Eleutherian

CNN reports that Rep. Ron Paul won the annual CPAC presidential straw poll on Saturday with 31 percent of the vote (Mitt Romney finished second with 22 percent). While this will not have much of an effect on the eventual Republican candidate, it has profound complications for the future of both the Republican and Libertarian parties.

Of the 2,400 voters at CPAC, 54 percent were between the ages of 18 and 25, and they overwhelmingly voted for Ron Paul over more traditional Republican candidates. These 1,000+ young people actually want to call themselves Republicans, but they cannot identify with the majority of the party's favored politicians.

Ron Paul's following has continued to grow since the last presidential primary, especially among young voters. When Ron Paul fails to win the nomination (yes, "when" not "if" - the Republican Party leadership will not stand behind Paul), some of his disillusioned followers will still vote Republican. However, the Libertarian Party will provide an attractive alternative to many of these freedom loving individuals.

Just as the Democrats refuse to support the numerous good policies that go against the desires of their union and trial lawyer support base, Republicans refuse to lose the support of their ultra-conservative and elderly supporters. Democrats continue to embrace traditional (reactionary) policies, while Republicans embrace traditional (outdated) policies. Of the two, outdated trumps reactionary, but it's still a choice between two inferior options.

The Libertarian Party offers the superior option for anyone who supports a truly progressive agenda. For example, as I stated in a previous post:

Given that the libertarian platform has formed the basis for your [LGBT] rights, it's in your self-interest to support the continuation of this platform - libertarianism.

I recently began reading the first book in John C. Wright’s Golden Age science fiction trilogy. While it was a slow read at first (which I now see as necessary to fully understand the futuristic society), the philosophical themes have taken shape, and it has become a joy to read. This is not the first time I have written about a science fiction book on this blog. Oddly, I had never even read a science fiction book until I started this blog several months ago. Several books on the Libertarian Reading List fall in this genre, and they are among the best books for challenging the stubborn remnants of traditional, reactionary thinking in any self-proclaimed libertarian.

Returning to Wright’s The Golden Age, the paragraph at the bottom of page 114 shook me from my blogging lethargy. The story’s main character, Phaethon (a reference to the Greek myth), is suffering from voluntary memory loss but cannot understand why his full-memory self would voluntarily agree to it. He is questioning Rhadamanthus (an artificial, self-aware entity/servant with thought capacity far beyond that of a normal being) why he didn’t stop him from making such a foolish decision (as he now sees it). To this, Rhadamanthus replied:

If we were to overrule your ownership of your own life, your life, would, in effect, become our property, and you, in effect, would become merely the custodian or trustee of that life. Do you think you would value it more in such a case, or less? And if you valued it less, would you not take greater risks and behave more self-destructively? If, on the other hand, each man’s life is his own, he may experiment freely, risking only what is his, till he find [sic] his best happiness.

The themes in this one paragraph have countless “real world” applications. I will expand on the two main points: the nanny state mentality (or as I often refer to it, legislating morality) and encouraging risk.

Whenever the government attempts to legislate morality or dictate behavior, it is overruling your ownership of your life. If Rhadamanthus is correct in implying that lacking ownership of your life will cause you to value it less (and I believe he is correct), then this will increase feelings of depression and thoughts of suicide among the owned people. On top of that, governments often pass absurd legislation to prohibit people from ending a life they no longer value. (See David Hume’s essay Of Suicide for more on this topic). Most of all, when the government overrules your ownership of your life, it increases your dependence on the government.

The relationship between ownership and risk is a topic that deserves a post of its own, but I will briefly touch on it here. Risk homeostasis is when increased safety measures (for example) have the unintended effect of promoting riskier behavior. An example of this can be seen in the recent sub-prime mortgage crisis. The government wanted to encourage people to purchase homes (because they apparently have something against renting – but I digress), but banks were not willing to approve loans to people who did not appear capable of making payments over the life of the loan. To solve this, the government stepped in and offered to guarantee these loans that the banks would not have otherwise made. This encouraged the banks, related financial intuitions, realtors, and potential homeowners to engage in risky behavior.

I'm steadily making my way through the Libertarian Reading List, and I will share any major findings along the way. I just finished reading The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. It was a solid but not outstanding book until the final few chapters, which were amazing for their insight. I will focus this post largely on passages from pg. 293-294. (Note: Shevek is the main character of the book, Takver is his partner [there are no husbands and wives, which are viewed as property], and Odonianism is the label for an anarchic ideology).

Shevek had learned something about his own will these last four years. In its frustration he had learned its strength. No social or ethical imperative equaled it. Not even hunger could repress it. The less he had, the more absolute became his need to be.

He recognized that need, in Odonian terms, as his 'cellular function," the analogic term for the individual's individuality, the work he can do best, therefore his best contribution to society. A healthy society would let him exercise that optimum function freely, in the coordination of all such functions finding its adaptability and strength....With the myth of the State out of the way, the real mutuality and reciprocity of society could give security and stability, only the individual, the person, had the power of moral choice - the power of change, the essential function of life. The Odonian society was conceived as a permanent revolution, and revolution begins in the thinking mind [emphasis added].

The chapter continues:

Fulfillment, Shevek though, is a function of time. The search for pleasure is circular, repetitive, atemporal. The variety seeking of the spectator, the thrill hunter, the sexually promiscuous, always ends in the same place. It has an end. It comes to the end and has to start over. It is not a journey and return, but a closed cycle, a locked room, a cell....

So, looking back on the last four years, Shevek saw them not as wasted, but as part of the edifice that he and Takver were building with their lives. The thing about working with time, instead of against it, he thought, is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.

Le Guin writes from a largely anarchistic point of view, but The Dispossessed applies equally well to libertarians (I have nothing against anarchism, but this blog focuses mostly on libertarian thought).

A recurring concept in the book is that the end does not justify the means - the end is the means. You cannot achieve peace through violence; you achieve violence that spreads. You cannot achieve economic freedom through control; you achieve control that spreads.

As libertarians, we must not compromise our values in order to achieve partial success. It is our responsibility to be stubborn. We may not accomplish much, but we will not achieve desired ends through undesired means.

I do not know if Le Guin chose "four years" on purpose, paralleling one presidential term, but the lesson applies. Even when politicians are moving the country away from freedom, the time is not wasted. Pain is not wasted.

The publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal wrote a scathing editorial in the state's largest newspaper, seemingly discouraging Nevadans from reelecting Senator Harry Reid. Now, this blog will never endorse one candidate over another, but Nevada, your senator has abandoned you.

Last week, upon meeting the Review-Journal's director of advertising, Senator Reid shook his hand and said, "I hope you go out of business." A senator should never say this to a constituent - especially during a recession. Harry Reid has lost touch with his constituents.

As the newspaper's publisher, Sherman Frederick, wrote:

Such behavior cannot go unchallenged....it must be called what it was -- a full-on threat perpetrated by a bully who has forgotten that he was elected to office to protect Nevadans, not sound like he's shaking them down.

No citizen should expect this kind of behavior from a U.S. senator. It is certainly not becoming of a man who is the majority leader in the U.S. Senate. And it absolutely is not what anyone would expect from a man who now asks Nevadans to send him back to the Senate for a fifth term.

Nevadans, libertarians will not abandon you. Libertarianism is the ideology of environmentalists, of family values, of women's rights. Las Vegas was created for libertarianism, and Nevada will make a great western foothold.

Libertarian environmentalism is not a contradiction of terms - nor is free-market environmentalism (another good summary can be found here). Free-market environmentalism, however, is too focused on property rights and tort reform. While these are both highly productive and praiseworthy measures, I believe a broader approach is necessary. Simply put, libertarian environmentalism seeks to improve the environment without the use of force.

Many environmentalists today (I dare say a majority) rely too heavily on force to achieve their goals. They look to government to punish and coerce individuals to behave a certain way. The government often acts in accordance to their will, as the government has grown accustomed to using force to achieve other goals.

Environmentalists and the government justify their use of force by reason of market failure. To the contrary, it is the government's failure to allow the market to correctly function.

Rather than relying on force, libertarian environmentalism encourages environmentally-friendly actions through economic incentives. You could replace the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with the Environmental Incentive Agency (EIA), replacing negative reinforcement with positive reinforcement.

Critics of both libertarian and free-market environmentalism are quick to bring up global warming. While I am more inclined to believe in climate change over global warming, I made my feelings clear in yesterday's post on the topic:

If a cap-and-trade system (hereon more accurately referred to as a "carbon quota") were implemented in the United States, the level of emissions would be completely arbitrary. No scientist knows the level of carbon dioxide at which the atmosphere become irreversibly unstable. Without knowing the upper limit, any restriction in quantity will necessarily be made through guesswork (or, even worse, through politics - i.e. what sounds politically popular).

Do not allow the supporters of cap-and-trade ("carbon quota") mislead you by stating they are "creating a market" for carbon. They are using force to achieve an unscientifically-based goal.

I will not completely ignore the climate change issue. In a previous post on climate change in Africa, I stated:

I won't deny the existence of climate change. However, it is more a regional phenomenon than a global one. For example, many environmentalists cite the melting glaciers of Mt. Kilimanjaro as a sign of global warming. These people overlook basic science. The area surrounding Mt. Kilimanjaro has been largely deforested by the local population. Due to the deforestation, less water evaporates from the trees, providing less snowfall to replenish the glaciers each year on the mountain.

A 2006 study by Quan Li and Rafael Reuveny found that increased levels of political freedom have been shown to lower CO2 and NOx emissions, decrease rates of deforestation and land degradation, and reduce water pollution. If force was the appropriate means to achieve environmental goals, authoritarian countries like China would have spotless environmental records.

As I mentioned previously, factors such as deforestation are major contributers to climate change. Forcing a carbon tax or carbon quota on the economy is not the most efficient way to tackle problems like deforestation that directly contribute to climate change.

However, I will not deny the role of increased carbon emissions on climate change. I previously blogged on private sector solutions to this problem, including a group of UK and US scientists who plan to create wind-powered ships to increase cloud cover, reflecting the suns rays, without affecting regional weather patterns. The plan costs $9 billion to test and launch 1,900 ships (a cost of less than $5 million per ship). There's no need for the government to force individuals' behavior when private sector solutions are available.

The idea for this post came from a video by the Motorhome Diaries crew interviewing Steve Horwitz, blogger and professor of economics at St. Lawrence University. I recommend checking it out (under five minutes).

As recently as one hundred years ago, in many more developed societies, husbands had nearly total control over the family. Going back another hundred years, families were essentially enterprises. Today, it's difficult to think in such callous terms, but each family member was essentially a unit of production. Families had many children, not out of love, but out of necessity. At the time, many children increased economic security through additional units of production and to ensure that parents had a safety net if they reached old age.

Economic freedom allowed families to hire workers outside the family (by extension, allowing children to find work outside the family). Previously, the only work found outside the family was through an apprenticeship with a tradesman, guild, or clergy. However, they required family connections. This is a similar process found in labor unions today. In postmaterialist societies, unions are backward (i.e. reactionary), antiquated entities, continuing a practice that is no longer necessary in more developed countries.

Additionally, increased economic freedom reduced the average family size (so carbon Malthusians should give credit where credit is due). Children are no longer viewed as a necessity (except in Russia, which speaks volumes as to the country's level of economic freedom). Rather, children are born out of a loving couple's honest desire for children. Instead of forcing them to work, parents are now able to invest in their children, demonstrating societies' changing views with regard to children.

Increased economic freedom changed families for the better. In today's society (at least in more developed countries), arranged marriages are a rare and antiquated practice. Families no longer require the political and/or economic benefits of marriage. Marriage has become about love over finances (for the most part).

This same process (one might call it the human development process) has increased homosexual rights, particularly with regard to same-sex marriage. As marriages are no longer about economic/political partnerships and families no longer need to rely on children as units of production or to provide a future safety net, it is financially realistic for gay and lesbian couples to marry.

At the end of the video, Dr. Horwitz makes the following statement:

You have people on the right, conservatives, who love (or they say they love) free markets but don't like these sort of changes [e.g. homosexual rights] that capitalism has brought forward....If you're going to really have markets, you can't stop this kind of ongoing cultural change.

On the other hand, people on the left have the opposite problem. They like the cultural change but refuse to give credit where credit's due, which is to recognize the role that capitalism has played in bringing those about. To the extent that they're stifling capitalism, they're stifling the very dynamism that produces those social changes they like so much.

The hypocrisy by both major political parties is rather amusing (and sad). Katherine Mangu-Ward with Reason Magazine touched on a related issue regarding homosexuals and the major political parties, stating:

But you know who your real friends are, LGBTers. And we're going to help you get through this. Besides, who knows better than libertarians what it's like to be in a long-standing lopsided love affair with a mainstream political party?

She's right, LGBTers. Given that the libertarian platform has formed the basis for your rights, it's in your self-interest to support the continuation of this platform - libertarianism.

A couple months back, I decided to search for libertarian book lists, compiling my own master reading list of both fiction and nonfiction. Be prepared - the list is long (133 books by 89 authors) and in no particular order.

• Hans-Hermann Hoppe
• A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism
• Democracy: The God That Failed
• The Economics and Ethics of Private Property
• Economic Science and the Austrian Method
• The Myth of National Defense
• Ludwig von Mises
• Human Action
• The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science
• Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War
• Murray N. Rothbard
• The Ethics of Liberty
• Man, Economy and State (with Power and Market?)
• Power and Market: Government and the Economy
• For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto
• Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature
• The Irrepressible Rothbard
• Education: Free & Compulsory
• America’s Great Depression
• Henry Hazlitt
• Time Will Run Back
• Economics in One Lesson
• Llewellyn H. Rockwell
• The Free Market Reader: Essays in the Economics of Liberty
• The Economics of Liberty
• Speaking of Liberty
• Frederic Bastiat
• The Law
• Milton Friedman
• Capitalism and Freedom
• Free to Choose
• Tyranny of the Status Quo
• David Friedman
• The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism
• Linda & Morris Tannehill
• The Market for Liberty
• Randy Barnett
• The Structure of Liberty
• Lysander Spooner
• No Treason No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority
• The Lysander Spooner Reader
• James J. Kilpatrick
• The Sovereign States: Notes of a Citizen of Virginia
• Jan Narveson
• The Libertarian Idea
• Loren Lomasky
• Persons, Rights and the Moral Community
• Felix Morley
• Freedom and Federalism
• Raoul Berger
• Government by Judiciary: The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment
• The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights
• Federalism: The Founder's Design
• Bruce Benson
• The Enterprise of Law
• George Reisman
• Capitalism
• The Government Against the Economy
• Ayn Rand
• Atlas Shrugged
• Philosophy: Who Needs It
• Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
• The Capitalist Manifesto
• The Fountain Head
• Robert Heinlein
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
• Starship Troopers
• Stranger in a Strange Land
• J. Neil Schulman
• Alongside Night
• L. Neil Smith
• The Probability Broach
• The Gallatin Divergence
• John C. Wright
• The Golden Age
• David Bergland
• Libertarianism in One Lesson
• Allan Burris
• A Liberty Primer
• Mary Ruwart
• Healing Our World
• Charles Sprading
• Liberty and the Great Libertarians
• Walter Block
• A Lexicon of Economic Thought
• Economics & the Environment
• Jack Boulogne
• The Zoo
• Sheldon Richman
• Separating School and State
• Terry Anderson
• Free Market Environmentalism
• NAFTA and the Environment
• Joseph Bast, Peter Hill & Richard Rue
• Eco-Sanity
• Poul Anderson
• Harvest of Stars
• Mirkheim
• Orion Shall Rise
• The Last of the Deliverers
• Rose Wilder Lane
• The Discovery of Freedom
• Isabel Paterson
• The God of the Machine
• Henry Grady Weaver
• The Mainspring of Human Progress
• Richard Epstein
• Simple Rules for a Complex World
• Ronald Homowy
• Dealing with Drugs
• Wayne Lapierre
• Guns, Crime, and Freedom
• John Locke
• Two Treatises of Government
• Tibor Machan
• Individuals and Their Rights
• The Liberty of Virtue
• Human Rights and Human Liberties: A Radical Reconsideration of the American Political Tradition
• Robert Nozick
• Anarchy, State, and Utopia
• Adam Smith
• The Wealth of Nations
• Peter Brimelow
• Patriot Games
• Harry Browne
• Why Government Doesn’t Work
• Friedrich von Hayek
• The Road to Serfdom
• Auberon Herbert
• The Right & Wrong of Compulsion by the State
• Isabella Horry and Michael Walker
• Government Spending Facts 2
• Francis Kendall and Leon Louw
• Let the People Govern
• Albert Jay Nock
• Our Enemy, the State
• Filip Palda
• Election Finance Regulation in Canada
• Douglas K. Adie
• The Mail Monopoly
• R.W. Grant
• Rent Control and the War against the Poor
• Ronald Hamowy
• Canadian Medicine: A Study in Restricted Entry
• Charles Murray
• Losing Ground
• Christopher Sarlo
• Poverty in Canada
• Edmund Opitz
• Leviathan at War
• R.J. Rummel
• Death by Government
• Robert Merrill
• The Ideas of Ayn Rand
• Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl
• Liberty and Nature: An Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order
• Vernor Vinge
• A Deepness in the Sky
• James P. Hogan
• The Multiplex Man
• Voyage to Yesteryear
• The Mirror Maze
• David Boaz
• Libertarianism: A Primer
• Jeffrey Rogers Hummel
• Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War
• Larry Elder
• The Ten Things You Can’t Say in America
• Jacob Sullum
• Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use
• John R. Lott, Jr.
• More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws
• Thomas Paine
• Collected Writings
• James Bovard
• Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen
• Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil
• Justin Raimondo
• An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard
• Israel Kirzner
• Ludwig von Mises: The Man and His Economics
• John V. Denson
• Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom
• The Costs of War
• Thomas DiLorenzo
• The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War
• George Woodcock
• Anarchism
• Paul Edward Gottfried
• After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State
• Robert Higgs
• Crisis and Leviathan
• Depression, War, and Cold War
• Ron Paul
• The Revolution: A Manifesto
• Richard Eberling
• The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle
• Randall Holcombe
• The Great Austrian Economists
• Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
• Meltdown
• Robert Murphy
• Chaos Theory
• William Morris
• News from Nowhere
• An Epoch of Rest
• H.G. Wells
• Men Like Gods
• Eric Frank Russell
• Late Night Final
• Alfred Bester
• The Stars My Destination
• Jack Vance
• Emphyrio
• Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
• Left Hand of Darkness
• Robert Anton Wilson
• The Illuminatus Trilogy
• Schroedinger's Cat
• Corey Doctorow
• Little Brother

I became a fan of Reason Magazine back in 2007 after reading "The Secrets of Intangible Wealth" by Ronald Bailey. It has remained one of my favorite pieces, but the inspiration for this post came from a more recent article by editors Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, "The Libertarian Moment."

To quote the article, "Understanding the Libertarian Moment is fundamental to understanding the 21st century." This got me thinking of the U.S. presidency (thanks largely to my former American Presidency professor, Paul Rego). I mention my former professor 1. for his libertarian leanings and 2. for his close emphasis on the United States's first president elected in the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (His book on Roosevelt's presidency is available here).

Yes, Roosevelt was the first president elected during the 20th century. However, he was not the first 20th century president. Historian Lewis L. Gould bestows the title on William McKinley (thanks largely to his assistant secretary George B. Cortelyou). Together, according to historian Richard Norton Smith, McKinley and Cortelyou "anticipated much of the modern chief executive's role as newsmaker, agenda setter, public educator, and uber celebrity."

We have had two presidents, Bush '43 and Obama, elected in the 21st century. However, Bush served and Obama currently serves with a 20th century mindset. The United States has yet to have a 21st century president.

Let's get back to the quote by Gillespie and Welch, "Understanding the Libertarian Moment is fundamental to understanding the 21st century." The first U.S. president of the 21st century will be the man or woman who understands the libertarian moment.

They define the libertarian moment:

...the power to swarm in the direction of freedom is the new technology fueling an idea that is as old as the American republic itself: No central government shall interfere with our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The Libertarian Moment is taking these self-evident truths and organizing them into a comprehensive approach toward living. It started where it always does, in business and culture, where innovation is rewarded. Statist politicians—it’s not fully clear that there is any other kind—will ignore that epochal shift at their peril.

An important step toward electing a libertarian (not necessarily Libertarian) president is instilling in the American public that libertarians are the true progressives in the United States. Big government approaches are the oldest, most reactionary policies available. Limited government policies are revolutionary. The word "liberal" may be lost forever to the statists in the U.S., but "progressive" is still within reach.