Daily Archives: July 9, 2022

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Voting Guides Archive - Libertarian Party of California

What is the libertarian position on abortion? The answer is not so simple. Abortion is a divisive issue in pro-liberty circles: some are staunchly pro-choice while others are staunchly pro-life. Yet, the various libertarian positions on abortion follow a similar moral logic.

So why are some people pro-choice? The answer is actually very simple: they believe that the fetus in the womb is not yet an independent human life and thus the mother has the right to abort the fetus because it is an issue of her bodily autonomy.

And why are some people pro-life? Again the answer is simple; they believe that the fetus is a living human being with its own rights, thus aborting the fetus is a violation of the babys bodily autonomy as it results in the death of a living being against its will.

But many people reject the fact that this is the dichotomy and instead make it a personal issue by demonizing the other side. Those on the pro-choice side are often demonized as baby killers, satanists, murderers, etc., while those on the pro-life side are often labeled misogynists, sexists, authoritarians, etc.

But what we must understand is that the vast majority of people on both sides have good intentions. They do not want to murder or control someones body. Most people on both sides actually want basic human rights such as the right to life and the right to control their own bodies and make their own decisions.

This is also the reason why libertarianism is torn on the subject of abortion. Both pro-choice and pro-life libertarians believe their position is in support of liberty. While it may seem like both sides have nothing in common, they do have one very important thing in common, they are both pro-liberty.

And in reality we need more people that are pro-liberty. While many on the right and left often use religion or other personal views to support or oppose the right to abortion, libertarians dont, they have a simple goal, libertarians want everyone to have the freedom to make their own decisions, libertarians believe that every individual is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

If science is able to prove that the fetus is not a living being, the libertarian position would be pro-choice. But if science is able to prove that the fetus is a living being, the libertarian position would be pro-life because libertarians want to protect life, liberty, and bodily autonomy.

And that is the moral and logical position.

Libertarians do not wish to use religious belief or personal views to control other people, Instead, libertarians want to know the truth and act according to facts and maximize liberty for all.

If the libertarian approach to abortion is applied on other issues, we would be able to solve our problems much better.

We can create a freer, more advanced and more just society by maximizing liberty and pursuing the truth.

If life does not begin in the womb, then abortion is justified, if life does begin in the womb, then abortion is wrong. This is the pro-liberty view. You have a right to life and bodily autonomy; libertarians want to defend your rights. They do not want to spread their religion, nor demonize anyone and cause division. Libertarians are pro-choice, pro-life but most importantly pro-truth and pro-liberty.

For more content on the various schools of thought within classical liberalism, be sure to check out our video playlist by clicking on the button below.

This piece solely expresses the opinion of the author and not necessarily the organization as a whole. Students For Liberty is committed to facilitating a broad dialogue for liberty, representing a variety of opinions.

Guest Author,

Swapnarka Arnan is a student who is interested in Economics, Political Economics, History, International Relations and Human rights. He loves to read, his favourites include Anthem by Ayn Rand, Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman and Two Treatises of Government by John Locke.

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The libertarian position on abortion - Learn Liberty

The Team Libertarian Report from the National Constitution Center's "Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy" is now available for free download on SSRN. I coauthored the report with Clark Neily and Walter Olson (both of the Cato Institute). Here is the abstract:

American democracy faces multiple serious challenges. In the immediate future, we must establish institutional safeguards to prevent the kind of negation of election results attempted by Donald Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. In the medium-to-long run, more must be done to empower people to be able to make meaningful choices about the policies they live under. Ballot-box voting has great value. But it is not enough to ensure genuine political freedom. The latter requires enhancements to both "voice" and "exit" rights. We need to simultaneously increase citizens' ability to exercise voice within political institutions, and give them more and better exit options.

This report takes on all three challenges. We propose a variety of reforms that can address immediate short-term threats to democracy, while also increasing citizen empowerment in the long run.

Part I outlines reforms that can safeguard the electoral process against attempts at reversal, while also curbing presidential powers that could be abused in ways that undermine democracy. Among the most urgently needed reforms are new constraints on presidential powers under vaguely worded emergency statutes. These can too easily be manipulated by an unscrupulous administration in ways that could hobble democracy. It is also essential to reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887 in order to definitively preclude the sort of effort to overturn an election that then-President Trump engaged in after his defeat in 2020. In addition, we propose ways to incentivize electoral losers to concede defeat, rather than engage in bogus accusations of fraud and voter suppression, and to gradually restore public trust in the electoral system.

Part II describes how a number of serious flaws in the democratic process can be alleviated by expanding people's opportunities to "vote with their feet." Under conventional ballot-box voting, individual citizens usually have almost no chance of influencing the outcome. They also have strong perverse incentives to be "rationally ignorant" about the issues they vote on, and to process political information in a highly biased way.

Expanded foot voting rights can help alleviate these problems. People can vote with their feet, choosing what jurisdiction to live in within a federal system, and also through making decisions in the private sector. Relative to ballot box voters, foot voters have a much higher chance of making a decisive choice, and therefore much stronger incentives to become well-informed. Expanded foot voting can also help alleviate the dangerous polarization that has gradually poisoned our political system. Much can be done to expand foot voting opportunities in both the public and private sector by breaking down barriers to migration, such as exclusionary zoning. Foot voting can also be facilitated through greater decentralization of political power, which would reduce the incidence of one-size-fits-all federal policies from which there is no exit, short of leaving the country entirely.

Finally, Part III outlines ways in which ordinary citizens can be empowered to exercise greater "voice" in their dealings with the criminal justice system, particularly through reviving the institution of the citizen jury. Since the Founding and before, jury trials have been understood as an important tool of popular participation in government. Sadly, in the modern criminal justice system, the constitutionally prescribed role of juries in resolving criminal charges has been almost entirely displaced by so-called plea bargaining. As a result, citizen-jurors no longer exercise influence over those powers of government that directly impact the lives and liberty of the people more than most others. We propose multiple reforms that can help restore juries to their proper role in the criminal justice system.

Even if adopted in combination, our proposed reforms would not cure all the ills that afflict American democracy. But they can do much to shore it up against threats, and empower Americans to exercise greater control over the government policies they live under.

The NCC project also includes a Team Conservative report (coauthored by team leader Sarah Isgur, David French, and Jonah Goldberg, all affiliated with The Dispatch), and a Team Progressive report (coauthored by prominent election law scholars Edward Foley and Franita Tolson). I offered some thoughts in the similarities and differences between the three reports here.

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Team Libertarian Report from National Constitution Center "Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy" Project Now Available on SSRN - Reason

By Daniel Nardini

There seems to be no real political center anymore. The Democratic Party in so many ways has been infiltrated by organizations on the political left. The Republican Party has largely been infiltrated by the political right and what is being called the alt-Right (alternative Right meaning extremists such as neo-nazis, Ku Klux Klan, White Supremacists, White Nationalists, etc.). Now it seems that the alt-Right (or alt-right) has taken over the third largest party in the United States; the Libertarian Party. The Libertarian Party, which has existed since 1971, had called for laissez faire capitalism, complete freedom for the individual, protection of private property, a strictly non-interventionist foreign policy, the rights for gays and other minorities, and fiscal conservatism. In fact, the Libertarian Party had called for the rights of gays and trans-people decades before this issue had gone mainstream. At the Libertarian National Convention held in Reno, Nevada, in late May, a radical alt-right faction called the Mises Caucus (according to high ranking former members of the Libertarian Party Joseph Bishop-Henchman and Andy Craig) took total control of the party.

According to Henchman and Craig, the Mises Caucus will completely take the Libertarian Party into a very dark alt-right direction. Already, the Mises Caucus has stripped away the platform on abortion, and there are many members in the Libertarian Party who are in fact anti-gay and anti-trans-people. Just as equally telling were tweets against gay people by some party people in various state party branches, and the recent removal of the party platform against discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity or sexual orientation (this is a dog whistle for bigots and racists to join the party). But this takeover is much more than just about the takeover of the Libertarian Party. It is the alt-right on the march as the Democratic Party and the political left are in retreat. Indeed, as I pointed out in last weeks article that the Texas Republican Party has cast doubt on the very 2020 presidential election. In my view, if anything, it was one of the most monitored and freest elections in Americas history. But there is a growing movement among Republicans and the alt-right that the election was totally fraudulent, and therefore must be overturned. But what I am seeing and what Henchman and Craig are seeing is the attempted effort to change America into an alt-right hell on earth.

In some ways I am personally seeing that now. I am seeing more and more Confederate flags appearing throughout my area of Illinois. In the Land of Lincoln, where our 16th President Abraham Lincoln came from, I am seeing ever more Confederate flags. When I was growing up, no one in Illinois ever flew a Confederate flag. That would be like flying a Nazi flag in Israel. But it is happening now, and I sincerely doubt all of the Confederate flags being flown fro peoples homes is due to Southern pride. Likewise, my poor wife had been subjected to racism at work by being given work schedules with either too many work days (like seven days in a row), or too few days. We have had to complain to higher administration that this was unacceptable, and only after that did my wifes work schedule return to something that was within a 40-hour work week. No one else at her job is treated this way, and we both know that racism plays a part in this. There is no doubt in my mind that when one political extreme or another comes into play, we all suffer from where the political winds blow. Now it seems that the extreme political right and alt-right is gaining the ascendancy, and it is coming back with a vengeance.

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Alt-Right On the March - Lawndale News

After a truly surreal 36 hours, British politics has some clarity: The prime minister, Boris Johnson, will resign, thus triggering the third Conservative leadership contest in six years. His successor (due to be picked from a field of hopeful Tory parliamentarians which could easily stretch to a dozen people) is expected to take office this autumn. The race begins now.

For British libertarians, the end of the Johnson premiership is a bittersweet moment. For all his association with liberty-crushing lockdowns, many of us still remember when Johnson was a darling of the freedom-loving right. He used to be the politician who made his career rallying against the excesses of the nanny state while thumbing his nose at bores and bureaucrats alike.

It was this penchant for freedom and optimism that made Johnson such an effective campaigner for Brexit. Unlike the nativist grievance peddling from the likes of Nigel Farage, Johnson painted Brexit as a chance to build a more outward-looking and ambitious Britain. All we had to do first was "take back control"and end the supremacy of European Union regulation. It was a theme that went on to power both his leadership and general election campaign of 2019.

But shortly after the newly-crowned prime minister broke the political deadlock around Brexit, there came a new crisis: COVID-19. At first, Johnson's much-heralded libertarian instincts held up nicely. In one of his early press conferences about the pandemic (in which he encouraged a nervous public to minimize social contact and keep physical distance), Johnson laughed off a question about calling in the police to enforce common sense. Within weeks, he had been persuaded by his advisers to order a full lockdown.

It was this heavy-handed approach that would go on to shape 18 months of British politics, as the country veered from punitive lockdowns (at one point opting for the most stringent measures in Europe) to equally invasive lockdown-lite measures like the "rule of six." As backbench libertarian members of Parliament raged, Johnson's acolytes sought to assure the public that these measures flew in the face of his political instinctsand would disappear as soon as possible. But many of us weren't convinced.

The truth is that, even as the pandemic faded, Johnson's newfound "big state" instincts did not. One of the first warning signs was when, after Johnson had been hospitalized with COVID-19, he announced an expansive anti-obesity agendapromising to ban multibuy deals on unhealthy food; end television advertising of sweets and crisps; and even make calorie counts compulsory on all restaurant menus (a move that would have placed a disproportionate burden on small businesses).

Downing Street didn't just come after our diets. One of the government's flagship legislative proposals was the much-criticized Online Safety Bill: a sprawling manifesto on internet regulation that would see web hosts fined vast sums for failing to remove "legal but harmful" content (the exact meaning of which would be subject to the judgment of government ministers). Free speech advocates saw it for what it was: a censor's charter.

His supposed libertarianism didn't add up to much when it came to taxation and spending, either. Having used his leadership campaign to define himself against the austerity measures of previous Tory governments, Johnson spent his time on Downing Street going even furtherdriving up state spending in pursuit of lofty policy goals (including using taxpayer cash to protect the assets of millionaire pensioners by introducing a socialized cap on privately-provided elder care).

Under big-spending Boris, tax levels reached the highest level since WWII. A sneaky decision not to inflation-proof tax thresholds meant that 2 million people just got pushed into a higher tax bracket, even though their real-terms earnings have not necessarily increased. Businesses didn't fare much better eitherjust look at the recent decision to levy a short-notice "windfall tax" on the increased profits of energy firms (which comes on top of the planned hike in corporation tax).

Inevitably, this profligate attitude was going to bring trouble for a maverick like Johnson. And so it did last month when a mooted plan to ignore World Trade Organization rules in order to unfairly subsidize British steel (a move designed to appeal to Johnson's protectionist "Red Wall" voters) led to the resignation of Christopher Geidt, the prime minister's ethics adviser. Although, of course, none of those scandals came close to Partygatethe lockdown-breaking spree that hastened Johnson's downfall.

For all his promise, the truth is that Johnsonthe supposed savior of the Tory rightwill end up leaving behind a Britain considerably less free than the one he inherited. Many will continue to praise him for delivering Brexit, but this misses the point. While the U.K. may be out of the E.U. legal orbit, we've done almost nothing to take advantage of it, retaining the vast majority of the regulations that Johnson used to rail against so persuasively.

If there's one positive, it's thatas the Johnson premiership goes down in flamesperhaps the Conservative Party will finally rediscover its commitment to liberty. There are already signs that at least one serious candidate (the current foreign secretary, Liz Truss) plans to run on a more libertarian-oriented platform in the upcoming contest. Others are likely to follow in the coming weeks.

If Conservative voters have paid attention during the Johnson premiershiprather than remaining blinded by party or Brexit loyaltythey will have observed the folly of "big state" conservatism. Let's hope this summer they vote in a way that reflects that.

More:

Boris Johnson Leaves Behind a Bigger, Bloated State - Reason

LAWRENCE Kansas advocacy groups and Democrats are working to broaden outreach to unaffiliated and young voters this summer to get Kansans to vote against the anti-abortion constitutional amendment on the Aug. 2 ballot.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the League of Women Voters of Kansas and the Kansas Democratic party have seen an increased interest in voting on the amendment. Rep. Christina Haswood, a Lawrence Democrat and member of the Navajo Nation, said anti-abortion policies disproportionately affect American Indians and is canvassing to encourage voter turnout.

Martha Pint, co-president of League of Women Voters of Kansas, and Rebecca Perkins, Dickinson County Democratic chairwoman, say they are confronting the challenges created by legislators who placed the constitutional amendment on the primary ballot in an attempt to favor passage of the amendment. The primary is otherwise closed to independent voters, and few Democrats typically participate in comparison to Republicans.

There is this huge hurdle that we have to overcome, to get it out there, to let people know you can vote, you just have to be registered, you dont have to affiliate with any party to vote on this issue, Pint said. Now, if you want to vote on the candidates, different story. But on this issue, be registered and vote.

Pint said the League of Women Voters Kansas found that some counties, including Sedgwick and Wyandotte, offer applications for advanced mail-in ballots that only list Republican and Democrat as options for party affiliation. Pint said this may mislead some unaffiliated voters to believe they cant vote on Aug. 2.

Pint said the league brought this issue to the attention of officials. Sedgwick County adjusted its application for advance mail-in ballots to include unaffiliated and Libertarian as options. Wyandotte Countys advance mail-in ballot has not changed.

According to the Kansas Secretary of States Office, as of April, 44.3% of registered voters in Kansas identify as Republican, 28.8% identify as unaffiliated, 25.7% identify as Democrat, and 1.1% identify as Libertarian.

Perkins said her favorite story while handing out Vote No yard signs was when she went to deliver a sign to a rural home in Dickinson County. She said she approached a man in a pickup truck who told her he had been waiting for the signs to arrive.

And they said, I am probably the only Republican-slash-Libertarian youll find voting no on this question. And I said, You will find you are far from the only Republican voting no, Perkins said.

The amendment vote will be the first referendum in the U.S. pertaining to abortion rights following the U.S. Supreme Courts overturn of Roe v. Wade. Those who vote yes support amending the Kansas Constitution to make it clear that women have no right to terminate a pregnancy. Those who vote no support a Kansas Supreme Court ruling in 2019 that determined the state constitutions right to bodily autonomy applies to a womans decision to terminate a pregnancy.

Perkins said she has seen a growing interest in voting no on the amendment from people in both political parties, men and women, and an uptick in the number of younger people participating in the Democratic Party in Dickinson county.

According to a survey conducted by The Docking Institute of Public Affairs at Fort Hays State University, 60% of Kansans believe abortion should not be completely illegal in Kansas. The survey found 50.5% of respondents agree the Kansas government should not regulate the circumstances under which women can receive an abortion, while 25.4% believe the opposite.

You know, there was a lot of naivete on the part of the Kansas legislative Republican leaders thinking that they could just get their way by putting this on a primary and thinking politics as usual would prevail, Perkins said. I think the overturning of Roe upends politics as we know it.

Pint and Perkins said the demand for Vote No yard signs has increased in both the Wichita and Dickinson county areas. Both also said theyve seen an increase in the number of young people who are participating.

Pint said she was among 600 others at the U.S. League of Women Voters biennial convention in Denver when the decision ending Roe was issued.

You want to talk about some upset women, Pint said. Oh my goodness, you couldnt have asked for a better place to be, and you couldnt have asked for a worse place to be, because we just all felt so upset and angry and defeated.

Pint said convention goers joined a march for abortion rights in Denver.

Haswood said on the Kansas Reflector podcast she is p***ed about the possibility of Kansans losing reproductive rights. Because Haswood is running unopposed she said she is able to partially shift her campaign focus to voter turnout for the amendment.

She also expressed concern for American Indians who will be affected if Kansans lose their right to choose an abortion.

You know, its not going to stop abortions, only safe abortions, Haswood said. And thinking about my Indigenous folks, we have one of the highest rates of maternal mortality, morbidity, preeclampsia, you know, we can go down the list on all that.

American Indian and non-Hispanic Black women are approximately three times more likely than white women to die of pregnancy-related issues, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Haswood said the Hyde Amendment has affected American Indians rights and access to abortions.

The Hyde Amendment was passed by Congress in 1976 and forbids federal Medicaid funding to be used for abortion services, while some exceptions were added in 1993. Indian Health Services regulations follow the Hyde Amendment.

According to the National Library of Medicine, many American Indian women living in the U.S. rely on IHS facilities for reproductive health services. Data suggests the majority of these facilities lack resources to provide abortions under any circumstances.

According to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, in 2018 Medicaid covered 1.8 million American Indian and Alaskan Native people. Of American Indian and Alaskan Native adults under the age of 65, 36% were covered by Medicaid in 2018. Of all adults in the United States, 22% are covered by Medicaid.

Data shows that 46% of American Indian women give birth to their first child before the age of 20.

Haswood said reproduction and sex education was interwoven in American Indian creation stories, until the colonization of American Indian land when American Indian women began to be sexualized.

She said American Indians historically practiced family planning and used herbal medicines for abortions.

For me, Im just so lucky to have my summer interns who are all as angry as I am, Haswood said. We are training folks who want to volunteer and make this voter engagement because that is what the other side is doing, and theyve been doing it since Roe v. Wade was (put) in place. So, now we have to help folks have voting plans.

The deadline to register for the primary election is July 12. Starting July 13, advance ballots will be mailed and in-person voting opens.

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Kansas abortion rights advocates and Democrats work to boost voter turnout - Kansas Reflector

Data from the N.C. State Board of Elections show that 41,795 N.C. voters have changed their party affiliation since the beginning of 2022. More than half of those, 23,374, are now unaffiliated voters, instead of a Democrat, Republican, or Libertarian.

Republicans are the only N.C. party to gain more voters than theyve lost so far this year, with nearly 5,000 Democrats becoming Republicans.

Of political parties, Democrats have lost the most voters since January 2022 with nearly 20,000 registered Democrats leaving the party and only 6,253 joining. The data show that of those who left, one quarter (4,999) became Republicans, 14,447 became unaffiliated, and 207 switched to the Libertarian Party.

About 9,830 voters have left Republican affiliation, and 11,341 switched to it. Of the Republican voters who changed their affiliation, most (8,348) became unaffiliated, 1,211 became Democrats, and 271 switched to Libertarian.

Libertarians lost 936 affiliated voters. Of those, 579 became unaffiliated, 220 became Republicans, and 137 became Democrats.

This year seems to have a slight uptick in registration changes when comparing it to the election years of the last decade, said Jim Stirling, research fellow at the John Locke Foundations Civitas Center for Public Integrity. 2020 had a massive number of registration changes, totaling 237,611 changes.This includes the now removed Green and Constitutional parties only having received 2,477 registrant changes.While we may not reach 2020 registration changes, we will likely see a large uptick in registrations as we get closer to November.

There has been speculation that voters are switching parties to manipulate another groups primary race and might switch back in time for the general election.

Short-term party switching is often talked about but is pretty rare in practice, said Andy Jackson, director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity. It was popularized by Rush Limbaughs Operation Chaos in 2008, when he encouraged Republicans to change registration to vote in Democratic presidential primaries. More recently, there was an effort by progressives to change party registration to vote in the Republican 11th Congregssional District primary against Madison Cawthorn.

Only an estimated 2,000 Democrats made the switch in that race, likely not enough to have swayed the outcome.

North Carolina has more than 7 million registered voters, with about 2.5 million Democrats, 2.2 million Republicans, and 50,000 Libertarians. There is a meeting at the State Board of Elections scheduled for Thursday June 28, that would consider adding the Green Party to N.C. ballots. Controversy has erupted lately, though, that citizens whove signed the Greens petition are being contacted by a group associated with national Democrat operative Marc Elias. The group is encouraging them to remove their names from the petition. If the Green Party is allowed on N.C. ballots for November, it could erode Democrat affiliations even further.

The data illustrate a national trend with more voters switching to the Republican Party ahead of 2022 general elections. Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported that 1 million voters in 43 states have switched to Republican affiliation this year, while only 63,000 switched to become Democrats. AP cited Raleigh as one of the key cities in the study where Republicans are gaining ground.

Democrats are hoping that last weeks U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wades constitutional right to an abortion will change the voter exodus from their party and force Democrats focus onto the state legislative races, where abortion law would now be set.

I think this is an earthquake in the midterms, said N.C. Democrat political strategist Morgan Jackson on Front Row with Marc Rotterman over the weekend, calling it a base motivator.

Both sides of the aisle think the Roe decision from the U.S. Supreme Court could benefit Democrats, with a recent Civitas Poll of likely N.C. voters finding that 40% of respondents identified as pro-life, while 43% of respondents said they are pro-choice. Among women 18-34 years old, 22% say they are pro-life, while 63% say they are pro-choice.

One of the reasons Democrats are having trouble in polls right now is because Democrats are not motivated, Jackson said. This changes all of that.

Republicans are working to wrest control of Congress from Democrats after losing majority power in 2020. They say that historic inflation in food, housing, energy, and gasoline costs combined with dropping wages will set the pace for November elections, giving Republicans the wind at their back. In Junes Civitas poll, only 41% of respondents say they plan on voting for Democrats at the national level and 39% at the state level.

Unaffiliated voters were the second-largest group to change parties, behind Democrats. Of the 11,376 unaffiliated voters to change, 6,122 became Republicans, 4,905 became Democrats, and 349 became Libertarians.

The general election is scheduled for Nov. 8. Voters must be registered by Oct. 14.

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More than 40000 NC voters have changed their political party this year - Carolina Journal

I used to line up an article every month for Econlib, from 2008 to 2019. My favorite was one by Jeff Hummel in 2018. Its titled Benefits of the American Revolution: An Exploration of Positive Externalities.

Here are the opening two paragraphs:

It has become de rigueur, even among libertarians and classical liberals, to denigrate the benefits of the American Revolution. Thus, libertarian Bryan Caplan writes: Can anyone tell me why American independence was worth fighting for? [W]hen you ask aboutspecificlibertarian policy changes that came about because of the Revolution, its hard to get a decent answer. In fact, with 20/20 hindsight, independence had two massive anti-libertarian consequences: It removed the last real check onAmerican aggression against the Indians, and allowed American slavery to avoid earlierand peacefulabolition. One can also find such challenges reflected in recent mainstream writing, both popular and scholarly.

In fact, the American Revolution, despite all its obvious costs and excesses, brought about enormous net benefits not just for citizens of the newly independent United States but also, over the long run, for people across the globe. Speculations that, without the American Revolution, the treatment of the indigenous population would have been more just or that slavery would have been abolished earlier display extreme historical naivety. Indeed, a far stronger case can be made that without the American Revolution, the condition of Native Americans would have been no better, the emancipation of slaves in the British West Indies would have been significantly delayed, and the condition of European colonists throughout the British empire, not just those in what became the United States, would have been worse than otherwise.

Another excerpt:

[Historian Gordon] Wood concludes that Americans had become, almost overnight, the most liberal, the most democratic, the most commercially minded, and the most modern people in the world. The Revolution not only radically changed the personal and social relations of people but also destroyed aristocracy as it had been understood in the Western world for at least two millennia. The Revolution brought respectability and even dominance to ordinary people long held in contempt and gave dignity to their menial labor in a manner unprecedented in history and to a degree not equaled elsewhere in the world. The Revolution did not just eliminate monarchy and create republics; it actually reconstituted what Americans meant by public or state power.

Heres a comment Jeff made in 2018 in response to some commenters:

Even after military conflict broke out in April 1775, a majority of the Continental Congress did not favor independence until February 1776, and it was a slim majority. The first colony to actually instruct its delegates to vote for independence was North Carolina the following April. Thus we have nearly a year of hard fighting during which a majority of Patriots favored and expected to achieve reconciliationwithinthe British Empire. It was Thomas Paines Common Sense, published in January 1776, that ultimately tipped the scales in favor of secession.

Also the difference between the French and American Revolutions can be overdrawn. The American Revolution admittedly had no reign of terror, but the treatment of Loyalists could be quite appalling, with disturbing instances of brutality and killing. Given that many Loyalists fought for the British, some historians have started referring to the Revolution as a civil war, a term neither of you [the two people hes responding to] consider. At the end of the War for Independence, an estimated 50,000 Loyalists left the United States, out of total population of 2.5 million. The French Revolution generated as many as 130,000 migrs and deportees, out of a total population of 25 million. Thus the American Revolution produced refugees at almost four times the rate of the French Revolution. And while many migrs eventually returned to France, very few Loyalists returned to the U.S.

I still maintain that the American Revolution brought momentous benefits, but let us not overlook its costs and excesses.

The picture above is of me with my Betsy Ross flag in front our house. I will be carrying it in the July 4 parade in Monterey later today.

Happy, happy July 4.

See more here:

The Positive Externalities of the American Revolution - Econlib

A Google Deep Mind project (Democratic AI) ended up redistributing virtual wealth in ways that were voted as the most popular methods, according to a vote taken by human players participating in an online game-based experiment.

The research was based on an algorithm that learned from different models of human behavior via an online investment game. Participants (biological and silicon) had to decide whether to keep or give away monetary gains from a communal pot. The AI ended up gradually redistributing the wealth it won and redressing some of the imbalances in economic fortunes among the players. But it achieved this in a way considered by participants to be the fairest way possible.

The reason for the research was not, as our clickbait headline suggests, to prove that computers, software, or AI researchers are inherently socialists but instead to develop better value alignment between self-learning computer models and their human bosses. Because theres a wide range of behaviors exhibited by humans, an AI should be able to align its behavior in such a way that it appeals, on balance, to a majority of the population.

The researchers aimed to maximize a democratic objective: to design policies that humans prefer and thus will vote to implement in an [] election.

The study measured human monetary contributions during the game under three redistribution principles: strict egalitarian, libertarian and liberal egalitarian. In political; terms, these might translate into socialism, free market-ism, and social democracy hard left, hard right, and somewhere in between.

The egalitarian model divided funds equally between players regardless of their contribution, while the libertarian returned a payout proportional to the monetary contribution those with the most gained the most. The liberal egalitarian measured contributions proportional to any inherent imbalance in wealth that players entered the game with.

It was found that generally, humans disliked the extremes of each model. The pure egalitarian model was seen as aggressively taxing the wealthiest and supporting freeloaders. The libertarian model saw money flow to the wealthiest disproportionately. Researchers wanted to know whether an AI system could design a mechanism that humans preferred over these alternatives and that would be more acceptable than the liberal egalitarian modeling that one might think was the natural middle ground.

The AI was trained to imitate behavior during the game, voting the same way as human players over the course of many rounds. The model was optimized using deep RL (reinforcement learning) and then took redistribution decisions with a new group of human players. Players voted on the AIs suggestions for redistribution. Iterating on these processes obtained a mechanism that we call the Human Centred Redistribution Mechanism, the papers authors state.

Throughout the experiments, radical redistribution of wealth from the top down was found to be unpopular as it eventually led to the wealthiest players not wishing to contribute collectively at all. Nor were those at the bottom of the virtual economic pile happy with seeing just a few players gain disproportionally.

The report states, the redistribution policy that humans prefer is neither one that shares out public funds equally, nor one that tries to speak only to the interests of a majority of less well-endowed players.

Smart AI systems learning from the full gamut of human behaviors mean systems can be trained to satisfy what researchers called a democratic objective, that is, to find the most popular way forward. The AIs winning model was voted the best by a few percentage points, beating the liberal egalitarian, pure egalitarian, and pure libertarian. In brief, the AI found a better compromise than any humans could devise by simply learning to imitate all available human behavior.

AIs learning from human behavior is a fiercely complex area of study, and some of the more public experiments have ended in, at best, derision. Earlier experiments, like the very public disgrace of the Microsoft Twitter personality, ended badly. Given a cross-section of the cauldron of human opinion expressed by an opaque algorithm, Tay learned to be racist, sexist, and generally unhinged after a few hours. As a Microsoft spokesperson told CNN at the time, [Tay] is as much a social and cultural experiment, as it is technical.

When biased learning materials are given to an AI, it simply recreates that bias and, in some notable cases, exaggerates by being given similar input often. However, improving methods of machine learning are helping matters, as is the awareness of inherent human bias in just about every expression and utterance. Economics is one area where the nuances of human behavior can literally be quantified and, therefore, are a fertile ground for research.

In 50 years, will we refer to AIs decision-making abilities to decide human affairs? Having AIs making decisions over human conduct is a standard trope in science fiction, where silicon rulers can be fully benign (The Polity series of books, by Neal Asher, for example) or something very much more malevolent (Terminator et al.). If there is a better way that pleases most of the people most of the time, it may have just germinated.

See original here:

The AI algorithms that believe in equality, from Google's Deep Mind - TechHQ

Is there a pro-freedom progressivism? Im not certain, but Matthew Yglesias sure seems to think so. In the past hour, he has tweeted the following:

1. Criticism of a Really outrageous attack on free speech by law enforcement in Arizona.

2. Argued Lets make it easier to get permits to build houses An hour earlier he made the pitch more overtly political, Own Ron DeSantis by making it easier to build houses in California.

3. Argued Lets make clean energy deployment easier

4. Argued Lets increase the supply of doctors and other medical professionals by weakening the AMA cartel.

5. Five hours ago he suggested that freedom was the best way to sell the pro-choice argument:

As Ive said many times, theres no such thing as public opinion. It depends how you frame the question. I.e., the question creates the opinion.

6. Six hours ago, he tweeted, YIMBY is about freedom, not apartment buildings.

7. Twenty hours ago he tweeted on vaccines and nuclear power. In both areas he has written more extensive essays, sometimes advocating the removal of regulatory barriers that slow the development of vaccines and prevent the construction of (low carbon) nuclear power plants.

Matt Yglesias is certainly not a libertarian. But hes also not a typical progressive. Rather he advocates something called popularism, which is roughly the achievement of progressive goals via popular means (and in some cases compromises.) This differs from populism, which often aims at non-progressive policy goals such as trade barriers, immigration barriers, and the weakening of criminal justice protections. In Yglesiass view, unpopular woke excesses actually end up hurting the progressive cause.

I find it interesting that Yglesias often sees the freedom message as a way of making public policies more palatable. He spends part of the year in Texas, and seems to have a pretty good grasp of how middle Americans think, especially when compared to the typical coastal progressive.

PS. If I were pro-life, Id be infuriated by this misleading and manipulative video. But as Yglesias correctly suggests, it is probably quite effective.

PPS. Warning: If progressives keep using the freedom message because it works, they might eventually find themselves beginning to believe in freedom. Handle with care!

Here is the original post:

Popularism and freedom - Econlib