but not on the first attempt for some reason).
4. Paid Patreon using the gift card. For some reason the Patreon website did not allow me to enter the card's number using Tor, so I switched over to Firefox. Now that I've set up the payment, I'm switching to contacting Patreon with Tor.
5. Potential problem: The gift card is not supposed to be used for recurring payments. I set up a small monthly donation. We'll see if it gets rejected next month. It would be nice if I could transfer all the money to Patreon or another intermediary, and then pay it out a bit at a time, but I don't know if that's possible. I see that Patreon accepts PayPal as a payment source, and I think they let you keep an account. So maybe that would be the way to do it.

End result: Not very effective. Probably not worth the time (except as a exercise).

1. Patreon knows who I donated to, and they have my IP address and my pseudonymous email -- and my Walmart gift card.
2. Walmart has my IP address and knows where I bought the gift card.
3. The recipient has my pseudonymous email.

I'm most concerned with Patreon as a weak point -- I can imagine an antagonistic entity forcing them to release their payment records, and then opening a file on everyone who has donated to targeted organizations. But even in that case, they would have to do some extra work to figure out who I am (though maybe contacting my ISP would be enough).

(this post was composed through Tor browser)

The Epstein suicide: do we trust the state?

Eptstein's suicide looks like the latest in a series of decisions that will protect his associates. Maybe the FBI can get to the bottom of this and let us know what happened. But that's not the real question that faces the public now -- the question is whether we trust the system to reveal what Epstein was up to and who else was involved. This case is prompting conspiracy theories among people who are not normally prone to such things... it may reveal a more widespread loss of faith in American institutions. Or maybe not.

The efficiency of public services

I've become more acquainted with the workings of state agencies over the past few years, and consequently have become more interested in some of the theories about the efficiency with which the government delivers public services.

When looking at the inefficiencies of government services, I've previously focused on the big picture issues:

1. The agency problem: The government is not necessarily attempting to achieve what the people (or a person) wants -- it has its own agenda.
2. The information problem: Even if the government were fully committed to serving the needs of the people, it would not know how to serve those needs as well as the people themselves do. 

Along these lines, you could also define "the control problem", by which I mean that the state is a massive, complicated institution, making it very hard for the elected officials to actually assure that federal employees are doing what the elected officials think they should be doing. This issue exists in any institution,  but it creates some special problems for democratic states, which will be the focus of this post.

What I've seen in government agencies is that the employees are extremely constrained, to the point that it is difficult for them to do their jobs. There are tons of bureaucratic hoops. Some of these are the natural result of working for a big institution and trying to coordinate large numbers of people (which includes the public, and not just the employees). But I believe many of them are consequences of the need to maintain "the public trust". This is especially complicated because government employees are working with tax dollars -- forcibly confiscated wealth. If a government employee overcharges (or does not fulfill their commitments), it's a scandal. In contrast, if a private company does the same, its just a bad business decision. Throughout the institution, people are more forgiving of corruption in private institutions -- both because the costs are often limited to people who are inside the institution, and because others (e.g. customers) are free to walk away. As a result, government employees are wrapped in red-tape to avoid corruption -- every decision goes through several layers of approval to make sure that nobody is abusing their position. Of course, it can only stop a fraction of the corruption out there, and it probably costs more money than it saves. But the point that elected officials can claim they are doing everything in their power to stop corruption, and everything revolves around CYA rather than GID.

Another problem with government agencies is that everything is ultimately a performance -- the ultimate justification for government activities is that they get supportive officials re-elected.

While I'm on this topic, the conventional Republican complaints hold no water.

1. Workers need to fear losing their jobs. Complacency is rarely a problem among career civil servants, that I've seen. I think Republicans just want to maintain a general culture of financial insecurity, so that they can better push around workers.
2. Agencies need more efficient management (hence, the hiring freeze). Again, the Republicans talk a big game, but have no idea how to improve management. If management seems bloated, it is a consequence of the control problem described above. It is exacerbated by the Republican drive to hold worker's feet to the fire. Policies like the hiring freeze don't magically make agencies do more with  less -- in fact, it just makes the operation of the agencies more complicated (more layers of approval to make a hire), and increases the administrative burden. Ultimately, all of this stuff ends up being just another form of political performance -- one more thing to distract employees from the jobs they are supposedly hired to perform.

If the elected officials want to make government agencies efficient, they need to start by looking at their own behavior. Start by setting clear strategic plans (wouldn't NASA love that), and then allocating the money needed to implement those plans. Let the agencies know how much they have to spend and what they are expected to accomplish. And stop denigrating the employees.

p.s. Maybe "control" is the problem. Maybe the solution is to trust the employees. Or shrink the state to the point that it can be efficiently managed.

Small government for the small folk

I asked previously whether "regular Americans" have any influence over the government. For those of us who think the answer is effectively "no", we may think of ourselves as "the small folk". My view is that the small folk amount to perhaps 3/4 of the population (others say 90%). This leads to the seemingly contradictory proposition that elections could be easily decided by the people who have no influence. However, this is not a contradiction, for a couple of reasons. First, part of what makes small folk "small" is that they do not have the resources to organize around myriad policy issues, and therefore they have no say as the elite micromanage policy decisions to their own benefit. Related to this, the small folk are not the people who run for office or decide who gets on the ballot -- so the conclusion that small folk could decide the election depends on someone actually running that small folk would want to vote for. Given these realities of political power, what is the best outcome that small folk like us can obtain from voting?

The first thing to recognize is that if the small folk are going to be anything but pawns in politics, we need to vote as a block. If we allow ourselves to be recruited to the campaigns of elite, their arsenal of marketing strategies will drag us into culture wars, special-interest favor seeking, or whatever pet cause they can use turn us against each other so that they continue milking us. To have any electoral power, the small folk must organize around a single issue, or a coherent and durable platform. This is the traditional strategy of socialist movements -- while it had some success prior to WWII, the elites have figured out how to neutralize it since then: paternalistic social welfare policies dampened the urgency of reform, pro-establishment worker organizations were cultivated to replace radical organizations, the threat of foreign tyrants was used to rally workers around the flag, and finally cultural disagreement was politicized (made into "a war") to create divisions among the people. The New Deal could be considered a victory for the worker's movement, but it did not change the basic power structure and class dynamic of American society, and eventually the USA fell back into the old patterns of elitist greed, unmediated by a sense of elite solidarity with the (white) working man.

I've found no proposals from conventional activists that would protect most Americans from being reduced to peasants at the mercy of the elite. Some progressives seek a reinstatement of the post-WWII social contract (with some updates), but this agenda has consistently failed to gain electoral traction. Even worse, it depends upon a sense of noblesse oblige from the elite, which is unlikely to be revived short of some crisis comparable to the threat of nationalist or communist revolutions*. Socialist radicals see an opportunity to revive their old big-government agenda, but struggle to overcome horrible legacy of state-socialism, ranging from economic stagnation in the West and India, to routine atrocities in the Stalinist regimes.

Any agenda that focuses on the state as a solution to our problems grinds to a halt when people balk at handing more authority to distant elites. The progressive agenda has failed to appeal to conservative populists, who see progressive policies as embodying an urban cosmopolitan culture that conflicts with their own judgement. Likewise, the socialist program fails to live up to its ideass due to the inevitable problems that arise when one group of people tries to impose decisions on another group. The political and organizational weakness of these statist approaches argues for an anti-state (i.e. libertarian) approach to establishing a shared political agenda for the small folk.

A libertarian approach first recognizes the limited ability of the small folk to control the state. If there is only one thing that we can tell the government to do, we should tell it not to take more authority on itself, because that authority will inevitably give more discretion to the elite at our expense. A libertarian approach also recognizes the diversity of the small folk. We are not going to agree on how to live our lives and organize our communities, so detailed prescriptions should be left out of a political platform to help us stay above the factionalism and culture-wars that the elite use to divide us. Progressives claim that the reduction of government is inherently elitist, but they ignore that even a small government must make many policy choices that can tilt society toward either an elitist or egalitarian outcome. An egalitarian libertarian coalition will focus on dismantling any government policy that gives one person power over another.

The details of this agenda remain to be worked out, but numerous ideas are circulating in the left-libertarian community, some of which I tried to document in a (incomplete) Left-Libertarian platform. Setting that aside for now, we can still discuss whether a "small government" strategy  is sufficient to promote the welfare of "the small folk".

Progressives and socialists make a strong case that many people need immediate, tangible economic support if they are going to get out of the poverty trap that the elites have pushed them into. They propose that healthcare and education should be provided as a right, and income should also be supported through a variety of interventions. I don't see this as essential to a broad-based radical movement, because fore a radical movement gained enough political power to guarantee those rights, it would have enough social and economic clout to provide decent social services on its own. Since that economic power would increase as egalitarian libertarians whittle away the privileges of the elite, those problems would be solved as quickly by a "small government" approach as by establishing new government programs. Perhaps the strength of the statist approach is that the agenda of the radicals could dovetail with the agenda of progressive reformers, such that basic anti-poverty benefits could be won even when the radical movement has moderate influence in society.

The egalitarian libertarian response should be to carefully avoid removing anti-poverty programs while aggressively targeting "pro-poverty" policies. For instance, taxes that affect the poor should be slashed, with the unapologetic reasoning that government benefits tend to be proportional to wealth.

Finally, there is one place where even "small government" advocates should support programs that superficially increase the size of government -- when the lack of  those programs is a way to push the cost of other government programs onto the poor. A prime example would be to fully fund defense lawyers for those accused of crimes. When the government decides to criminalize an activity (such as drug use), it needs to account for the full cost of that policy, including the cost of providing a fair trial.

*Trumpism could be a wake-up call to the cosmopolitan elite of US business school, but I've yet to see any evidence that their repulsion is sufficiently strong or widespread to provide a meaningful response to Trump's pitch.

Town meeting or Monarchy?

Apologists for the USA routinely assert that the government is "democratic" -- that it is a government "of the people, for the people, and by the people". Modern progressives often bemoan the diminishment of democracy, hearkening back to a period (1950s-1970s) when "regular" citizens had a voice in government, and policymakers took heed of their interests. Skeptics of this progressive mythology, frequently point to white-male supremacism during this period, as well as the substantial differences in power that existed between white-male workers, managers, and the power elite. But still, the progressives adhere to this sunny view of the state, and demand that all right people should happily support "their" government.

A contrasting view is that the state is fundamentally elitist and exploitative, even in the USA. Here, the state was established by a narrow elite in order to subjugate the rest of society. With the state being structured around domination, it is fundamentally incapable of being democratic. Granted, the state does have some democratic aspects -- most notably elections, equality before the law, and civil liberties enshrined in the Constitution. However, these do not change the fundamental nature of the state, they just give it some procedural accountability and restrain the arbitrary use of power. Perhaps these concessions were made to gain broader support from the general populace, or perhaps they were established to mediate conflict among the elite, but either way they are a big improvement over absolute monarchies, totalitarian regimes, or naked kleptocracy.

These two views essentially treat the USA as either a scaled-up New England town-meeting, or a reformed monarchy. Perhaps the distinction is not too important, since the USA is clearly influenced by both traditions. Geniuses such as Thomas Paine and John Stuart Mill aimed to design institutions from democratic first-principles, but it looks to me that they were still trying to design something that functioned very much like the monarchies that they were familiar with. Even if town-meetings were being used as a starting point, it could be that the town-meeting does not scale up well; that coordinating with strangers requires the delegation of authority, and the desire for rapid, centralized decision-making is fundamentally elitist. During the foundation of the USA, democratic idealists were clearly in the minority, as most of the decision-makers arose from the colonial elite, and many championed elitist attitudes, even aside from racism and sexism.

Progressives seem to view that elitism as essentially receding into history, pushed aside first by Jacksonian democracy, then by the slow and ongoing extension of civil and economic rights to women and racial minorities. Yet many conservatives, perhaps stuck in the Jacksonian era, see a new nexus of elitism centered around the university network, which extends its influence into government by educating the ranks of bureaucrats and technocrats who are constantly telling regular folk how to live their lives. And of course, socialists consider the USA to be tightly controlled by the capitalist class.

Amidst all these conceptions of power and powerlessness, I find myself wondering "what is power for?" The nature of the state is clearly to create power differentials -- to allow one group of people to exert power over the rest of society. Why do we go along with that? Engles had a dream that once people gave up the idea of dominating and exploiting each other, the state would transform into a simple administrative agency, coordinating economic activity. However, the rejection of racism and sexism a generation or two ago has not made control of the state any less contentious -- if anything, Americans seem to be ever more strongly divided over who should control the state. Perhaps this reflects the aimlessness of the state -- it is no longer clear who the state is meant to dominate, so what is it's purpose? Perhaps we've moved from an era when the state acted as the executive committee for a broad, stable ruling class (white males), to an era of true democracy, where each election is an opportunity for one faction to establish themselves in a dominant position over the remainder of society.  Having established an institution that necessarily dominates people and redistributes their wealth through both direct and indirect mechanisms (e.g. taxes and copyrights, respectively), all of us are now perpetually at risk of becoming its next target.

Which brings me back to the initial question that motivated this post -- can "regular folk" (even those with Socio-economic status in the 70th percentile) exert reasonable control over the state? Can we choose more than one issue to base our votes on, or does trying to engage in the full range of political debate just sap our energy and diffuse our effectiveness? If we do choose one issue, is it just a matter of personal preference, whereby each of us focusing on a topic that motivates us, we end up covering all of the bases? Would that strategy allow the elite to easily pit us against each other, such that they can continue to systematically shift wealth to their own associates, while we tear at each other over the culture war. Or is there an issue or principal that can be elevated above all others, that can shift power back to the people? To me, the single issue seems to be "small government", or perhaps "small government socialism"

How will we stop an preventive attack on Korea or Iran?

I'm having flashbacks to 2002. The government is marching towards war, and the American people have not grasped that fact. I was slow to grasp what was going on, but my eyes were opened by this article at the Intercept:

John Bolton Chairs an Actual “Fake News” Publisher Infamous for Spreading Anti-Muslim Hate

 This made me realize that Bolton is not just a hawk -- not just a guy with different opinions about how to solve a problem -- he's a genocidal liar. Based on the material published by the Gatestone Institute, he will whip up fear using brazenly fallacious arguments. For people in his position, credible arguments are not needed, because repetition and political power will be enough to persuade a large number of people to support his agenda.

We have to assume that the Trump administration is preparing to attack North Korea and/or Iran, and we need to put every possible roadblock in their path. People from diverse political and moral schools of thought recognize that what they intend to do is illegal, immoral, and pretty much insane.

Now we need to raise the alarm, and organize a response.

I've found the following groups to be speaking out against preventive wars:
1. Buchanan conservatives (The American Conservative)
2. Catholics academics (Unclear about the conference of bishops, but they likely would come out against invasions)
3. Libertarians (Ron Paul, Rand Paul?)
4. Your standard anti-war, anti-state leftists.

We Will Breathe the Ashes of the Dead for the Rest of Our Lives

Environmental Anarchism

Pollution is a bodily assault. Releasing a puff of smoke in a person's face is comparable to shoving a person aside while walking down the sidewalk. These are the types of behaviors that result in fights--possibly escalating to wars--and governing these interactions is one of the rationalizations for the state. As described in the Economist (A scourge of the EPA takes over at the EPA), the Trump administration has made it painfully clear that they plan to abandon environmental governance, even at a time when the majority of Americans believe that greater governance is needed (and it's not just greenhouse gases). According to that article, the demand for environmental governance really took off in the post-WWII era as a number of high-profile environmental disasters produced a bipartisan consensus is favor of the Clean Water and Clean Air acts. Even in recent years, there have been a several high-profile environmental disasters*, so how will people respond if the state abandons this realm of governance?

Some people will try to shoulder the burden themselves, treating pollution prevention as a civic duty even as profiteers exploit the opportunity to shed their waste on everyone else. But there is also a history of people enforcing their own sense of justice. However, I don't think we've ever had a situation where a large fraction of the population has desperately felt the absence of state involvement with environmental governance -- possibly leading to a form of environmental vigilantism unlike anything we've seen.

Of course, pollution is different from other forms of impositions -- the consequences are diffuse, and we all claim the right to engage in "reasonable" amounts of pollution. It is hard for vigilantees to establish a consensus on what amounts to excessive pollution, and then identify the people who create excessive pollution. 

It'll be interesting to see how this develops.

* I couldn't find a list, but here are some I can think of:

• Deepwater Horizon
• Several other oil spills
• Several drinking water problems (though the immediate cause is infrastructure maintenance)
• Elk River Chemical spill of 2014
• Fukoshima
• 
  

The Nolan Chart of cynicism

I used to think that I had a cynical attitude towards major American institutions --primarily the government and big business. I even remember a survey that placed me into a "disenfranchised" group (or something like that) -- basically identifying me as a lower income white guy (which is not quite accurate). Occasionally I would run into other libertarians who were more cynical, but outside of that bubble, my impression was that most people were pretty satisfied with how our country operates. But these days, I feel like I've been outflanked, and am running into lots of people from across the political spectrum who are even more cynical than me -- even people of greater socio-economic status than me.

So, I need to rethink the political spectrum.

I used to think mainly in terms of the Nolan Chart, and derivatives of it. Basically you have the "left" (defined by Dems as the center-left) and "right" (defined by Repubs as the center-right), with a second libertarian/authoritarian axis. On such charts, I typically landed as left-libertarian, which seemed correct to me. However, these charts are very much tuned for a pro-establishment polity. They define things in term of the policy disagreements between the two big parties. How would you capture the fact that people would happily abandon those parties?

So, I imagine a coordinate system based on cynicism. One axis is cynicism towards major institutions, the other is cynicism towards regular people. The four extremes would be:
1. Authoritarian. Trusting institutions; distrusting people.
2. Anarchist. Distrusting institutions; trusting people
3. Anti-social. Trusting nobody.
4. Pangloss. Everyone is as good as can be expected.

Of course, this is a gross simplification -- trust in institutions could be broken down between trust in the state and trust in big business (to give the conventional left/right divide among liberals). Similarly, "trust in people" often means trust is a specific subset of the American population -- whether just trusting one's own race, one's own religion, or one's own political coalition.



But still, I think there's something to this. On this scale, I think I'd be in the center-Anarchist region (perhaps with public figures like Glenn Greenwald). Establishment politicians tend produce propaganda in the Pangloss corner, spouting platitudes towards the American people and the benevolence of govenment and business (at least when they are in charge). I think in reality, they are a bit more authoritarian than that, and that faith in the state is often built of distrust of regular people. A lot of libertarian propagandists are near the anarchist corner, but I think most real libertarians are a bit more suspicious of some of their neighbors (at least suspecting that their neighbors are authoritarians), so would shift up towards anti-social. I'm not sure where to put the Trumpists -- before the election, a lot of them were probably in the anti-social corner, trusting only a small portion of the American population. With Trump in office, there's the risk that they'd drift towards authoritarianism... or maybe they just supported Trump the wrecker, and don't care for Trump the Leader.

Anyway, this puts some of my recent thoughts in perspective. A few years back, I said that the the big contribution of left-libertarianism is to expose the elitism of the state (thereby creating more cynicism towards institutions), however, with the rise of the Trump movement, it seems that the problem may be that there is not enough trust among the people, and it's time to put more effort into building a cohesive civic culture for our country -- and world.

p.s. I think this all has something to do with conspiracy theories too -- with trump being the biggest proponent right now.

I never thought this day would come

Back in my geolibertarian days, I thought the most important political issues were to establish a citizen's dividend (or basic income) funded by land rent, pollution fees, and resource extraction fees. I learned to despair that our political system ever producing such an elegant and fair policy, and thought the mainstream politicians could never support such things, except in special circumstances (such as the Alaska permanent fund). The Obama administration's cap-n-trade proposal just emphasized that even acknowledging the supremacy of the plutocrats was not sufficient to get urgent anti-pollution legislation through. Yet this week, I head that some Republican grandees are proposing more-or-less my ideal system -- a carbon tax that funds a citizen's dividend.

Not only are they keeping the issue of greenhouse gas pollution on the table, but they are doing it in a sensible and transparent manner. Wow! So, I'll publicize it and ask my Congresscritters to support it...but I won't hold my breath.

The Holocaust statement

I'd heard the fuss over the fact that Trump did not mention Jews on Holocaust remembrance day (while simultaneously blocking refugee entry to the US), but only looked at his statement now. Perhaps just as disturbing is how he frames the Holocaust as an issue of the relative military strength between "good" and "evil".

Here it is (I underline the major quotes):

“It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.
“Yet, we know that in the darkest hours of humanity, light shines the brightest.‎ As we remember those who died, we are deeply grateful to those who risked their lives to save the innocent.
“In the name of the perished, I pledge to do everything in my power throughout my Presidency, and my life, to ensure that the forces of evil never again defeat the powers of good. Together, we will make love and tolerance prevalent throughout the world.”

This contrasts with with the more conventional calls for self-reflection, presenting the Holocaust as the consequence of German cultural/moral collapse (and the failure of other nations to provide refuge). Obama emphasized this strongly in 2015 (the only other statement I looked at):

On the tenth International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the American people pay tribute to the six million Jews and millions of others murdered by the Nazi regime. We also honor those who survived the Shoah, while recognizing the scars and burdens that many have carried ever since.
Honoring the victims and survivors begins with our renewed recognition of the value and dignity of each person. It demands from us the courage to protect the persecuted and speak out against bigotry and hatred. The recent terrorist attacks in Paris serve as a painful reminder of our obligation to condemn and combat rising anti-Semitism in all its forms, including the denial or trivialization of the Holocaust.
This anniversary is an opportunity to reflect on the progress we have made confronting this terrible chapter in human history and on our continuing efforts to end genocide. I have sent a Presidential delegation to join Polish President Komorowski, the Polish people, official delegations from scores of nations, and many survivors, at today’s official commemoration in Poland.
As a founding member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the United States joins the Alliance’s thirty other member nations and partners in reiterating its solemn responsibility to uphold the commitments of the 2000 Stockholm Declaration. We commemorate all of the victims of the Holocaust, pledging never to forget, and recalling the cautionary words of the author and survivor of Auschwitz Primo Levi, “It happened, therefore it can happen again. . . . It can happen anywhere.” Today we come together and commit, to the millions of murdered souls and all survivors, that it must never happen again.

Burn all flags

The Trump election has increased the prominence of flag-burning in the public consciousness. The thing I'd like to express with flag-burning isn't that the USA is particularly bad, but that the state in general is a problem (and the flag definitely is not sacred). So maybe it would help to desecrate the 'stars and stripes' alongside other flags. Or maybe, in limited circumstances, it would be possible to get the message across by burning other flags, such as the 'stars and bars' of the confederacy. Of course, if you burn the 'stars and bars' in Georgia, people might think you are burning the state flag.

What if Trump won't concede?

What should libertarians do?

Now that Trump is hinting that he will not accept the legitimacy of the election results, my evaluation of the likelihood that The Shit Will Hit the Fan is going up. This is the fear that got me to start looking at the libertarian blogosphere again-- either that President Trump would institute mass deportations, or that nationalist nut-jobs would strike out against immigrant communities. The later fear has already been reinforced by recent announcement of a plot targeting Somali immigrants. But now that Trump is talking about vote rigging and rejecting the election results, there's also a chance of some organized civil disobedience. So, what to do? Here are the scenario's as I see them:

1. Trump elected. Help immigrants. Help refugees. Reinforce the global community by supporting nation-free institutions (e.g. BitCoin)
2. Anti-immigrant terrorism. Help immigrant and refugee organizations. Help law enforcement catch the terrorists, if applicable. Would we trust all law-enforcement agencies? The Feds would probably be safe.
3. Pro-trump demonstrations. Probably best to ignore them and just stay out of it. Of course, these could escalate into brawls if the anti-Trump people show up. Probably best to stay out of it, let the Clintonistas handle it.
4. Pro-Trump strikes (doubt it). Be a scab if applicable (and pays well)? Would they beat a scab? What industries would be impacted? Can we prepare ahead of time to avoid those industries (e.g. if coal is one, should be set up solar panels)? This scenario is very unlikely, probably not effective to try to anticipate them.
5. Pro-Trump blockades. Large protests and blockades would probably be unlikely to bring down the government, but would cost a lot of money. The blockades could be a form of anti-immigrant terrorism, so there could be some value in white men being available to transport supplies to blockaded communities. If these are general blockades, would this be an opportunity to develop libertarian counter-economics? The situation would probably be short lived.
6. Secession. This would suck. I don't know if any state really has so many anti-establishment white-nationalist residents that it would try to secede over this election. It's the worst case; probably would be impossible to stay on the sidelines.

At the end of the day, it may be good to get in touch with the following types of organizations:
1. Immigrant support organizations (World Relief, International Rescue Committee)
2. Your favorite religious activist group (Religious Action Center of Reform Judiasm; Unitarian Universalist Service Committee)

A book for every age

I recently picked up a couple of books by David Graeber. The books have a few good ideas, but I don't consider the writting better that what I get from an intelligent blogger. I had expected more rigor from an academic, but I guess that books like The Utopia of Rules is just shit that Graeber put out for the mass audience. Anyway, his depiction of bureaucracy as inherently violent, and cops as bureaucrats with guns was insightful. Oddly enough, shortly after starting his Utopia, I picked up a kids book at a yard sale -- and found that it had the same themes. I could describe it here, but you can just listen to it being read as a bedtime story...

Let's send everyone to college!

Clinton has picked up the fetish of the college-educated left -- let's make 4-year colleges free! What a fucking crock. Yeah, let's dump even more money into these bloated elitist bureaucracies than have been taken over by marketers and influence peddlers. Let's help all of our young adults continue to act like children -- just going with the flow and sitting in classrooms because that's what everyone is doing and it's easier than getting a job.

Don't get me wrong -- I love universities. I spent 14 years at universities, both as a student and a researcher, and I would love to be a professor if I thought I could make a living at it (given the other constraints in my life). But the worst experience in my time there was teaching kids who didn't want to be there. A university education is not for everyone. While I know that many people acquire valuable skills at universities, I firmly believe that the simplistic claims that a degree will give the marginal student a million dollars in extra income are pure bullshit (my university education taught me how to evaluate these claims).

I think formal education is a great thing, and I support any effort to increase the learning of our society, but 4-year colleges are not an efficient way to do so. Let's start with community colleges and free educational materials-- let's make sure everyone has the opportunity to access the fruits of intellectual efforts without having to dedicate themselves wholly to an institution. Let's focus on providing opportunities to those with the least money, least preparation, and the greatest obligations, rather than dumping money on the ungrateful heads of a bunch of pampered "first-world" kids.

What can we get from these candidates?

Nothing. That's what we can get from Clinton or Trump. Both candidates will make the government more intrusive, and neither will challenge the elitism of the state.

Neither of them offers a vision for a sustainable society.

• Neither can address the perpetual increase of the national debt. Seven years into an economic recovery, the debt should be growing more slowly than the economy...but it's growth exceeds the economy's. The political establishment has no clue about how it will deliver its fiscal promises. It's made up of short-term opportunists and partisan hacks.
• Neither will address greenhouse gas emissions.
• Neither will mitigate the growing social-economic stratification of American society -- which will create even greater political dysfunction and crime.

Of course, Gary Johnson doesn't have the answer either. I'm bugged that he wants to replace the income tax with a sales tax rather than a pollution tax. One "libertarian"  benefit of a pollution tax is that it probably would not be able to raise even a fraction of what a tax on livelihood (like income or sales) can.

What is a political party?

This fucking election...

The following rant was my response to the assertion that the Libertarian Party is not a real party. I'm saving it for posterity:
 
 "Your political leaders sell their influence for personal gain while humiliating and nickel-and-diming the regular people with unreasonable regulations and penalties. They make you afraid of your neighbors (including the other "real" political party), so that you feel that you have no choice but to surrender your freedom and wealth to them. You're so enamored with he idea that you can get close to power that you make endless excuses for the failures your candidates. You don't have a political party, you have a professional marketing campaign that is run on the same principles as a campaign for any mass-market commodity, and is funded by the same corporations."

FWIW, I don't take the LP too seriously, and I think most LP members don't either. ..even though they take the movement seriously.

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