The minimum wage is a sort of litmus test. And not only for economists. For social justice advocates, too.

Forget, for a moment, the economics of it. In essence, minimum wage legislation imposes compulsory unemployment on the poor, the unskilled, racial minorities, the young, the physically and even more so the mentally handicappedthe very people all men of good will most want to help. Before the advent of this law, the unemployment rate for white middle-aged people and black teens was just about the same. Now, the latter are unemployed at quadruple the rate of the former.

For the moment lets just discuss the ethics and logic of the minimum wage. I now make you an offer: come work for me: you can wash my car, clean my house, etc. Ill pay you $3 per hour. If I were serious about this offer, I could go to jail for making it. If you accepted it, you would also be breaking the law, but you would not get more than a slap on the wrist, since the judge would think I was exploiting you. Did I violate anyones rights? Did I violate your rights by making you this offer? Hardly.

As we should know from pure logic alone that an offer of employment such as I am now making to you, theoretically (I do not welcome being arrested), cannot help but improve your economic welfare. It is a proposal of an option you simply did not have before I made it. If you reject it, you are no worse off than you otherwise would have been. If you accept it, this job necessarily benefits you, at least ex ante (looking ahead), since, presumably, you had no better alternative than this one. I am your benefactor, not your exploiter.

Now for the economics of it. Some people believe the minimum wage is like a floor; raise it, and pay scales rise, particularly those at the lower end of the economic pyramid. If this were so, why be so modest as to want to raise it, only, to $15 per hour. Why not $1,500 hourly? Then, we would all be rich! We could stop all foreign aid to poor countries. We might just tell them, instead, to install a minimum wage decree at a high level.

No, the minimum wage is more like a barrier over which you have to jump in order to get a job in the first place and then keep it. The higher this hurdle, the harder it is for you to jump over it. Let us return to my offer to you at $3 per hour. Suppose you are very unskilled. Your productivity, the amount of revenue you can add to my bottom line, is only $3 per hour. If I hire you at $15, Ill lose $12 per hour. Thus, I wont hire you if I want to maximize profits. If I do so anyway, I will risk bankruptcy. Which is better for you: no wage at all, zero, nada, with this law in place? Or $3 per hour, with no such enactment? Clearly, $3 per hour is better than nothing.

Here are three objections to the foregoing. First, if you were totally unemployed, you might be eligible for welfare; if employed at a low wage, likely not. So the minimum wage, at least with a welfare program, is a benefit to the poor. True enough. But, here, we are not holding fast to ceteris paribus (all else equal) conditions. If we want to clearly see the economic effects of this regulation, we have to hold all else constant. Assume, either, no welfare at all, or, an equal amount of such payments whether on the job or not. Then, we can see clearly that something is better than nothing, and, also, that something plus a welfare payment is greater than nothing plus the same welfare payment.

Second, there is the claim of monopsony, which is a single buyer of labor, or, oligopsony, a situation in which there are only a few employers. This is a divisive concept within the dismal science (economics), which we need not discuss here. But one thing is clear: this applies, if it does at all, only to firms which employ highly skilled workers. For example, the NBA, the NFL, MLB and other such sports teams; to doctors, engineers, lawyers, computer experts, with very narrow specialized skills which can be utilized only by one or a very few companies. But these people earn vast multiples of the $15 per hour many are pushing for. Thus, this objection is not even relevant to our present discussion.

Third, several economists have not been able to find the unemployment effects implied by this directive in their econometric studies. Response: they should look a little harder, probe a bit deeper. They have not done their full homework.

The minimum wage law should not be raised, it should not remain constant, it should not be lowered. It should be ended, forthwith, and salt sowed where once it stood. Its proponents may have good intentions, but in practice it is a malicious attack on the least of us.

Excerpt from:

Debunking the Myth That Minimum Wage Laws Are 'Progressive ... - Foundation for Economic Education

A mom in the neighborhood recently made trouble. Macroeconomic trouble. Here is a way to spot such trouble, and how to help nurture the goodness in our economic way of life.

A few months back her boy went door to door, confidently introducing himself, explaining his purpose, and handing us a detailed flier: Twelve-year-old boy willing to work. He was trying to earn money to go to sailing school. I was impressed. My wife was impressed. We told our kids to be impressed.

There is virtue in hard work and initiative, and such virtue is doubled when it involves tweens and teens. I commend the boy and the momboth of whom were complete strangers to me.

But then things turned bad. Not with the boyhe was great. I called him to bring our empty trash cans back up to the house one day when we would be out of town. I promised him ten dollars upon my return. He was thrilled and he performed the task with what I imagine was great alacrity. Never have my trash cans been so well brought up to the house.

Things turned bad when I got the text from Mom: It was an easy task. No need to pay.

I concede that the task was easy and ten dollars was very generous. Heck, I probably could have negotiated the boy down to five dollars! That he actually had a reservation wage of zero was both remarkable and a missed opportunity to avoid transgressing child labor laws.

I also readily concede that charity and neighborliness are lovely and important. But this was something else. The moms sequitur was easy;ergo, freean analogue to the more familiar hard;ergo, expensive. In this, she had slipped into economic (and moral) reasoning that is everywhere in society and everywhere dangerous. Economists call it thelabor theory of value.

In simple terms, the theory states that the amount of hard labor put into a product or service is what determines its value (and price). The harder the work, the more value generated, and thus the more the worker should be remunerated. Sounds innocent enough.

Indeed, so easily does such logic enter into the brain that it is deeply embedded in our moral sensibility. It is the intuition telling us that the hard work and commitment of teachers ought to be better remunerated. It is the impulse telling us that the per-throw, per-word, per-hour, and per-post earnings of, respectively,athletes,actors,CEOsandInstagram personalitiesis unjustly high.

The mom clearly calculated the effort of the boy and was embarrassed that the effort did not align with the remuneration. She wanted the boy to learn the value of hard work. What was there to learn in this easy-money situation? Maybe something unseemly.

I saw the learning opportunity differently. His mom and I were going to wrestle for the soul of this child and for the future of our economic order.

Value, as most economists recognize since themarginal revolutionof the late nineteenth century, is not actually determined by calculating the number of hours of production. Rather, value is determined by the customerby how much the customer appreciates the product relative toavailability. Value is inherently subjective.

In what will be known as the trash can debacle of 2023, I clearly and dearly valued trash can service. Trash cans on the curb would signal absence and invite neer-do-wells to break in and steal my lovely tchotchkes and shiny baubles. I would have paid twenty dollars. Geesh, maybe more!

The boy got lucky by my conundrum. But this luck was not without merit. He was an entrepreneur. He came up with the idea, developed excellent flyers, and then built up the courage to go door-to-door and look complete strangers in the eye and make an impression. He also had to remember that between prealgebra and LEGOs he had to retrieve trash cans in the cold. Heck, he was probably anxious about it for days!

The labor theory of value errs by directing us to calculate the most visible. But there was much more benefit to me than could be gleaned in the easy movement of empty objects. And much more went into moving those empty objects than walking the twenty yards to my house. As Roman philosopher Seneca (and renowned football coach and plagiarist Vince Lombardi) stated, Luck is when opportunity meets preparation.

Thus my moral contribution to this childs upbringing: Your value is in your whole person, not in just your labor. Your ideas will have value in todays society. Your gumption will have value. Your character too. Figure out what the world appreciates. You will earn well and improve the lot of others.

Adam Smith saw morality in such wealth-seeking spirit. The twelve-year-old boy was mybutcher or brewer or bakerthat day. He did not offer me services out of a charitable spirit, but rather out of a selfish spirit to get to sailing school. And that is ok. Look at the outcome, not the intention. Heeffectivelyprovided me alms (or what economists call consumer surplus).

Smith was born three hundred years ago this year. His kind of moral thinking threatened the monopoly of political and spiritual leaders of his time. It does the same today.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezwould like you to think that we often exchange money for the alienated souls of laborers.Pope Francisinsists that labor transactions are win-lose events between haves and have-nots.

My exchange with the boy says otherwise. In markets, we exchange wants for provisions, needs for fulfillments, and dreams for realizations. We are all have-nots becoming haves, and haves providing to have-nots.

In the end, I paid the boy and did not preach. The morality of the market is often learned simply by participating in it.

If the boy and I continue to do business together this year, we will both be better off. Moreover, to ensure continued transactions, he will likely keep himself upstanding and I will likely avoid being a boor and a brute (this article notwithstanding).

This upcoming year my neighborhood will experience a demonstration of Smithsinvisible handas well as Montesquieusdoux commerce. It is a demonstration replicated over and over across free societiesone where diverse strangers meet, solve each others disparate problems, and behave in ways that lend totolerance, democracy, peace, and trust.

Such a society is a cause worth donating to. So find that neighborhood kid willing to work, and make sure to pay. You will be nurturing themiraculous sentimentthat trade has its virtues. In doing so, you will be paying it forward for all of us.

This Mises Institute article was republished with permission.

Original post:

Why I Paid the Neighbor Kid $10 for a Simple Task, Even Though ... - Foundation for Economic Education

Last September, billionaire Ken Griffin announced he was pulling up stakes and moving Citadelhis gigantic hedge fundfrom Chicago to Miami.

The Windy City was out of control, he told Bloomberg, something that dawned on him after a colleague made a coffee run and was robbed by a thief who put a gun to his head.

Its no secret that Griffins exit is part of a much larger migration taking place across America.

Data show that several populous blue statesCalifornia, New York, and Illinois among themhave been losing population and companies for years. In 2021 Forbes wrote about leftugees fleeing blue states for red ones. A few years before that, a headline in The Hill touched on the great exodus out of America's blue cities.

New IRS data, however, show the speed with which blue states are losing taxpayersand their adjusted gross income (AGI)is increasing. A recent Wall Street Journal analysis found that more than 100,000 people left Illinois in 2021, taking with them some $11 billion in AGI, nearly double its 2019 total. For New York it was $24.5 billion, an increase of more than 150 percent from 2019. California, meanwhile, saw its AGI loss ($29 billion) more than triple since 2019.

That people are migrating from these states is important. But who is migrating is equally important, and the data paint a bleak picture for these states. Taxpayers giving up on the Prairie State and the Empire State made about $35,000 more per year than new arrivals. For Florida, the data are even more stark. The average income for a new arrival to the Sunshine State was roughly $150,000more than double those leaving.

In other words, the geese with the golden eggs are flying away, writes economist Daniel Mitchell, referring to the IRS data.

Needless to say, these data do not bode well for the future of these states. But not everyone is concerned.

The Atlantic accepts the reality that a major migration is underway, one that undercuts the conventional wisdom that Democratic states are the future, but rejects the idea that they are dying.

New York City isnt some dystopian wasteland where no one can see their future, writes Jerusalem Demsas.

Demsas may be right, but its hard to deny there is a dystopian character to what were witnessing in many major US citiesincluding surging crime, failing schools, and social unrest.

Yet there are reasons to believe these problems are going to get worse, not better. Losing wealth-creators and affluent workers doesnt just affect the economic landscape. It also affects the political landscape.

In a recent WSJ op-ed, Allysia Finley pointed out this primarily works to the political benefit of public sector unions and welfare activists.

Cities are losing the voters who keep their leaders from going off the rails, Finley writes, noting that Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was defeated by mayor-elect Brandon Johnson, who ran to her left.

Johnsons margin of victory was relatively thin, some 20,000 votes. Thats a fraction of the 175,000 people who left Cook County from 2020-2022, Finley points out, and it stands to reason that these are the very people the city needs to get back on the rails.

One can see the cyclical nature of this phenomenon. As cities and blue states become more confiscatory and hostile to property rights, they drive out wealthier people and wealth creators. And as prosperous people leave, the politics become more confiscatory and hostile to property rights. And the cycle continues.

Theres something very Randian in this phenomenon. After all, the basic plot of Atlas Shrugged involves a small group of industrialists living in a dystopian future in which they struggle to keep their businesses afloat while fighting against an oppressive government and mooching politicians. Eventually they say to hell with it and walk away, taking with them their wealth, creativity, and innovations.

This is very similar to what were witnessing, except that were not talking about just a few rich industrialists like Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden (two of the heroes of Atlas Shrugged). Its not just the Ken Griffins who are leaving, but hundreds of thousands of wealth creators who are voting with their feet, and opting for greener pastures of opportunity.

This is a more realistic version of Atlas Shrugged. The novel was in many ways an epic mystery, Agatha Christie meets Cecil B. DeMille. People are disappearing, and we dont know why. As Taggart and Rearden struggle (and eventually form a love affair), we keep hearing about some mysterious figure: John Galt.

Eventually we of course learn that Galt is a disgruntled visionary and entrepreneur, and hes inviting the best and brightest in society to join him in abandoning the looters and leaving them to their own fate. He explains why in a long speech near the end of the novel, which touches on Rands philosophy of voluntaryism, individualism, and capitalism.

All the men who have vanished, the men you hated, yet dreaded to lose, it is I who have taken them away from you. Do not attempt to find us. We do not choose to be found. Do not cry that it is our duty to serve you. We do not recognize such duty. Do not cry that you need us. We do not consider need a claim. Do not cry that you own us. You don't. Do not beg us to return. We are on strike, we, the men of the mind. We are on strike against self-immolation.

Its good story-telling, but its not exactly believable. What were witnessing, however, is: a mass movement of people who are tired of having the fruits of their labor seized to fund increasingly dysfunctional government systems.

We often forget that entrepreneurship is the lifeblood of an economy. Societies without it wither away. And many of these states and cities have become hostile to entrepreneurship and wealth creation.

I dont put companies here in New York anymoreor California, Shark Tank entrepreneur Kevin OLeary recently told CNN. Those states are uninvestable. The policy here is insane. The taxes are too high.

As Griffins exit from Chicago shows, its not just high taxes that are driving people out of cities.

There are other costsmoral, social, and culturalwhen you create communities that spurn property rights and celebrate looting.

IRS data only tell us so much. If you want to better understand those costs, pick up Atlas Shrugged.

See original here:

America's 'Atlas Shrugged' Moment Has Already Arrived, New IRS ... - Foundation for Economic Education

Plans for the Boston Public Library, the nations second-oldest public library, were approved in 1852, the same year Massachusetts passed the countrys first compulsory schooling law. Both public libraries and public schools are funded through taxation and both are free to access, but the similarities end there. The main difference between public libraries and public schools is the level of coercion and state power that public schooling wields.

Libraries are open and available for anyone to access. You can quickly sign up for a library card if you want borrowing privileges, but you dont have to. You can come and go freely, spend time in whatever library sections most interest you, ignore ones that dont, and leave when you want. You can ask for help and support from a librarian if you choose. You can participate in a class that the library offers or access one of the librarys many online resources, but those are all optional. You may not always like a librarys programming, but you dont have to participate in anything you dont want to. If you dont like your neighborhood library, you can freely visit one in another neighborhood or another town. You mix daily with a wide assortment of people of all ages and backgrounds at your library, reflecting the diversity of your community. Aside from the public levy, everything is voluntary.

Moreover, you dont ever have to step foot in a library and still have access to books and resources through bookstores and online retailers. Your library has no control over what your local bookstore sells, and the library system cant dictate rules to Amazon.

Parents are required to register their children for school under a legal threat of force, and the ages at which a child must attend school are lengthening.

Public schools, which are more aptly called government schools because of the force associated with them, are nothing like public libraries. Parents are required to register their children for school under a legal threat of force, and the ages at which a child must attend school are lengthening. Parents can choose to homeschool or enroll their child in a private school, but in most states, homeschooling and private schools are regulated by the state under compulsory schooling statutes. Education is controlled by the state, even for non-public entities that receive no public money.

This is akin to your public library monitoring the books that Barnes & Noble sells, but it goes well beyond that. In each state, young people are required to meet certain attendance thresholds in terms of hours of classroom learning. It would be like the library system mandating that you visit your libraryassigned to you based on your zip code a certain number of days and hours each year, or, alternatively, visit Barnes & Noble for those same number of days and hours with a report to the state to prove it. While youre at your library or bookstore, you are also required to learn about specific subjects whether you want to or not. And there may be a test.

Sign-Up: Receive Kerrys Weekly Parenting and Education Newsletter!

If the public library system had the same power as the public schooling system, there would be far fewer private booksellers. When you are required by law to receive library services for a certain number of hours per year, you will likely go with the free option rather than paying to receive your mandatory library services at Barnes & Noble, which would charge a fee. Indeed, this happened with mandatory schooling.

Most of us would never tolerate a level of coercion and state power associated with public libraries that we routinely accept with public schools.In his bookSchooled to Order, historian David Nasaw explains that as government schooling became compulsory in Massachusetts, the number of private schools in the state dropped from 1,308 in 1840 to only 350 by 1880.[1]Similar trends occurred in other states as they enacted compulsory schooling laws, with private school enrollment subsequently plummeting. Its hard to compete with free and compulsory.

Most of us would never tolerate a level of coercion and state power associated with public libraries that we routinely accept with public schools and education more broadly. As back-to-school time nears, its worth celebrating the many ways that public libraries facilitate non-coercive, self-directed learning for all members of the community and questioning why we would ever want our children to learn in spaces where force, not freedom, prevails.

[1]Nasaw, David.Schooled to Order: A Social History of Schooling in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, p. 83.

Original post:

The Difference Between Public Libraries and Public Schools - Foundation for Economic Education

Some problems are perplexing and complicated, with solutions evading the wisest among us.

The need for affordable housing is not one of those issues. The causes and cures are not complicated. They evade us only because somewhere between kindergarten and college graduation, we never learned basic economics.

Often, one avoidable and seemingly-unrelated problem can inform the solution to another. Take your garbage, for example. It should interest you to know that if you live in Montana, garbage isnt very affordableits disposal, that is. Depending on where you live, you are probably paying for gold-plated garbage trucks (figuratively speaking) owned by companies that earn net profits two to four times higher than their counterparts in other states.

Economics 101: When demand is high (lots of garbage to dispose of), and supply is low (an artificial scarcity of trash haulers to choose from,) you will pay far more for those emptied garbage cans than you would if market entry was unrestricted and garbage collectors competed fiercely for your consumer dollars. I say artificial because scarcity is NOT an indigenous creature of the free market. Its a mutant beast conceived of by protectionist politicians who make monopolies out of special interests. Such is the case in Montana.

For the second session in a row, legislation has been introducedHB 191to repeal the state requirement that new garbage collection services must first be approved by the Public Service Commission and issued a Certificate of Convenience and Necessity through a long, drawn-out and financially back-breaking process. Finishing this absurd legal obstacle course is almost impossible. The result: government-created monopolies that can charge pretty much anything they want. Maybe this year, legislators will discover their consciences and backbones, and repeal this anti-consumer, anti-freedom statute.

How does this lesson inform us about the scarcity of adequate, affordable housing in many Montana communities? The answer is in two sentences. Freedom works. Government intervention and control does not.

The first approach produces an abundance of supply at a price most consumers can afford. The second produces shortages, unserved consumers, and dramatically inflated prices. Too often, local governments have chosen the second course, and desperate, economically ill-educated consumers clamor for more of the same.

The town of Bozeman is a classic example, where we suffer from decades of increasingly-restrictive zoning laws, property use ordinances, city and county land use planning, contractor fees, and skyrocketing property taxes to pay for the skyrocketing cost of local government. All of these measures have the ultimate effect of constricting supply and driving up building costs, which in turn renders rental prices and home ownership out of the reach of many would-be residents and families. Add to that the inflation created by out-of-control federal spending, and the situation becomes truly bleak.

So what has been the local response of the economically illiterate that tweaks the sympathetic ears of city commissioners? The formation of a so-called tenants union that demands the banning of Airbnbs and VRBOs and using city housing funds to subsidize existing short-term rentals into long-term leases. In other words, taking over peoples property rights and destroying the local jobs their enterprises create. Power to the people! Its eerily reminiscent of the film Doctor Zhivago, where the Red Army took over Zhivagos family home and divided the rooms among the deserving proletariat.

But perhaps a more modern solution is to just require Certificates of Convenience and Necessity for every new dwelling thats allowed to be built in our communities. Then the tenants unions and the city planners can enjoy total government control. Brilliant!

Do you see a pattern here? Do you see any similarities between the Marxist-socialist thinking that socialized a garbage industry, creating scarcity and high prices, and the Marxist-socialist thinking that socializes housing and creates scarcity and high prices in the shelter we seek?

If you dont, read Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, and youll begin to figure it out. Freedom and free markets work. Top-down government control never does. Trust freedom.

Read the original here:

What Garbage Collection Rates Can Teach Us about Affordable ... - Foundation for Economic Education

Slavery is always and everywhere an unconscionable stain, an egregious error, a monstrous outrage, a mortal sin. Every human possesses a natural right to be his own master, so long as he does not deny that same right to others.

Most people take that truism for granted today but it wasnt the governing rule of the past. Few people who have ever lived on this planet were truly free; most were either outright slaves or were serfs or subjects who lived in constant fear of tyrants. In world history, freedom is the exception, and mostly a recent one.

Writing in National Review, Rich Lowry points out,

Slavery knew no bounds of color or creed. During one period, from 1500 to 1700, there were more white European slaves held captive on the Barbary Coast than slaves sent from West Africa to the Atlantic world, according to Gordon [referring to Stewart Gordon and his bookShackles of Iron: Slavery Beyond the Atlantic].

Some people use Black History Month as an occasion to skewer America for slavery. The more extreme among them stoke racial divisions to score political points or line their pockets. To be sure, America is not a perfect country, nor is any one of the other 196.

The fact that slavery was so commonplace throughout the world does not whitewash the slavery that was perpetrated by anybody, including Americans. But slavery isnota uniquely American characteristic.

The process of ending legalized human bondage wasnt a flip of a light switch, on one moment and off in an effortless second. We had to work at it, long and hard. Ideas and customs had to change first before policy changed, and thats the way progress always happens. Along the way, an appalling number of black and white Americans paid the ultimate price to get rid of slavery, and even then, the struggle against Jim Crow persisted for decades.

In hindsight, its easy in the smug comfort of our 21st century blessings to frown on the Founders for not freeing everybody in one fell swoop. But none of us even knows whether, if he had been born in, say, 1700, he would have mustered the courage to fight for anybodys freedom.

Americas Founders proclaimed the revolutionary principle that all men are created equal. Some were more consistent in the application of that principle than others. They compromised for the sake of union but many of them knew that the intellectual seeds they planted would eventually end slavery, one way or the other. To the argument that they didnt abolish slavery at the Founding, Thomas G. West in his Vindicating the Founders responded,

[T]hey limited and eventually outlawed the importation of slaves from abroad; they abolished slavery in a majority of the original states; they forbade the expansion of slavery into areas where it had not been previously permitted; they made laws regulating slavery more humane; individual owners in most states freed slaves in large numbersFreedom was secured for the large majority of Americans, and important actions were undertaken in the service of freedom for the rest.

Why was unity so important? even though it delayed slaverys extinction, asks Rob Natelson of Colorados Independence Institute. Because the probable result ofdisunionwould be never-ending war on the American continent. (See his essay for elaboration.)

The world progressed from acceptance and ubiquity of chattel slavery in the 18th century to near-universal abolition a century later. That remains one of the most remarkable transformations in history. The spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the sacrifices of millions of people of all colors played a mighty role in that metamorphosis.

If we are to assess slavery and its abolition accurately, we must see them in their fullest historical and cultural contexts. We ought to avoid the temptation to assume that everything about slaverys history is clear-cut andpardon the double meaningblack and white. That means recognizing some uncomfortable facts that too often are swept under the rug.

Example: It wasnt only whites who possessed black slaves in early America. Free black people owned fellow blacks in every one of the 13 original states and later in almost every other state. As late as 1830, according to Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates, 3,776 free American blacks owned 12,907 slaves. Moreover, in 1860, Native American tribes owned some 8,000 black slaves; the Cherokee Indians alone possessed about 4,600.

In my next article, I will provide a collection of additional facts about slavery that are often overlooked in the ongoing examination of this deplorable institution.

Presentism Imperils our Future by Distorting Our Past by Lawrence W. Reed

John Woolman: The Conscientious Quaker Who Paved the Way for the Abolitionist Movement by Lawrence W. Reed

Did Black People Own Slaves? by Henry Louis Gates

Defending the Constitution: Why the Founders Couldnt Abolish Slavery by Rob Natelson

Five Things They Dont Tell You About Slavery by Rich Lowry

1619 and the Narrative of Despair by Allen C. Guelzo

Visit link:

Recognizing Hard Truths about America's History With Slavery ... - Foundation for Economic Education

Philosophy supporting all forms of human association being voluntary

Voluntaryism (,[1] ;[1] sometimes voluntarism[2] )[3] is used to describe the philosophy of Auberon Herbert, and later that of the authors and supporters of The Voluntaryist magazine, which, similarly to anarcho-capitalism, rejects a totalitarian government in favor of voluntary participation in society, meaning a lack of coercion and force. This is normally completed through a strict adherence to pacifism, civil rights, and either arbitration or some other mutually-agreed-upon court system between individuals.[4]

As a term, voluntaryism was coined in this usage by Auberon Herbert in the 19th century and gained renewed use since the late 20th century, especially within libertarianism in the United States.

Voluntaryist principal beliefs stem from the idea of natural rights, equality, non-coercion, and non-aggression.[5]

Precursors to the voluntaryist movement had a long tradition in the English-speaking world, at least as far back as the Leveller movement of mid-seventeenth century England. The Leveller spokesmen John Lilburne and Richard Overton who "clashed with the Presbyterian puritans, who wanted to preserve a state-church with coercive powers and to deny liberty of worship to the puritan sects".[6]

The Levellers were nonconformist in religion and advocated for the separation of church and state. The church to their way of thinking was a voluntary associating of equals, and furnished a theoretical and practical model for the civil state. If it was proper for their church congregations to be based on consent, then it was proper to apply the same principle of consent to its secular counterpart. For example, the Leveller 'Large' Petition of 1647 contained a proposal "that tythes and all other inforced maintenances, may be for ever abolished, and nothing in place thereof imposed, but that all Ministers may be payd only by those who voluntarily choose them, and contract with them for their labours."[6] The Levellers also held to the idea of self-proprietorship.[6]

The educational voluntaryists[citation needed] wanted free trade in education, just as they supported free trade in corn or cotton. Their concern for "liberty can scarcely be exaggerated". They believed that "government would employ education for its own ends" (teaching habits of obedience and indoctrination), and that government-controlled schools would ultimately teach children to rely on the State for all things. Baines, for example, noted that "[w]e cannot violate the principles of liberty in regard to education without furnishing at once a precedent and inducement to violate them in regard to other matters". Baines conceded that the then current system of education (both private and charitable) had deficiencies, but he argued that freedom should not be abridged on that account. In asking whether freedom of the press should be compromised because we have bad newspapers, Baines replied that "I maintain that Liberty is the chief cause of excellence; but it would cease to be Liberty if you proscribed everything inferior".[7] The Congregational Board of Education and the Baptist Voluntary Education Society are usually given pride of place among the Voluntaryists.[8]

In southern Africa, voluntaryism in religious matters was an important part of the liberal "Responsible Government" movement of the mid-19th century, along with support for multi-racial democracy and an opposition to British imperial control. The movement was driven by powerful local leaders such as Saul Solomon and John Molteno. When it briefly gained power, it disestablished the state-supported churches in 1875.[9][10]

There were at least two well-known Americans who espoused voluntaryist causes during the mid-19th century.[citation needed] Henry David Thoreau's first brush with the law in his home state of Massachusetts came in 1838, when he turned twenty-one. The state demanded that he pay the one dollar ministerial tax in support of a clergyman, "whose preaching my father attended but never I myself".[11] When Thoreau refused to pay the tax, it was probably paid by one of his aunts. In order to avoid the ministerial tax in the future, Thoreau had to sign an affidavit attesting he was not a member of the church.

Thoreau's overnight imprisonment for his failure to pay another municipal tax, the poll tax, to the town of Concord was recorded in his essay "Resistance to Civil Government", first published in 1849. It is often referred to as "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" because in it he concluded that government was dependent on the cooperation of its citizens. While he was not a thoroughly consistent voluntaryist, he did write that he wished never to "rely on the protection of the state" and that he refused to tender it his allegiance so long as it supported slavery. He distinguished himself from "those who call[ed] themselves no-government men", writing that "I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government". This has been interpreted as a gradualist, rather than minarchist, stance,[12] given that he also opened his essay by stating his belief that "government is best which governs not at all", a point that all voluntaryists heartily embrace.[11]

Another one was Charles Lane. He was friendly with Amos Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thoreau. Between January and June 1843, a series of nine letters he penned were published in such abolitionist's papers as The Liberator and The Herald of Freedom. The title under which they were published was "A Voluntary Political Government" in which Lane described the state in terms of institutionalized violence and referred to its "club law, its mere brigand right of a strong arm, [supported] by guns and bayonets". He saw the coercive state on par with "forced" Christianity, arguing: "Everyone can see that the church is wrong when it comes to men with the [B]ible in one hand, and the sword in the other. Is it not equally diabolical for the state to do so?" Lane believed that governmental rule was only tolerated by public opinion because the fact was not yet recognized that all the true purposes of the state could be carried out on the voluntary principle, just as churches could be sustained voluntarily. Reliance on the voluntary principle could only come about through "kind, orderly, and moral means" that were consistent with the totally voluntary society he was advocating, adding: "Let us have a voluntary State as well as a voluntary Church, and we may possibly then have some claim to the appeallation of free men".[13]

Although use of the label voluntaryist waned after the death of Auberon Herbert in 1906, its use was renewed in 1982, when George H. Smith, Wendy McElroy and Carl Watner began publishing The Voluntaryist magazine.[14] Smith suggested use of the term to identify those libertarians who believed that political action and political parties (especially the Libertarian Party) were antithetical to their ideas. In their "Statement of Purpose" in Neither Bullets nor Ballots: Essays on Voluntaryism (1983), Watner, Smith and McElroy explained that voluntaryists were advocates of non-political strategies to achieve a free society, and effectively appropriated the term on behalf of right-libertarianism. They rejected electoral politics "in theory and practice as incompatible with libertarian goals" and argued that political methods invariably strengthen the legitimacy of coercive governments. In concluding their "Statement of Purpose", they wrote: "Voluntaryists seek instead to delegitimize the State through education, and we advocate the withdrawal of the cooperation and tacit consent on which state power ultimately depends".

Continued here:

Voluntaryism - Wikipedia

Latin phrase

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a Latin phrase found in the work of the Roman poet Juvenal from his Satires (Satire VI, lines 347348). It is literally translated as "Who will guard the guards themselves?", though it is also known by variant translations, such as "Who watches the watchers?" and "Who will watch the watchmen?".

The original context deals with the problem of ensuring marital fidelity, though the phrase is now commonly used more generally to refer to the problem of controlling the actions of persons in positions of power, an issue discussed by Plato in the Republic. It is not clear whether the phrase was written by Juvenal, or whether the passage in which it appears was interpolated into his works.

The phrase, as it is normally quoted in Latin, comes from the Satires of Juvenal, the 1st2nd century Roman satirist. Although in its modern usage the phrase has universal, timeless applications to concepts such as tyrannical governments, uncontrollably oppressive dictatorships, and police or judicial corruption and overreach, in context within Juvenal's poem it refers to the impossibility of enforcing moral behaviour on women when the enforcers (custodes) are corruptible (Satire 6, 346348):

audio quid ueteres olim moneatis amici,"pone seram, cohibe." sed quis custodiet ipsoscustodes? cauta est et ab illis incipit uxor.

I hear always the admonishment of my friends:"Bolt her in, constrain her!" But who will guardthe guardians? The wife plans ahead and begins with them.

Modern editors regard these three lines as an interpolation inserted into the text. In 1899 an undergraduate student at Oxford, E. O. Winstedt, discovered a manuscript (now known as O, for Oxoniensis) containing 34 lines which some believe to have been omitted from other texts of Juvenal's poem.[1] The debate on this manuscript is ongoing, but even if the verses are not by Juvenal, it is likely that it preserves the original context of the phrase.[2] If so, the original context is as follows (O 2933):

... nouiconsilia et ueteres quaecumque monetis amici,"pone seram, cohibes." sed quis custodiet ipsoscustodes? qui nunc lasciuae furta puellaehac mercede silent crimen commune tacetur.

... I knowthe plan that my friends always advise me to adopt:"Bolt her in, constrain her!" But who can watchthe watchmen? They keep quiet about the girl'ssecrets and get her as their payment; everyone hushes it up.

This phrase is used generally to consider the embodiment of the philosophical question as to how power can be held to account. It is sometimes incorrectly attributed as a direct quotation from Plato's Republic in both popular media and academic contexts.[3] There is no exact parallel in the Republic, but it is used by modern authors to express Socrates' concerns about the guardians, the solution to which is to properly train their souls.

Several 19th-century examples of the association with Plato can be found, often dropping "ipsos".[4][5] John Stuart Mill quotes it thus in Considerations on Representative Government (1861), though without reference to Plato. Plato's Republic though was hardly ever referenced by classical Latin authors like Juvenal, and it has been noted that it simply disappeared from literary awareness for a thousand years except for traces in the writings of Cicero and St. Augustine.[6] In the Republic, a putatively perfect society is described by Socrates, the main character in this Socratic dialogue.

Socrates proposed a guardian class to protect that society, and the custodes (watchmen) from the Satires are often interpreted as being parallel to the Platonic guardians (phylakes in Greek). Socrates's answer to the problem is, in essence, that the guardians will be manipulated to guard themselves against themselves via a deception often called the "noble lie" in English.[7]As Leonid Hurwicz pointed out in his 2007 lecture on accepting the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, one of Socrates's interlocutors in the Republic, Glaucon, even goes so far as to say "it would be absurd that a guardian should need a guard."[8]

The issue of the accountability of political power, traced back to different passages of the Old and New Testaments, received great attention in medieval and early modern Christian thought, especially in connection with the exercise of authority in the Church and in church-state relations.[9] In the Protestant tradition it also animated the debate about who was to be the final arbiter in the interpretation of the Scriptures.[10][11]

In his 2013 report to the UN Human Rights Council, Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, the United Nations Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order, elucidated Juvenal's continued relevance: Crucial remains the conviction that the government should serve the people and that its powers must be circumscribed by a Constitution and the rule of law. Juvenal's question quis custodiet ipsos custodes (who guards the guardians?) remains a central concern of democracy, since the people must always watch over the constitutional behaviour of the leaders and impeach them if they act in contravention of their duties. Constitutional courts must fulfil this need and civil society should show solidarity with human rights defenders and whistleblowers who, far from being unpatriotic, perform a democratic service to their countries and the world.[12]

Read more:

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Wikipedia

Core concept in libertarianism in the United States

The non-aggression principle (NAP), also called the non-aggression axiom, is a concept in which aggression, defined as initiating or threatening any forceful interference (violating or breaching conduct) against either an individual, their property[note 1] or against promises (contracts) for which the aggressor is liable and in which the individual is a counterparty, is inherently wrong.[1][2] There is no single or universal interpretation or definition of the NAP, with different definitions varying in regards to how to treat intellectual property, force, abortion, and other topics.

It is considered by some to be a defining principle of libertarianism in the United States[3][bettersourceneeded] and is a prominent idea in libertarianism, anarcho-capitalism and minarchism,[4][5][6][7] and in legal concepts like breach of contract and breach of property (trespass to land, trespass to chattels) and, in cases applied to the sovereign state instead of the sovereign individual, in just war theory. In contrast to pacifism, the NAP does not forbid forceful defense.[3][bettersourceneeded]

The principle has been derived by various philosophical approaches, including:

Both libertarian supporters and opponents of abortion rights justify their position on NAP grounds. One question to determine whether or not abortion is consistent with the NAP is at what stage of development a fertilized human egg cell can be considered a human being with the status and rights attributed to personhood. Some supporters of the NAP argue this occurs at the moment of conception while others argue that since the fetus lacks sentience until a certain stage of development, it does not qualify as a human being and may be considered property of the mother. On the other hand, opponents of abortion state that sentience is not a qualifying factor. They refer to the animal rights discussion and point out the argument from marginal cases that concludes the NAP also applies to non-sentient (i.e. mentally handicapped) humans.[14]

Another question is whether an unwelcome fetus should be considered to be an unauthorized trespasser in its mother's body.[15] The non-aggression principle does not protect trespassers from the owners of the property on which they are trespassing.[16]

Objectivist philosopher Leonard Peikoff has argued that a fetus has no right to life inside the womb because it is not an "independently existing, biologically formed organism, let alone a person".[17] Pro-choice libertarian Murray Rothbard held the same stance, maintaining that abortion is justified at any time during pregnancy if the fetus is no longer welcome inside its mother.[18] Similarly, other pro-choice supporters base their argument on criminal trespass.[19] In that case, they claim that the NAP is not violated when the fetus is forcibly removed, with deadly force if need be, from the mother's body, just as the NAP is not violated when an owner removes from the owner's property an unwanted visitor who is not willing to leave voluntarily. Libertarian theorist Walter Block follows this line of argument with his theory of evictionism, but he makes a distinction between evicting the fetus prematurely so that it dies and actively killing it. On the other hand, the theory of departurism permits only the non-lethal eviction of the trespassing fetus during a normal pregnancy.[20]

Anti-abortion libertarians such as Libertarians for Life argue that because the parents were actively involved in creating a new human life and that life has not consented to his or her own existence, that life is in the womb by necessity and no parasitism or trespassing in the form of legal necessity is involved. They state that as the parents are responsible for that life's position, the NAP would be violated when that life is killed with abortive techniques.[21]

The NAP has been defined[citation needed] as applicable to any unauthorized actions towards a person's physical property. Supporters of the NAP disagree on whether it should apply to intellectual property rights as well as physical property rights.[22] Some argue that because intellectual concepts are non-rivalrous, intellectual property rights are unnecessary[23] while others argue that intellectual property rights are as valid and important as physical ones.[24]

Although the NAP is meant to guarantee an individual's sovereignty, libertarians greatly differ on the conditions under which the NAP applies. Especially unsolicited intervention by others, either to prevent society from being harmed by the individual's actions or to prevent an incompetent individual from being harmed by his own actions or inactions, is an important issue.[to whom?][25] The debate centers on topics such as the age of consent for children,[26][27][28] intervention counseling (i.e. for addicted persons, or in case of domestic violence),[29][30] involuntary commitment and involuntary treatment with regards to mental illness,[31] medical assistance (i.e. prolonged life support vs euthanasia in general and for the senile or comatose in particular),[32][33] human organ trade,[34][35][36] state paternalism (including economic intervention)[37][38][39] and foreign intervention by states.[40][41] Other discussion topics on whether intervention is in line with the NAP include nuclear weapons proliferation,[42][43] human trafficking and immigration.[44][45][46]

Randian author Ronald Merill states that use of force is subjective, saying: "There's no objective basis for controlling the use of force. Your belief that you're using force to protect yourself is just an opinion; what if it is my opinion that you are violating my rights?"[47]

Some libertarians justify the existence of a minimal state on the grounds that anarcho-capitalism implies that the non-aggression principle is optional because the enforcement of laws is open to competition.[48] They claim competing law enforcement would always result in war and the rule of the most powerful.[citation needed]

Anarcho-capitalists usually respond to this argument that this presumed outcome of what they call "coercive competition" (e.g. private military companies or private defense agencies that enforce local law) is not likely because of the very high cost, in lives and economically, of war. They claim that war drains those involved and leaves non-combatant parties as the most powerful, economically and militarily, ready to take over.[49][50][51] Therefore, anarcho-capitalists claim that in practice, and in more advanced societies with large institutions that have a responsibility to protect their vested interests, disputes are most likely to be settled peacefully.[52][53] Anarcho-capitalists also point out that a state monopoly of law enforcement does not necessarily make NAP present throughout society as corruption and corporatism, as well as lobby group clientelism in democracies, favor only certain people or organizations. Anarcho-capitalists aligned with the Rothbardian philosophy generally contend that the state violates the non-aggression principle by its very nature because, it is argued, governments necessarily use force against those who have not stolen private property, vandalized private property, assaulted anyone, or committed fraud.[52][54][55]

Some proponents of the NAP see taxes as a violation of NAP, while critics of the NAP argue that because of the free-rider problem in case security is a public good, enough funds would not be obtainable by voluntary means to protect individuals from aggression of a greater severity. The latter therefore accept taxation, and consequently a breach of NAP with regard to any free-riders, as long as no more is levied than is necessary to optimise protection of individuals against aggression.[citation needed] Geolibertarians, who following the classical economists and Georgists adhere to the Lockean labor theory of property, argue that land value taxation is fully compatible with the NAP.[citation needed]

Anarcho-capitalists argue that the protection of individuals against aggression is self-sustaining like any other valuable service, and that it can be supplied without coercion by the free market much more effectively and efficiently than by a government monopoly.[56] Their approach, based on proportionality in justice and damage compensation, argues that full restitution is compatible with both retributivism and a utilitarian degree of deterrence while consistently maintaining NAP in a society.[50][57][58] They extend their argument to all public goods and services traditionally funded through taxation, like security offered by dikes.[59]

Supporters of the NAP often appeal to it in order to argue for the immorality of theft, vandalism, sexual assault, assault, and fraud. Compared to nonviolence, the non-aggression principle does not preclude violence used in self-defense or defense of others.[60] Many supporters argue that NAP opposes such policies as victimless crime laws, taxation, and military drafts. NAP is the foundation of libertarian philosophy.[8]

NAP faces two kinds of criticism: the first holds that the principle is immoral, and the second argues that it is impossible to apply consistently in practice; respectively, consequentialist or deontological criticisms, and inconsistency criticisms. Libertarian academic philosophers have noted the implausible results consistently applying the principle yields: for example, Professor Matt Zwolinski notes that, because pollution necessarily violates the NAP by encroaching (even if slightly) on other people's property, consistently applying the NAP would prohibit driving, starting a fire, and other activities necessary to the maintenance of industrial society.[61]

The NAP also faces definitional issues regarding what is understood as forceful interference and property, and under which conditions does it apply.[62][63][64][65][66][67][68] The NAP has been criticized as circular reasoning and a rhetorical obfuscation of the coercive nature of right-libertarian property law enforcement because the principle redefines aggression in their own terms.[69]

Critics argue that the non-aggression principle is not ethical because it opposes the initiation of force even when they would consider the results of such initiation to be morally superior to the alternatives that they have identified. In arguing against the NAP, philosopher Matt Zwolinski has proposed the following scenario: "Suppose that by imposing a very, very small tax on billionaires, I could provide life-saving vaccination for tens of thousands of desperately poor children. Even if we grant that taxation is aggression, and that aggression is generally wrong, is it really so obvious that the relatively minor aggression involved in these examples is wrong, given the tremendous benefit it produces?"[61]

Zwolinski also notes that the NAP is incompatible with any practice that produces any pollution, because pollution encroaches on the property rights of others. Therefore, the NAP prohibits both driving and starting fires. Citing David D. Friedman, Zwolinski notes that the NAP is unable to place a sensible limitation on risk-creating behavior, arguing:

Of course, almost everything we do imposes some risk of harm on innocent persons. We run this risk when we drive on the highway (what if we suffer a heart attack, or become distracted), or when we fly airplanes over populated areas. Most of us think that some of these risks are justifiable, while others are not, and that the difference between them has something to do with the size and likelihood of the risked harm, the importance of the risky activity, and the availability and cost of less risky activities. But considerations like this carry zero weight in the NAP's absolute prohibition on aggression. That principle seems compatible with only two possible rules: either all risks are permissible (because they are not really aggression until they actually result in a harm), or none are (because they are). And neither of these seems sensible.[61]

Some critics use the example of the trolley problem to invalidate NAP. In case of the runaway trolley, headed for five victims tied to the track, NAP does not allow a trolley passenger to flip the switch that diverts the trolley to a different track if there is a person tied to that track. That person would have been unharmed if nothing was done, therefore by flipping the switch NAP is violated. Another example often cited by critics is human shields.[citation needed]

Some supporters argue that no one initiates force if their only option for self-defense is to use force against a greater number of people as long as they were not responsible for being in the position they are in. Murray Rothbard's and Walter Block's formulations of NAP avoid these objections by either specifying that the NAP applies only to a civilized context (and not "lifeboat situations") or that it applies only to legal rights (as opposed to general morality). Thus a starving man may, in consonance with general morality, break into a hunting cabin and steal food, but nevertheless he is aggressing, i.e. violating the NAP, and (by most rectification theories) should pay compensation.[70] Critics argue that the legal rights approach might allow people who can afford to pay a sufficiently large amount of compensation to get away with murder. They point out that local law may vary from proportional compensation to capital punishment to no compensation at all.[50]

Other critics state that the NAP is unethical because it does not provide for the violent prohibition of, and thereby supposedly legitimizes, several forms of aggression that do not involve intrusion on property rights such as verbal sexual harassment, defamation, boycotting, noninvasive striking etc. If a victim thus provoked would turn to physical violence, they would be labeled an aggressor according to the NAP. However, supporters of the NAP state that boycotting[71][72] and defamation[73][74] both constitute freedoms of speech and that boycotting,[71][72] noninvasive striking[72][75] and noninvasive discrimination[76] all constitute freedoms of association and that both freedoms of association and of speech are nonaggressive. Supporters also point out that prohibiting physical retaliation against an action is not itself condonement of said action,[77] and that generally there are other, nonphysical means by which one can combat social ills (e.g., discrimination) that do not violate the NAP.[72][76] Some supporters also state that while most of the time individuals choose voluntarily to engage in situations that may cause some degree of mental battering, this mental battering begins to constitute unauthorized physical overload of the senses (i.e. eardrum and retina) when it cannot be avoided and that the NAP at that point does apply.[21]

Many supporters consider verbal and written threats of imminent physical violence sufficient justification for a defensive response in a physical manner.[78][79] Those threats would then constitute a legitimate limit to permissible speech. Because freedom of association entails the right of owners to choose who is permitted to enter or remain on their premises, legitimate property owners may also impose limitation on speech. The owner of a theatre wishing to avoid a stampede may prohibit those on her property from calling 'fire!' without just cause.[80] However, the owner of a bank may not prohibit anyone from urging the general public to a bank run, except insofar as this occurs on the property of said owner.[71]

In a 1948 interview with Donald H. Kirkley for the Library of Congress, H. L. Mencken, a writer who influenced many libertarians, puts an ethical limit on the freedom of speech:

I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I do not think there are any other conditions to free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I have not got a right to press it on anybody else. [...] Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors.[81]

Supporters also consider physical threats of imminent physical violence (e.g. pointing a firearm at innocent people, or stocking up nuclear weapons that cannot be used discriminately against specific individual aggressors) sufficient justification for a defensive response in a physical manner. Those threats would then constitute a legitimate limit to permissible action.[82][83][79]

Critics argue it is not possible to uphold NAP when protecting the environment as most pollution can never be traced back to the party that caused it. They therefore claim that only general broad government regulations will be able to protect the environment. Supporters cite the theoretical "tragedy of the commons"[clarification needed] and argue that free-market environmentalism will be much more effective in conserving nature.[84][85]Political theorist Hillel Steiner emphasizes that all things made come from natural resources and that the validity of any rights to those made things depends on the validity of the rights to the natural resources.[86] If land was stolen then anyone buying produce from that land would not be the legitimate owner of the goods. Also, if natural resources cannot be privately owned but are, and always will be, the property of all of mankind then NAP would be violated if such a resource would be used without everybody's consent (see the Lockean proviso and free-market anarchism).[87] Libertarian philosopher Roderick Long suggests that, as natural resources are required not only for the production of goods but for the production of the human body as well, the very concept of self-ownership can only exist if the land itself is privately owned.[88]

Consequentialist libertarian David D. Friedman, who believes that the NAP should be understood as a relative rather than absolute principle, defends his view by using a Sorites argument. Friedman begins by stating what he considers obvious: a neighbor aiming his flashlight at someone's property is not aggression, or if it is, it is only aggression in a trivial technical sense. However, aiming at the same property with a gigawatt laser is certainly aggression by any reasonable definition. Yet both flashlight and laser shine photons onto the property, so there must be some cutoff point of how many photons one is permitted to shine upon a property before it is considered aggression. However, the cutoff point cannot be found by deduction alone because of the Sorites paradox, so the non-aggression principle is necessarily ambiguous. Friedman points out the difficulty of undertaking any activity that poses a certain amount of risk to third parties (e.g. flying) if the permission of thousands of people that might be affected by the activity is required.[89]

"Right" has cogently and trenchantly been defined by Professor Sadowsky:

When we say that one has the right to do certain things we mean this and only this, that it would be immoral for another, alone or in combination, to stop him from doing this by the use of physical force or the threat thereof. We do not mean that any use a man makes of his property within the limits set forth is necessarily a moral use?

Sadowsky's definition highlights the crucial distinction we shall make throughout this work between a man's right and the morality or immorality of his exercise of that right. We will contend that it is a man's right to do whatever he wishes with his person; it is his right not to be molested or interfered with by violence from exercising that right. But what may be the moral or immoral ways of exercising that right is a question of personal ethics rather than of political philosophywhich is concerned solely with matters of right, and of the proper or improper exercise of physical violence in human relations. The importance of this crucial distinction cannot be overemphasized. Or, as Elisha Hurlbut concisely put it: "The exercise of a faculty by an individual is its only use. The manner of its exercise is one thing; that involves a question of morals. The right to its exercise is another thing."

More:

Non-aggression principle - Wikipedia

Political philosophy

Autarchism is a political philosophy that promotes the principles of individualism, the moral ideology of individual liberty and self-reliance. It rejects compulsory government and supports the elimination of government in favor of ruling oneself to the exclusion of rule by others.

Robert LeFevre, recognized as an autarchist by Murray Rothbard,[1] distinguished autarchism from anarchy, whose economics he felt entailed interventions contrary to freedom.[2] In professing "a sparkling and shining individualism" while "it advocates some kind of procedure to interfere with the processes of a free market", anarchy seemed to LeFevre to be self-contradictory.[2] He situated the fundamental premise of autarchy within the Stoicism of philosophers such as Zeno, Epicurus and Marcus Aurelius, which he summarized in the credo "Control yourself".[3]

Fusing these influences, LeFevre arrived at the autarchist philosophy: "The Stoics provide the moral framework; the Epicureans, the motivation; the praxeologists, the methodology. I propose to call this package of ideological systems autarchy, because autarchy means self-rule".[3] LeFevre stated that "the bridge between Spooner and modern-day autarchists was constructed primarily by persons such as H. L. Mencken, Albert Jay Nock, and Mark Twain".[2]

Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) biographer Robert D. Richardson described Emerson's anarchy as "'autarchy', rule by self".[4][5] Philip Jenkins has stated that "Emersonian ideas stressed individual liberation, autarchy, self-sufficiency and self-government, and strenuously opposed social conformity".[6]

.navbox-abovebelow,.mw-parser-output tr+tr>.navbox-group,.mw-parser-output tr+tr>.navbox-image,.mw-parser-output tr+tr>.navbox-list{border-top:2px solid #fdfdfd}.mw-parser-output .navbox-title{background-color:#ccf}.mw-parser-output .navbox-abovebelow,.mw-parser-output .navbox-group,.mw-parser-output .navbox-subgroup .navbox-title{background-color:#ddf}.mw-parser-output .navbox-subgroup .navbox-group,.mw-parser-output .navbox-subgroup .navbox-abovebelow{background-color:#e6e6ff}.mw-parser-output .navbox-even{background-color:#f7f7f7}.mw-parser-output .navbox-odd{background-color:transparent}.mw-parser-output .navbox .hlist td dl,.mw-parser-output .navbox .hlist td ol,.mw-parser-output .navbox .hlist td ul,.mw-parser-output .navbox td.hlist dl,.mw-parser-output .navbox td.hlist ol,.mw-parser-output .navbox td.hlist ul{padding:0.125em 0}.mw-parser-output .navbox .navbar{display:block;font-size:100%}.mw-parser-output .navbox-title .navbar{float:left;text-align:left;margin-right:0.5em}]]>

See the original post here:

Autarchism - Wikipedia

(16091676) Religious reformer, philosopher and activist

Gerrard Winstanley

Susan King

Elizabeth Stanley

Gerrard Winstanley (19 October 1609 10 September 1676) was an English Protestant religious reformer, political philosopher, and activist during the period of the Commonwealth of England. Winstanley was the leader and one of the founders of the English group known as the True Levellers or Diggers. The group occupied formerly common land that had been privatised by enclosures and dug them over, pulling down hedges and filling in ditches, to plant crops. True Levellers was the name they used to describe themselves, whereas the term Diggers was coined by contemporaries.

Gerrard Winstanley was born on 19 October 1609, the son of Edward Winstanley, mercer, and was baptised in the parish of Wigan, then part of the West Derby hundred of Lancashire. His mother's identity remains unknown and he could have been born anywhere in the parish of Wigan.[1] The parish of Wigan contained the townships of Abram, Aspull, Billinge-and-Winstanley, Dalton, Haigh, Hindley, Ince-in-Makerfield, Orrell, Pemberton, and Upholland, as well as Wigan itself.[2]

In 1630, Winstanley migrated to the City of London, where he became an apprentice to a Merchant Tailor. In 1638, he was admitted as a freeman of the Merchant Tailors' Company, a trade guild. In 1639, he married Susan King, the daughter of William King, a London surgeon.[3]

The First English Civil War disrupted Winstanleys business, and in 1643 he was made bankrupt. His father-in-law helped him to move to Cobham, Surrey, where he initially worked as a cowherd.[3]

There were many factions at work during the period of the three related English civil wars. They included the Royalists who supported King Charles I; the Parliamentary forces led by Sir Thomas Fairfax who would later emerge under the name of the New Model Army; the Fifth Monarchy Men, who believed in the establishment of a heavenly theocracy on earth to be led by a returning Jesus as king of kings and lord of lords; the Agitators for political egalitarian reform of government, who were branded "Levellers" by their foes and who were led by John Lilburne.[citation needed]

Winstanley became active as a Leveller, then led a faction known as the True Levellers, who were branded "Diggers" because of their actions. Whereas Lilburne had sought to "level the laws", while maintaining the right to the ownership of real property, Winstanley sought to level the ownership of real property itself, which is why he and his followers called themselves "True Levellers".[citation needed]

Winstanley published a pamphlet called The New Law of Righteousness. The basis of this work came from the Book of Acts, chapter two, verses 44 and 45: "And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need." Winstanley argued that

In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury, to preserve Beasts, Birds, Fishes, and Man, the lord that was to govern this Creation; for Man had Domination given to him, over the Beasts, Birds, and Fishes; but not one word was spoken in the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule over another. And the Reason is this, Every single man, Male and Female, is a perfect Creature of himself; and the same Spirit that made the Globe, dwels in man to govern the Globe; so that the flesh of man being subject to Reason, his Maker, hath him to be his Teacher and Ruler within himself, therefore needs not run abroad after any Teacher and Ruler without him, for he needs not that any man should teach him, for the same Anoynting that ruled in the Son of man, teacheth him all things... And so selfish imaginations taking possession of the Five Sences, and ruling as King in the room of Reason therein, and working with Covetousnesse, did set up one man to teach and rule over another; and thereby the Spirit was killed, and man was brought into bondage, and became a greater Slave to such of his own kind, then the Beasts of the field were to him.[4]

Winstanley took as his basic texts the Biblical sacred history, with its affirmation that all men were descended from a common stock, and with its scepticism about the rulership of kings, voiced in the Books of Samuel; and the New Testament's affirmations that God was no respecter of persons, that there were no masters or slaves under the New Covenant. From these and similar texts, he interpreted Christian teaching as calling for the abolition of property [in land] and aristocracy.

Winstanley wrote: "Seeing the common people of England by joynt consent of person and purse have caste out Charles our Norman oppressour, wee have by this victory recovered ourselves from under his Norman yoake."

His theme was rooted in ancient English radical thought. It went back at least to the days of the Peasants' Revolt (1381) led by Wat Tyler, because that is when a verse of the Lollard priest John Ball was circulated:

On 1 April 1649, Winstanley and his followers took over vacant or common lands on St George's Hill in Surrey. Other Digger colonies followed in Buckinghamshire, Kent, and Northamptonshire. Their action was to cultivate the land and distribute food without charge to any who would join them in the work. Local landowners took fright from the Diggers' activities and in 1650 sent hired armed men to beat the Diggers and destroy their colony. Winstanley protested to the government, but to no avail, and eventually the colony was abandoned.

After the failure of the Digger experiment in Surrey in 1650 Winstanley temporarily fled to Pirton, Hertfordshire, where he took up employment as an estate steward for the aristocratic mystic Lady Eleanor Davies. This employment lasted less than a year. It ended when Davies accused Winstanley of mismanaging her property, and he then returned to Cobham.

Winstanley continued to advocate the redistribution of land. In 1652 he published another pamphlet called The Law of Freedom in a Platform, in which he argued that the Christian basis for society is where property and wages are abolished. In keeping with Winstanley's adherence to biblical models, the tract envisages a communistic society structured on non-hierarchical lines, though one likely to have voluntary patriarchs.

By 1654 Winstanley was possibly assisting Edward Burrough, an early leader of the Quakers, later called the Society of Friends.[7] It seems that Winstanley remained a Quaker for the rest of his life, since his death was noted in Quaker records.[8] However, his Quakerism may not have been very strong as he was involved in the government of his local parish church from 1659 onwards though it is not unknown for committed Quakers to retain strong ties to other religious traditions, even including priesthood. He may have been buried in a Quaker cemetery.

Winstanley believed in Christian Universalism, the doctrine that everyone, however sinful, will eventually be reconciled to God; he wrote that "in the end every man shall be saved, though some at the last hour." His book The Mysterie of God is apparently the first theological work in the English language to state this universalism.[9]

In 1657 Winstanley and his wife Susan received a gift of property in Ham Manor in Cobham, from his father-in-law William King. This marked Winstanley's renovation in social status locally and he became waywarden of the parish in 1659, overseer of the poor in 1660 and churchwarden of the Church of England parish church in 166768. He was elected Chief Constable of Elmbridge, Surrey, in October 1671. These offices on the face of it conflicted with Winstanley's apparent Quakerism, a religion which later became more quietist.

When Susan died about 1664, Winstanley sold the land in Cobham to King for 50. Winstanley returned to London to trade, whilst retaining some connections in Surrey. In about 1665 he married his second wife, Elizabeth Stanley, and re-entered commerce as a corn chandler. Winstanley died in 1676, aged 66, vexed by legal disputes concerning a small legacy owed to him in a will.[10][11]

The Soviet-era Alexander Garden Obelisk in Moscow, Russia, in 1918 included his name among a list of outstanding thinkers and personalities of the struggle for the liberation of workers.

In 1999, the British activist group The Land is Ours celebrated the Digger movement's 350th anniversary with a march and reoccupation of St George's Hill, the site of the first Digger colony. Like the original colony, this settlement was quickly disbanded.[12]Since 2010 a Wigan Diggers Festival has been held annually in Winstanley's birth town of Wigan attracting support across the North of England.[13]

The Complete Works of Gerrard Winstanley, edited jointly by Thomas N. Corns, Ann Hughes and David Loewenstein, were published by the Oxford University Press in December 2009 at 229 (ISBN978-0-19-957606-7).

A shorter and less comprehensive volume containing all the major works, Gerrard Winstanley: A Common Treasury edited by Andrew Hopton, was published in 1989 by Aporia (ISBN978-0-948518-45-4) and reprinted several times since, most recently in 2011 (paperback) by Verso Books (UK) with an introduction by Tony Benn (ISBN978-1-84467-595-1).

1975 saw the release of Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo's film Winstanley.[14] As with the duo's previous film, It Happened Here, it had taken several years to produce with a very low budget. Winstanley was loosely based on a 1961 novel by David Caute entitled Comrade Jacob[15] and was produced in a quasi-documentary style, with great attention to period detail even to the point of only using breeds of animals which were known to exist at the time, and actual Civil War armour and weapons borrowed from the Tower of London museum.[16][17]

In 2009 UKA Press released Winstanley: Warts and all (ISBN978-1-905796-22-9), the story of the making of the film Winstanley, written by film director and film historian Kevin Brownlow.

The song, "The World Turned Upside Down," by English folksinger Leon Rosselson, weaves many of Winstanley's own words into the lyrics. An older song, the "Diggers' Song", said to have been written by Winstanley, was recorded by the English group Chumbawamba on their English Rebel Songs 13811914 in 1988.

From A Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England:

The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited upon the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land.

From A Watch-word to the City of London, and Army:

Alas! you poor blind earth-moles, you strive to take away my livelihood and the liberty of this poor weak frame my body of flesh, which is my house I dwell in for a time; but I strive to cast down your kingdom of darkness, and to open hell gates, and to break the devil's bonds asunder wherewith you are tied, and that you my enemies may live in peace; and that is all the harm I would have you to have.

From A New-year's Gift for the Parliament and Army:

The life of this dark kingly power, which you have made an act of Parliament and oath to cast out, if you search it to the bottom, you shall see it lies within the iron chest of cursed covetousness, who gives the earth to some part of mankind and denies it to another part of mankind: and that part that hath the earth, hath no right from the law of creation to take it to himself and shut out others; but he took it away violently by theft and murder in conquest.

From The Law of Freedom in a Platform:

If they prove desperate, wanton or idle, and will not quietly submit to the law, the task-master is to feed them with short diet, and to whip them, for a rod is prepared for the fool's back, till such time as their proud hearts do bend to the law... If any have so highly broke the laws as they come within the compass of whipping, imprisoning and death, the executioner shall cut off the head, hang or shoot to death, or whip the offender according to the sentence of law. Thus you may see what the work of every officer in a town or city is."

The rest is here:

Gerrard Winstanley - Wikipedia

by John Perry Barlow

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract. This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge. Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.

In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.

Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.

These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

Davos, SwitzerlandFebruary 8, 1996

Link:

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

Effecting Change

The disgraced former head of the crypto exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, built his formidable public persona on the idea that he was a new type of ethical crypto exec. In particular, he was a vocal proponent of "effective altruism" — the vague-but-noble concept of using data to make philanthropic giving as targeted and helpful as possible.

But in a direct message, Vox's Kelsey Piper asked Bankman-Fried if the "ethics stuff" had been "mostly a front."

Bankman-Fried's reply: "Yeah."

"I mean that's not *all* of it," he wrote. "But it's a lot."

Truth Be Told

If the concept of becoming rich to save the world strikes you as iffy, you're not alone — and it appears that even Bankman-Fried himself knows it.

When Piper observed that Bankman-Fried had been "really good at talking about ethics" while actually playing a game, he responded that he "had to be" because he'd been engaged in "this dumb game we woke Westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and everyone likes us."

Next time you're thinking of investing in crypto, maybe it's worth taking a moment to wonder whether the person running the next exchange might secretly be thinking the same thing.

More on effective altruism: Elon Musk Hired A Professional Gambler to Manage His Philanthropic Donations

The post Sam Bankman-Fried Admits the "Ethics Stuff" Was "Mostly a Front" appeared first on Futurism.

More:

Sam Bankman-Fried Admits the "Ethics Stuff" Was "Mostly a Front"

Red Crew, Blue Crew

Had it not been for the heroics of three members of NASA's specialized "Red Crew," NASA's absolutely massive — and incredibly expensive — Space Launch System (SLS) likely wouldn't have made it off the ground this week.

During the launch, the painfully delayed Mega Moon Rocket sprang a hydrogen leak. The Red Crew ventured into the dangerous, half-loaded launch zone to fix it live. Incredible work indeed, although in spite of their heroics, keen-eyed observers did notice something strange about the so-called Red Crew: they, uh, don't wear red?

"How is it we spent $20B+ on this rocket," tweeted Chris Combs, a professor at the University of Texas San Antonio, "but we couldn't manage to get some RED SHIRTS for the Red Team."

Alas, the rumor is true. Red shirts seemed to be out of the budget this year — perhaps due to the ungodly amount of money spent on the rocket that these guys could have died while fixing — with the Red Crew-mates donning dark blue shirts instead. Per the NYT, they also drove white cars, which feels like an additional miss.

A leftover from last night that’s still bothering me:

how is it we spent $20B+ on this rocket but we couldn’t manage to get some RED SHIRTS for the Red Team pic.twitter.com/FO10Y6mg3H

— Chris Combs (@DrChrisCombs) November 16, 2022

Packing Nuts

For their part, the Red Crew didn't seem to care all that much, at least not in the moment. They were very much focused on needing to "torque" the "packing nuts," as they reportedly said during a post-launch interview on NASA TV. In other words, they were busy with your casual rocket science. And adrenaline, because, uh, risk of death.

"All I can say is we were very excited," Red Crew member Trent Annis told NASA TV, according to the NYT. "I was ready to get up there and go."

"We were very focused on what was happening up there," he added. "It's creaking, it's making venting noises, it's pretty scary."

In any case, shoutout to the Red Crew. The Artemis I liftoff is historic, and wouldn't have happened if they hadn't risked it all. They deserve a bonus, and at the very least? Some fresh new shirts.

READ MORE: When NASA'S moon rocket sprang a fuel leak, the launch team called in the 'red crew.' [The New York Times]

More on the Artemis I launch: Giant Nasa Rocket Blasts off Toward the Moon

The post Experts Baffled by Why NASA’s “Red Crew” Wear Blue Shirts appeared first on Futurism.

Read the original:

Experts Baffled by Why NASA’s “Red Crew” Wear Blue Shirts

Birth Canal

The James Webb Space Telescope's latest mind-bending image just dropped — and this one is, in a word, splendid.

As NASA notes in a blog post about the finding, the telescope's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) was put to incredible use when capturing the "once-hidden features" of the beginnings of a star.

Known as "protostars," celestial objects like this one — found inside an uber-absorbant "dark nebula" cloud — are not yet stars, but will be soon. In short, the Webb telescope capture imagery of a star being born.

As NASA notes, the fledgling star itself is hidden within the tiny "neck" disk of the spectacular, fiery hourglass shape in the image — which is, as NASA notes, "about the size of our solar system" — and the colorful lights seen below and above this neck are emitted by the protostar's birth.

Countdown to a new star

Hidden in the neck of this “hourglass” of light are the very beginnings of a new star — a protostar. The clouds of dust and gas within this region are only visible in infrared light, the wavelengths that Webb specializes in: https://t.co/DtazblATMW pic.twitter.com/aGEEBO9BB8

— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) November 16, 2022

Stellar Anatomy

While this incredible capture is not the first time space telescopes have observed star birth, Webb's latest does provide an incredible look at the phenomenon.

"The surrounding molecular cloud is made up of dense dust and gas being drawn to the center, where the protostar resides," the post reads. "As the material falls in, it spirals around the center. This creates a dense disk of material, known as an accretion disk, which feeds material to the protostar."

Some of that material, NASA notes, are "filaments of molecular hydrogen that have been shocked as the protostar ejects material away from it," most of which the stellar fetus takes for itself. It continues to feed on that material, growing more massive and compressing further until its core temperature rises to the point that it kickstarts nuclear fusion.

This gorgeous peek at that process is extraordinary to witness — and a yet another testament to the power of the mighty James Webb.

More on Webb: NASA Fixes Months-Long Issue With Webb Telescope

The post NASA Drops Stunning New James Webb Image of a Star Being Born appeared first on Futurism.

Read the original post:

NASA Drops Stunning New James Webb Image of a Star Being Born

Italian Import

Carbon dioxide has a bad rep for its role in driving climate change, but in an unexpected twist, it could also play a key role in storing renewable energy.

The world's first CO2 battery, built by Italian startup Energy Dome, promises to store renewables on an industrial scale, which could help green energy rival fossil fuels in terms of cost and practicality.

After successfully testing the battery at a small scale plant in Sardinia, the company is now bringing its technology to the United States.

"The US market is a primary market for Energy Dome and we are working to become a market leader in the US," an Energy Dome spokesperson told Electrek. "The huge demand of [long duration energy storage] and incentive mechanisms like the Inflation Reduction Act will be key drivers for the industry in the short term."

Storage Solution

As renewables like wind and solar grow, one of the biggest infrastructural obstacles is the storage of the power they produce. Since wind and solar sources aren't always going to be available, engineers need a way to save excess power for days when it's less sunny and windy out, or when there's simply more demand.

One obvious solution is to use conventional battery technology like lithium batteries, to store the energy. The problem is that building giant batteries from rare earth minerals — which can be prone to degradation over time — is expensive, not to mention wasteful.

Energy Dome's CO2 batteries, on the other hand, use mostly "readily available materials" like steel, water, and of course CO2.

In Charge

As its name suggests, the battery works by taking CO2, stored in a giant dome, and compressing it into a liquid by using the excess energy generated from a renewable source. That process generates heat, which is stored alongside the now liquefied CO2, "charging" the battery.

To discharge power, the stored heat is used to vaporize the liquid CO2 back into a gas, powering a turbine that feeds back into the power grid. Crucially, the whole process is self-contained, so no CO2 leaks back into the atmosphere.

The battery could be a game-changer for renewables. As of now, Energy Dome plans to build batteries that can store up to 200 MWh of energy. But we'll have to see how it performs as it gains traction.

More on batteries: Scientists Propose Turning Skyscrapers Into Massive Gravity Batteries

The post Startup Says It's Building a Giant CO2 Battery in the United States appeared first on Futurism.

Visit link:

Startup Says It's Building a Giant CO2 Battery in the United States

Welp, that didn't take long. The first civil suit against the still-imploding crypto exchange FTX was just filed in a Florida court, accusing FTX, disgraced CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, and 11 of the exchange's many celebrity ambassadors of preying on "unsophisticated" retail investors.

The list of celeb defendants impressive — honestly, it reads more like an invite list to a posh award show than a lawsuit.

Geriatric quarterback Tom Brady and soon-to-be-ex-wife Gisele Bündchen lead the pack, followed by basketball players Steph Curry and Udonis Haslem, as well as the Golden State Warriors franchise; tennis star Naomi Osaka; baseballers Shoehi Ohtani, Udonis Haslem, and David Ortiz; and quarterback Trevor Laurence.

Also named is comedian Larry David — who starred in that FTX Super Bowl commercial that very specifically told investors that even if they didn't understand crypto, they should definitely invest — and investor Kevin O'Leary of "Shark Tank" fame.

"The Deceptive and failed FTX Platform," reads the suit," "was based upon false representations and deceptive conduct."

"Many incriminating FTX emails and texts... evidence how FTX’s fraudulent scheme was designed to take advantage of unsophisticated investors from across the country," it continues. "As a result, American consumers collectively sustained over $11 billion dollars in damages."

Indeed, a number of FTX promos embraced an attitude similar to the cursed Larry David commercial. In one, Steph Curry tells viewers that with FTX, there's no need to be an "expert," while a Naomi Osaka promotion pushed the idea that crypto trading should be "accessible," "easy," and "fun."

It's also worth noting that this isn't the first suit of its kind. Billionaire Mark Cuban, also of "Shark Tank" fame, was named in a class action lawsuit launched against the bankrupt lender Voyager in August, while reality TV star Kim Kardashian was recently made to pay a roughly $1.2 million fine for hawking the "EthereumMAX" token without disclosing that she was paid to do so.

The FTX suit, however, appears to be the most extensive — and high-profile — of its kind. And while a fine for a million or two is basically a one dollar bill to this tax bracket, $11 billion, even if split amongst a group of 11 exorbitantly wealthy celebs, is a more substantial chunk of change.

Of course, whether anyone actually ever has to pay up remains to be seen. Regardless, it's still a terrible look, and real people got hurt. If there's any defense here, though? At least they didn't promise to be experts.

READ MORE: FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried hit with class-action lawsuit that also names Brady, Bündchen, Shaq, Curry [Fox Business]

More on the FTX crash: Experts Say Sam Bankman-fried's Best Legal Defense Is to Say He's Just Really, Really Stupid

The post Celebrities Are Officially Being Sued by FTX Retail Investors appeared first on Futurism.

See the original post:

Celebrities Are Officially Being Sued by FTX Retail Investors

In just about a year, Facebook-turned-Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse vision has cost his company upwards of $15 billion, cratering value and — at least in part — triggering mass company layoffs. That's a high price tag, especially when the Facebook creator has shockingly little to show for it, both in actual technology and public interest.

Indeed, it seems that every time Zuckerberg excitedly explains what his currently-legless metaverse will one day hold, he's met with crickets — and a fair share of ridicule — at the town square. Most everyone finds themselves looking around and asking themselves the same question: who could this possibly be for, other than Zucko himself?

That question, however, doesn't really seem to matter to the swashzuckling CEO, who's either convinced that the public wants and needs his metaverse just as much as he does, or is simply just convicted to the belief that one day people will finally get it. After all, he's bet his company on this thing and needs the public to engage to stay financially viable long-term.

And sure, points for conviction. But conviction is easy if you're surrounded by a bunch of yes men — which, according to Vanity Fair, the founder unfortunately is. And with $15 billion down the line, that may not bode well for the Silicon Valley giant.

"The problem now is that Mark has surrounded himself with sycophants, and for some reason he's fallen for their vision of the future, which no one else is interested in," one former Facebook exec told Vanity Fair. "In a previous era, someone would have been able to reason with Mark about the company's direction, but that is no longer the case."

Given that previous reports have revealed that some Meta employees have taken to marking metaverse documents with the label "MMA" — "Make Mark Happy" — the revelation that he's limited his close circle to people who only agree with him isn't all that shocking. He wants the metaverse, he wants it bad, and he's put a mind-boggling amount of social and financial capital into his AR-driven dream.

While the majority of his many thousands of employees might disagree with him — Vanity Fair reports that current and former metamates have written things like "the metaverse will be our slow death" and "Mark Zuckerberg will single-handedly kill a company with the metaverse" on the Silicon Valley-loved Blind app — it's not exactly easy, or even that possible, to wrestle with the fact that you may have made a dire miscalculation this financially far down the road.

And if you just keep a close circle of people who just agree with you, you may not really have to confront that potential for failure. At least not for a while.

The truth is that Zuckerberg successfully created a thing that has impacted nearly every single person on this Earth. Few people can say that. And while it can be argued that the thing he built has, at its best, created some real avenues for connection, that same creation also seems to have led to his own isolation, in life and at work.

How ironic it is that he's marketed his metaverse on that same promise of connection, only to become more disconnected than ever.

READ MORE: "Mark Has Surrounded Himself with Sycophants": Zuckerberg's Big Bet on the Metaverse Is Backfiring [Vanity Fair]

More on the Meta value: Stock Analyst Cries on Tv Because He Recommended Facebook Stock

The post Former Facebook Exec Says Zuckerberg Has Surrounded Himself With Sycophants appeared first on Futurism.

Read the original post:

Former Facebook Exec Says Zuckerberg Has Surrounded Himself With Sycophants

No Photos, Please

NASA barred the press from photographing the launch site of its Space Launch System after it boosted the agency's Artemis I Moon mission into space earlier this week.

Multiple space reporters said on Twitter that the agency had sent them a message telling them they were prohibited from photographing the Artemis 1 launch tower after the liftoff.

"NASA did not provide a reason," Eric Berger, Ars Technica's senior space editor, tweeted. The reporter added that according to his sources, the ban was apparently an attempt to save face after the launch damaged the tower.

"So now sources are saying that yes, Launch Complex-39B tower was damaged during the Artemis I launch on Wednesday morning," Berger tweeted. "Basically, there were leaks and damage where there weren't supposed to be leaks and damage."

Damaging Reports

Later, Washington Post space reporter Christian Davenport posted a statement from NASA that seemed to corroborate Berger's sources, though he emphasized that there was "no word on damage" to the launch pad.

"Because of the current state of the configuration, there are [International Traffic in Arms Regulations license] restrictions and photos are not permitted at this time," the statement given to Davenport read. "There also is a launch debris around the pad as anticipated, and the team is currently assessing."

Whatever NASA's reasoning, it's pretty clear that the agency doesn't want unapproved photos of its expensive and overdue Space Launch System rocket going out to the public. NASA loves positive publicity, it seems — but not negative.

More on the Artemis 1 launch: NASA Says It's Fine That Some Pieces May Have Fallen Off Its Moon Rocket During Launch

The post NASA Orders Press Not to Photograph Launch Site After Moon Mission Takes Off appeared first on Futurism.

Read more:

NASA Orders Press Not to Photograph Launch Site After Moon Mission Takes Off

Floored Apes

The value of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs have absolutely plummeted, leaving celebrities with six figure losses, in a perhaps predictable conclusion to a bewildering trend.

Earlier this year, for instance, pop star Justin Bieber bought an Ape for a whopping $1.3 million. Now that the NFT economy has essentially collapsed in on itself, as Decrypt points out, it's worth a measly $69,000.

Demand Media

NFTs, which represent exclusive ownership rights to digital assets — but usually, underwhelmingly, just JPGs and GIFs — have absolutely plummeted in value, spurred by the ongoing crypto crisis and a vanishing appetite.

Sales volume of the blockchain knickknacks has also bottomed out. NFT sales declined for six straight months this year, according to CryptoSlam.

According to NFT Price Floor, the value of the cheapest available Bored Ape dipped down to just 48 ETH, well below $60,000, this week. In November so far, the floor price fell 33 percent.

Meanwhile, the crypto crash is only accelerating the trend, with the collapse of major cryptocurrency exchange FTX leaving its own mark on NFT markets.

Still Kicking

Despite the looming pessimism, plenty of Bored Apes are still being sold. In fact, according to Decrypt, around $6.5 million worth of Apes were moved on Tuesday alone, an increase of 135 percent day over day.

Is the end of the NFT nigh? Bored Apes are clearly worth a tiny fraction of what they once were, indicating a massive drop off in interest.

Yet many other much smaller NFT marketplaces are still able to generate plenty of hype, and millions of dollars in sales.

In other words, NFTs aren't likely to die out any time soon, but they are adapting to drastically changing market conditions — and leaving celebrities with deep losses in their questionable investments.

READ MORE: Justin Bieber Paid $1.3 Million for a Bored Ape NFT. It’s Now Worth $69K [Decrypt]

More on NFTs: The Latest Idea to Make People Actually Buy NFTs: Throw in a House

The post Celebrities' Bored Apes Are Hilariously Worthless Now appeared first on Futurism.

See the original post here:

Celebrities' Bored Apes Are Hilariously Worthless Now