Category Archives: Libertarian

With the Polish parliamentary elections just around the corner, the country's rising far-right threaten Poland's relations with Ukraine in more ways than one.

The Confederation party, a contender for third place in the upcoming Oct. 15 elections, is a disrupting force that pushes the country's mainstream further and further to the fringe, setting the tone for Polish foreign policy.

Traditionally Kyivs most ardent and vocal ally, the Polish governments relationship with Ukraine has been recently marred by diplomatic spats and trade disputes.

The ruling right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) is not only putting its foot down on Ukrainian grain imports but also chastises Kyiv for an apparent lack of gratitude for Polish support and plays on painful historical grievances.

This seemingly sudden change is not without cause PiS is feeling the pressure of the Confederation, a far-right alliance fighting for the same voters and capitalizing on the creeping Ukraine fatigue.

At one point surging as high as 14% and, in the more recent polls, oscillating around 10%, some surveys place the "nationalist-libertarian coalition" party as potentially the third strongest candidate behind PiS's United Right coalition (37%) and the liberal Civic Coalition/Civic Platform (30%).

To halt the spilling of its voters to the more radical and hardline Confederation, PiS is forced to up the ante in its Poland first rhetoric and convince a significant part of its voter base that Law and Justice can protect their interests better than the far-right upstarts.

The ruling conservatives must also consider that the Confederations MPs may hold keys to the next government. With their hands likely on a strong result, the radicals may become the kingmakers of these elections, something that the current Polish government is well aware of.

The Confederation Liberty and Independence was formed ahead of the 2019 parliamentary elections as a coalition of nationalist, conservative, and libertarian political projects, winning around 6.8% and 11 MPs in Sejm, the lower house of the country's parliament.

The far-right group espouses hardline Euroscepticism, a tough stance on immigration, and is set to introduce reduced taxation and government spending. Its members have, however, also accumulated a substantial record of anti-semitic and racist statements.

As the Confederation is heading toward even stronger results in the October elections, its views on Ukraine raise worries regarding Warsaw and Kyivs future rapport.

In their program, the party stresses the primacy of Polands own interests when it comes to their eastern neighbors. The radicals also managed to hit the nerve on some of the most sensitive topics, including the dark legacy of the Volyhnia massacres committed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) against the Poles during World War II.

Despite mutual efforts by both Ukrainian and Polish leaders to settle this painful chapter of the shared history, the topic of Volynhia, UPA, and its ideological leader, Stepan Bandera, keeps haunting Polish-Ukrainian relations.

Read also: Sawomir Sierakowski: Polands destructive grievance politics

These understandable sentiments are capitalized not only by Polands own radical groups but also by external forces seeking to drive a wedge between the two countries.

Lukasz Adamski, a historian, political scientist, and vice director of the Juliusz Mieroszewski Centre for Dialogue, points out that the Confederation is more closely connected to the organizations of Volyhnia victims relatives an influential lobby in Polish politics than other parties.

While being made up mostly of sincere Polish patriots, these groups have also been, to some extent, infiltrated by pro-Kremlin forces, Adamski said.

For example, a July demonstration at Ukraines embassy in Warsaw ahead of the 80th anniversary of the Volyhnia Massacre was organized by Krzysztof Tolwinski, who preaches reconciliation with Belarus and Russia amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

The event was also attended by Mateusz Piskorski, a suspected Russian spy, and Leszek Sykulski, the founder of the pro-Russian Polish Anti-War Movement.

The rally's participants called for holding Ukraine responsible for Banderism and Nazism and urged to cut weapons supplies for Kyiv, a clear nod to Russian decades-long propaganda.

The Confederations own leading members are also no strangers to anti-Ukrainian or pro-Russian statements.

80-year-old Janusz Korwin-Mikke, one of the coalitions founding members notorious for anti-semitic and misogynist statements, has a history of defending Russian President Vladimir Putin and even questioned Russias responsibility for the Bucha Massacre.

In 2015, Korwin-Mikke visited Russian-occupied Crimea and met with Russian occupation authorities.

Firebrand Grzegorz Braun rallies against what he calls the Ukrainization of Poland by Ukrainian refugees and said he wants to seek reparations from Kyiv for the Volyhnia tragedy.

While these statements are likely to grab the media headlines, it is not the face that the Confederations younger party leaders wish to present to the public.

Michal Lebduska, a researcher at the Prague-based think-tank Association for International Affairs, said that figures like Korwin-Mikke or Braun are being pushed to the background as their ultraconservative rhetoric does more harm than good to the partys performance.

Instead, the Confederation focuses on younger male voters, namely entrepreneurs, using their libertarian platform and attacking PiS' populist spending on pensions or family benefits.

The partys 2019 presidential candidate, 41-year-old Krzysztof Bosak, denied that the Confederation would be pro-Russian and said that the party does not have any delusion about Russia.

The far-right coalition criticizes the scale of Warsaws support for Ukraine, branding it gullible and naive, but it does not call for cutting Ukraine support completely.

"I have no doubt that helping Ukraine, also militarily in some sphere which does not lower Poland's own military capabilities, is necessary," Confederation spokesperson Anna Brylka told Reuters.

Adamski rejects branding the Confederation as pro-Russian, explaining their hardline stance toward Ukraine rather as an attempt to set the party apart from the mainstream politics, represented by both PiS and the rest of the opposition, namely Donald Tusk's liberal Civic Platform (PO).

This party (Confederation) is trying to get electorate support by using anti-mainstream political slogans and calling for transactional policy when it comes to Ukraine, and this is fundamentally different than being pro-Russian, Adamski said.

However, it remains unclear whether this shift toward more moderate, rational rhetoric reflects the partys actual policy goals or whether it is merely a play not to scare off potential voters during the campaign.

Some experts warn against underestimating the strength of the anti-Ukrainian strand among Confederations party members.

Wojciech Przybylski, the editor-in-chief of Visegrad Insight, noted that while younger leaders of the Confederation are effective at attracting younger electorate by effective PR and libertarian rhetoric, they have little to say on the security of foreign policy.

When it comes to foreign and security issues, Braun and Korwin-Mikke dictate the party agenda, Przybylski said, adding that these two figures, in fact, set the "value structure and hierarchy of the coalition.

In spite of the months of squabbles coming both from Polish and Ukrainian official channels, it is crucial to remember that the decisive majority of the Polish population remains supportive of Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.

Nevertheless, polls show that the initial pro-Ukrainian fever from the first months of the war is cooling down. This shift is largely driven by war and refugee fatigue common for other countries supporting Ukraine.

With the enthusiasm of the first months slowly falling off, Polands public is shifting attention to the 1 million Ukrainian refugees who became their new neighbors.

According to surveys, the number of Poles decisively in favor of continued support for refugees dropped from 49% to 28% between January and June.

Around 60% of respondents said Ukrainian refugees should not have access to the same social benefits as Polish citizens, and over half are against providing them with free food and accommodation.

Lebduska adds that some of the traditional issues between Poles and Ukrainians, such as the aforementioned historical grievances or Polish negative stereotypes about Ukrainian migrant workers, subsided with the start of the full-scale invasion but are now slowly resurfacing.

As this mood swing played right into the hands of the Ukraine-skeptic Confederation, PiS was forced to adopt a more hardline stance toward Kyiv as well.

With the struggle for electoral support so intense that every one or two percentage points count, other parties are inclined to adopt certain slogans of the Confederation, Adamski said.

Read also: Sawomir Sierakowski: The strongest army in Europe?

In May, Lukasz Jasina, a spokesperson for the Polish Foreign Ministry, said that Kyiv had not done enough to accept responsibility for the Volyhnia Massacre, sparking outrage in Ukraine.

Polish Secretary of State and Head of the International Policy Bureau Marcin Przydacz sparked another diplomatic conflict in the summer when he said Ukraine should show more gratitude for Polands aid.

The tensions reached new heights following Warsaws decision to extend the ban on Ukrainian grain imports past Sept. 15, after which Ukraine said it will sue Poland at the World Trade Organization and threatened its own embargo against Polish products.

This strategy may have brought some fruit. In July, the Confederation peaked in the polls at 14%, and PiSs United Right polled at 35%. The more recent numbers show the far-right alliance dropping to around 10% and the ruling party slightly rising to 37%.

Even so, PiS is most likely still looking at a notably lower result than in the 2019 parliament elections (43.6%) and will need another partys support to secure a majority in the Sejm.

Given the convergence between the ruling conservatives and the Confederation on issues such as the EU or social issues, the far-right party appears to be the most logical choice for post-election negotiations.

As Ukraine-skeptic populists grain ground both in Europe and the U.S., there are concerns that the Confederation might drive Poland to join this trend, especially if PiS tries to accept the far-right as potential coalition partners.

It remains to be seen what will be the result of the October vote, but despite the vitriol in the air, there is little prospect of a new right-to-far-right government spelling a sudden end to Ukraine's military aid.

Both PiS and Confederation have previously spoken against a joint coalition.

While politicians statements often count for little once the last ballot is cast, there are reasons to believe that the Confederation will not seek to enter into the government with PiS.

I dont see Confederation having an appetite to enter (into coalition with PiS), Przybylski said.

The smaller of the parties would be too weak in such a potential coalition and likely devoured by its larger partner, the expert believes.

Lebduska pointed out that the radical coalition has been building an image of a fresh alternative to the stale duo of PiS Jaroslaw Kaczynski and POs Tusk.

Becoming a coalition member in a government led by either of the two could take away much of the Confederations appeal as an anti-system party.

Read also: Ukraine war latest: Biden says American support for Ukraine cant be allowed to be interrupted

Should PiS receive a chance to build a government, they are more likely to try and poach some of the Confederations lawmakers or negotiate some kind of conditional, silent support in the Sejm.

And even if such an improbable but not impossible scenario came to pass, the support for Ukraine, including military supplies, is unlikely to dry out.

Poland will remain an important ally of Ukraine, at the least in the military area, Lebduska said, pointing out that there is a broad consensus on this subject in much of the Polish society.

As the decisively anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian segment of the Polish population remains in a clear minority, even the Confederation would be forced to respect the majority's opinion.

Polands historical experience with Russian occupation and Moscows military presence in the neighborhood make Ukraines survival a vital security interest for Warsaw and the Polish people.

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However, both Przybylski and Adamski said that the shift in PiS rhetoric, driven by the far-right challenge, would likely leave scars on long-term Polish-Ukrainian relations if the Law and Justice holds on to power.

Whatever result PiS gets, some of it will be based on nationalist votes that are skeptical of Ukraine, Przybylski said.

The party knowingly decided to build its strategy on "capturing nationalist sentiments" and will be under pressure to keep their promises, he added.

Neighborhood of two agrarian countries would naturally generate some conflicts, but this conflict has been solved through emotions, Adamski said, pointing out that Kyiv is also to blame for the escalation.

President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered scathing remarks against Poland at the UN General Assembly, hinting that their grain embargo is aiding Russia.

In response, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called on the Ukrainian president to never insult the Poles again.

Gathering nationalist voters, a new PiS government might be obliged, with or without the Confederations political support, to take a more protectionist stance toward Ukraine.

As Kyiv seeks to enter the European Union, its aspirations may encounter hurdles laid by Warsaws economic interests and historical grievances.

Read also: Peter Tkacenko: Slovakia after election If not friend, certainly not enemy of Ukraine

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Far-right party may hold keys to next Polish government, sets tone in talks with Ukraine - Yahoo News

This is an audio version ofThe Reason Livestream,which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern onReason's YouTube channel.

On June 30, PornhubAmerica's most-trafficked adult websiteannounced that it was blocking access in Mississippi, Virginia, and Utah. Why? Well, Pornhub was reacting to the passage of age-verification laws in those three states. Similar laws have passed in Louisiana, Texas, Montana, and Arkansas, leading Politico to declare that "A Simple Law Is Doing the Impossible. It's Making the Online Porn Industry Retreat." But the industry is fighting back and won a preliminary injunction against Texas' law.

Reason's Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe talked about these developments with Aella, a former OnlyFans star and outspoken libertarian defender of sex workers who leverages her sizable social media following to run sex polls and surveys, the results of which she analyzes and publishes on her blog Knowingless. In this conversation, they discuss Aella's sex surveys, delve into the psychological literature examining online porn consumption, unpack the privacy implications of age verification laws, and talk about a recent debate Aella attended hosted by The Free Press and FIRE about the effects of "the sexual revolution" on American society.

Continue reading here:

Aella: Is Porn Too Pervasive? - Reason

(UPDATE:The House of Representatives voted 216-206 on Tuesday afternoon to remove Rep. Kevin McCarthy (RCalif.) as speaker of the House, with eight Republicans voting in favor of his dismissal. It is the first time in U.S. history that a sitting speaker has been ousted in this manner. The position will remain vacant until a majority of the House votes to appoint a new speaker.)

Ahead of what could be a dramatic afternoon in the House of Representatives, Rep. Thomas Massie (RKy.) occupies an unusual and possibly unique position.

Massie is the closest thing to a libertarian that you'll find in the House and a frequent ally of the right-wing Freedom Caucussome members of which are aiming to topple Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in a vote that could come this afternoon. But in an interview with Reason on Tuesday morning, Massie offered a defense of McCarthy's speakership, and he warned that the Republican rebels might not understand the damage they would do by firing him.

"In many ways, this is a referendum on whether the House is going to try regular order or not, because the next speakerif Kevin is deposed todayis not going to say 'oh, if only we had tried more regular order, this could have worked out,'" Massie toldReason. "The next speaker is going to go back to the Old Testamentand we're going to devolve to the former method, which was an omnibus bill every year and gang warfare to try and get your thing in the omnibus bill."

For Massieand for anyone who wants to see Congress budget more responsibly regular order is a big deal. Effectively, that means that Congress should bring each of its 12 annual spending bills to the floor via the process that everyone learns in civics class: with committees voting on what to include in each, then amendments, and debate on the House floor before a final vote. Congress hasn't correctly completed that process on time since 1996.

As part of the compromise McCarthy reached with the House Freedom Caucus in January, he agreed to go back to that system.

He's been criticized for failing to follow through. While there are certainly personal issues involved in Rep. Matt Gaetz's (RFla.) attempt to dump McCarthy from the speakership, some of Gaetz's criticism is focused on McCarthy's unwillingness to send single-subject bills to the House floor.

Gaetz filed the motion to vacatea rarely used procedural tool that allows the full House to vote to remove a speakerafter McCarthy suspended the rules to bring a continuing resolution to the House floor on Sunday to prevent the government from shutting down. The bill passed with support from Democrats and against the objections of the Freedom Caucus.

Massie voted against the continuing resolution but said Tuesday it was "the least worst of a bunch of bad options." If the House bill hadn't passed, he said, it's likely that a Senate-drafted continuing resolution including a higher level of spendingmostly because of added military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, which was left out of the House measurewould have become law.

McCarthy's defenders argue that he's working to reform the budget process and needs more time to see it through.

Massie points out that McCarthy has allowed two Freedom Caucus membersReps. Chip Roy (RTexas) and Ralph Norman (RS.C.)onto the Rules Committee. Together with Massie, that's a voting block that can effectively control what bills reach the House floor, something that Massie says would have been unthinkable under previous Republican speakers.

"They have been listening to us and we have been guiding the process," he says.

Norman has also voiced support for keeping McCarthy in charge of the House. "I have been profoundly disappointed in several elements of Speaker McCarthy's leadership, but now is not the time to pursue a Motion to Vacate," he wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter) on Tuesday morning.

If McCarthy survives today's vote, does that mean regular order will prevail and Congress will pass all 12 budget bills before the new continuing resolution expires in mid-November? Massie says there's "a good chance" that will happen.

On the other hand, "ifKevin fails today, we're going to get the Schumer-McConnell special," he says, referring to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (RKy.), who Massie believes will have the upper hand in any dealings with a leaderless House GOP caucus.

"And it's going to be an omnibus," Massie added, "and it's not going to be pretty."

Originally posted here:

Massie: McCarthy Speakership Showdown a 'Referendum' on ... - Reason

[Source]

American sportswriter and host Pablo Torre recently spoke about his college days with entrepreneur Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy, shedding light on the Republican presidential candidate's persona in the classroom.

That Guy: In the Sept. 26 episode of the "Pablo Torre Finds Out" podcast, Torre reminisced about Ramaswamy's college days at Harvard, referring to him as "That Guy" on campus. Torre explained that "That Guy" is typically a "campus celebrity" who possesses an extraordinary level of ambition and an acute awareness of their image.

"Ramaswamy, when we were both freshmen, was famous on campus for his alter ego 20 years ago," the ESPN host recalled. "His alter ego was a libertarian rapper that he called 'Da Vek.'"

Drawing cringe: According to Torre, Ramaswamy fits the "That Guy" description perfectly as he was allegedly undeterred by how his actions leave others cringing. Torre said Ramaswamy would often raise his hand conspicuously in the shape of a 'V' during lectures, resembling a "bat signal for terrible libertarian takes."

More from NextShark: US citizen sentenced to death in China for fatal 'revenge' stabbing of ex-girlfriend

Obama karaoke: Torre elaborated on Ramaswamy's behaviors in MSNBC's "11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle." Torre said part of what's "absurd" about the GOP presidential candidate is his conduct of "Obama karaoke," daring people to think "this is what a smart person looks like" when it's what "an extreme, ridiculous person looks like."

"As a tool of the 'deep state' here to undermine his campaign, I've been instructed to remind people that the dude has been ridiculous for 20 years," Torre jokingly added.

More from NextShark: TikTok suppressing get-out-the-vote content, study suggests

Ramaswamy, who announced his bid for the Republican nomination in February, has a net worth of over $950 million as of August, as per Forbes. Should he win the 2024 election, he pledged to fire 75% of federal employees, end civil service protections for bureaucrats and abolish multiple federal agencies, including the Education Department, FBI, ATF, IRS, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and USDA's Food and Nutrition Service.

More from NextShark: Comedian Resorts to Racism Against Asian People, 'Ching Chong Virus' on Twitter

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ESPN's Pablo Torre explains how Harvard classmate Vivek Ramaswamy was 'That Guy' in school - Yahoo News

When it comes to personal privacy, the promises of DeFi summer have rung hollow.

Projects flooded the scene with buzzwords like financial privacy and cryptographic security during the DeFi boom of 2021, setting user expectations sky high when the industry was still in its earliest stages.

As a result, once the dust settled, it became apparent that most of DeFis bold privacy declarations had fallen short of expectations. This issue has been further underscored with the rise of new on-chain analytics services like Arkham Intelligence and Chainalysis, whose data dashboards revealed how traceable DeFi users on-chain activity actually is.

Now, the DeFi sector is facing increased regulatory pressure to de-anonymize certain transactions and user profiles, while simultaneously dealing with flagging user confidence in terms of their individual rights to data privacy.

But do these challenges mark the demise of privacy in DeFi? We certainly dont think so.

The fact is, todays most pressing issues are not a criticism of the nature of DeFi itself, but of its current state of evolution. More specifically, the problem for developers is that much of this frenzy was built on underdeveloped technology which has not lived up to the hype. However, the underlying infrastructure is rapidly maturing, and the Web3 development paradigm is shifting away from the notion that transparency must invariably be linked with a lack of privacy.

There is a significant difference between a libertarian approach to crypto privacy (doing what you want with no regards to anti-money laundering efforts) and privacy that enables new use cases in a regulatory-friendly way (doing what you want as long as your funds come from a legitimate source).

Read more: Privacy remains sticking point in Americas ongoing CBDC debate

Fortunately, most privacy laws allow for this delineation, which is why the vast majority of existing regulations have more to do with areas concerning customer protection rather than a blanket opposition to privacy.

For instance, the US government supports privacy-enhancing technologies as long as they align with existing AML/CFT rules. However, when organizations use private blockchains without following these guidelines or use services that operate outside the current laws, they create unnecessarily risks for their users.

The key to making this approach to privacy both practical for regulators and agreeable to users could be, for instance, a decentralized data storage of users credentials such as idOS a GDPR-compliant identity system recently announced during this years TOKEN2049 conference. With a solution like that, no single party is in control of users credentials even as the system verifiably ensures that users are not on any authorized sanctions lists.

Rapidly maturing technologies like zero-knowledge proofs and decentralized identity systems eliminate the need for (and the possibility of) divulging extraneous user data to any external party. At the same time, they enable regulators to identify and act on malicious on-chain activity with confidence and rapidity. Combining such a storage system with privacy-enhanced DeFi apps makes for a comprehensive privacy trading suite that is also aligned with AML regulations.

All of which is to say, Web3 builders are listening to both regulators and end users and developing more nuanced solutions that cater to both ends of the spectrum. There is no doubt that the industry as a whole currently does not live up to the expectations of either side.

Read more from our opinion section: DeFi has a reputation problem

However, one could say the same about the modern Internet, which mirrors DeFis evolutionary trajectory from both a developmental and regulatory perspective.

For context: The birth of the internet can be traced to an academic initiative conducted by the US Advanced Research Projects Agency but the Internet as we know it today was largely the result of a series of informal interactions and decisions made by tinkerers and fringe enthusiasts in the following years. Small, experimental testnets and applications that few people imagined would ever matter gave rise to essential Internet protocols still in use today, including File Transfer and TCP/IP.

During this time, the internet was essentially unregulated. Until the expansion and commercialization of the internet in the mid-1990s, the internets primary governance model was decentralized and based on informal standards and protocols voluntarily adopted by builders, with a focus on making networks interoperable.

And yet regulations eventually followed, developers adapted, and the vast majority of todays global financial activities are conducted online something that would have been unimaginable just a few decades ago given the internets discombobulated origins. Despite all its issues, the internet has unquestionably been a force for good in the world: The rapidly maturing DeFi sector has the potential to have a similar impact on the financial system and beyond.

As DeFi continues to grow and mature, regulators will develop new frameworks to govern this industry while developers will create new, responsible privacy-preserving technologies. Thats why Web3 builders should recognize that todays privacy shortcomings are a puzzle to be solved, not an indictment on the industry. And if an industry outsider cannot imagine a Web3 protocol that addresses regulators privacy concerns while satisfying users privacy needs, thats only because that solution hasnt been built by an industry insider yet.

Antoni is a co-founder of Aleph Zero Foundation (Switzerland), an organization overseeing the development of the Aleph Zero blockchain, and a Managing Partner of Cardinal Cryptography (Poland), firm focused on core development of the Aleph Zero ecosystem.

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DeFi has not followed through on its privacy promises yet - Blockworks

"The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations."

This spicy little sentence is typical of the zingers littered throughout David Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom. The anarcho-capitalist classic turns 50 this year, and it's worth revisiting for both its spirit and substance.

The book has a chaotic energy. Just a few pages after the epigraphwhich pairs a moderately profane joke by Lenny Bruce with a verse from "libertarian troubadour" and future U.S. congressman Dana Rohrabacherwe're deep into a discussion of the Federal Communications Commission's role in spectrum allocation before bouncing back out for chatty speculation about how to "sell the schools," a riff on "socialism, limited government, anarchy, and bikinis," and a treatment of the vital question, "is william f. buckley a contagious disease?" (Stylish '70s lowercase in the original, of course.)

But there is a method to the madness. In his "postscript for perfectionists," Friedman hammers home what is not included in the book: "I have said almost nothing about rights, ethics, good and bad, right and wrong." This strategic agnosticism is what captured my attention as a 19-year-old college student, already weary of banging my head against the wall of deontological disagreement.

It's very hard to convince someone to change their mind about what is right and wrong, but as Friedman observes, "it is much easier to persuade people with practical arguments than with ethical ones." Perhaps not coincidentally, that postscript was written right around the time that James R. Schlesinger was coining the phrase, "You are entitled to your own views, but you are not entitled to your own facts." If, as Friedman hypothesized, "most political disagreement is rooted in questions of what is, not what should be," many people have been going about the project of consensus building and political change all wrong. "I have asked, not what people should want," he says, "but how we can accomplish those things which most of us do want."

This approach suggests a methodology: Scrutinizing existing, highly effective voluntary institutions and systems for alternative ways to perform functions that even a minarchist libertarian might reserve for the state, and then extrapolating from there toward shared goals of peace, prosperity, and justice.

Asking how the world works nearly always yields more interesting and productive discussions than asking how the world should be. Often accused of utopianism, anarcho-capitalists are the opposite. ("I have wondered whether I might have originated 'Utopia is not an option,' but probably not," Friedman mused while casually popping into the comments section of a 2015 Slate Star Codex post about his greatest work.) Friedman's comfort with uncertainty is inspirational, heroic even. He isn't quite sure how things would play out if roles currently performed by the state were instead accomplished via market mechanisms, but he's happy to make a guess. After all, if he knew for sure, he'd be the CEO of the Court Services Co. or Professors Incorporated instead of being a guy who writes books.

***

"There are essentially only three ways that I can get another person to help me achieve my ends," Friedman writes: "love, trade, and force."

In a world where individuals are free to pursue their own interests and desires, people are more likely to engage in mutually beneficial relationships driven by genuine connection rather than social expectations or legal obligations. Loveor "more generally, the sharing of a common end"is a powerful coordinating tool in society, and one too often underestimated or undermined by other political theories.

Still, love only gets you so far. Force, the preferred tool of toddlers and tyrants, too often leads to unintended consequences while failing to actually achieve its stated ends. That leaves trade as the primary mode for getting things done. Part of the charm of The Machinery of Freedom is that it proceeds on the assumption that voluntary exchange is largely up to the task of organizing society. Friedman underscores that trade is not just limited to material goods but can also encompass intangible assets such as knowledge and ideas.

The most striking thing about The Machinery of Freedom is its cheerful, eclectic optimism. It weaves back and forth between history, politics, and speculative fiction in ways that are enlivening and energizing. Friedman was not the first to make market anarchist arguments, but in the decades that followed the book's publication, they grew in appeal as an alternative to the angry polarization gripping those who preferred to fight over state power. He is generous with his ideas. If you don't like his plan for voucherizing university classes, he's happy to offer you another option for education reform. If you are skeptical about market provision of national defense, he's happy to suggest a theory of change inspired by the French monarchy's habit of selling tax exemptions. If you're worried about who will pay to build the roads, he's happy to tell you a weirdly prescient story about "electronic recording devices, computer-controlled entrances, and three-to-eleven working days" while conceding that those innovations "sound like science fiction."

The appeal of Friedman's anarchism is not that he has the answer, but that he has dozens of them and he's not at all bothered by the idea that none may be the perfect one. "It is fashionable," writes Friedman, "to measure the importance of ideas by the number and violence of their adherents. That is a fashion I shall not follow. If, when you finish this book, you have come to share many of my views, you will know the most important thing about the number of libertariansthat it is larger by one than when you started reading."

Original post:

At 50, 'The Machinery of Freedom' Remains an Anarcho-Capitalist ... - Reason

"Prspera is the first time in human history that a group of people has said there's a way to deliver governing services, privatized for profit in a completely free market way," says Joel Bomgar, a Mississippi state representative and president of Prspera Inc., the company that's building a privately run charter city on the Honduran island of Roatn called Prspera Village.

In Honduras, about half of the population lives in extreme poverty, and gross domestic product per capita is 25 times higher than in the United States. And yet the country has abundant natural resources and is close to major shipping lanes.

The problem is governance: Nobody wants to invest in Honduras because the country has a long history of political instability, expropriating private land, and legal agreements that aren't particularly binding. Honduras is ranked 154th out of 190 countries in contract enforcement on the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index and 133rd overall in ease of doing business.

Narco gangs once made Honduras the murder capital of the world, and though crime has dropped in the last 12 years, life there is still extremely dangerous in comparison to the U.S., which is one reason so many Hondurans make the risky journey to immigrate. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported more than 73,000 encounters with Hondurans at the U.S.-Mexico border so far this year.

Recently, the country's politics have been especially turbulent: A president was ousted by the military in 2009, and another was extradited to the U.S. for drug trafficking.

The nation recently elected its first democratic socialist president, Xiomara Castro, who has called for a "refounding." She wants to rewrite the constitution to recognize that "the capitalist system doesn't work for the majority" of people. She's calling for electricity to become a "public goodand a human right" and is laying the groundwork for the outright nationalization of the entire energy sector. And she's spending billions on cash transfers.

"Every millimeter of the [Honduran] homeland that [capitalists] took over on behalf of the sacrosanct free marketwas watered with the blood of the native people," said Castro, who ran on abolishing the very law that authorized Prspera and similar zones in Honduras, in a September 2022 speech to the United Nations. "My government has embarked upon a process of national rebirth and is bringing profound change."

Meanwhile, a group of foreign investors has embarked on its own "refounding" of sorts. They've started a radical experiment in private governance, which they hope will become a model for how to create prosperity in poor countries all over the world.

"The concept of free private cities and charter cities, specifically what Prspera is trying to do, is the most transformative project in the world," says Bomgar. "There's not a big financial hub in Central America. There's not a sort of Singapore of Central America right now. And so that's what we're trying to create."

On the island of Roatn, a tourist hub with a land mass similar to Hong Kong, a group of libertarian entrepreneurs, including Bomgar, are trying to build a country within a country that's free of the dysfunction that hobbles the national government. And they're starting with a clean slate.

Prspera is based on the principle of true voluntarism, they say: All who live and work there have opted into the rules that govern the land, and they can change their minds and opt out at any time.

The first location being developed as part of this privately run charter city is called Prspera Village, but the project's co-founder and CEO, Erick Brimen, says that the particular plot of land doesn't matter as much as the rules governing it.

"Prspera is not a location. Prspera is a platform that delivers governance as a service in partnership with host governments that create a legal framework that allows that public-private partnership to emerge," says Brimen.

In 2017, the company began acquiring its first 58 acres, which at the time was mostly an undeveloped jungle. Today, Prspera Village is occupied by an office building, a schoolhouse, a factory for prefabricated building materials that's under construction, and a shared workspace for remote office workers. A 14-story luxury condo tower is also nearly complete. Development is happening here at a pace unheard of in a country where it can take years and several well-placed bribes to obtain a permit to put up a building of that size.

Prspera has so much autonomy thanks to a 2013 law authorizing Zones for Economic Development and Employment, or ZEDEs.

ZEDEs don't merely have favorable business and labor regulations, like China's Shenzhen. They make their own laws and regulations. Prspera created its own zoning code and levies its own taxes. Only the country's criminal laws still apply.

To become a full-time resident of Prspera, you just fill out an online application and pay a $1,300 fee, though Honduran nationals get an 80 percent discount. In lieu of a court system, they have access to the PrsperaArbitration Center to resolve any civil disputes, or they can opt for a different arbiter.

Companies can select their own regulation from a menu of options. Like Japan's biotech regulation? Use that. Singapore's banking laws? Use those. Or mix and match.

Depending on what industry they're in, some companies can opt out of regulation altogether, though at a cost.

"Then you're under common law legal liabilities, which can be very harsh. So you do have an incentive to be under regulation, and you need to have liability insurance that covers you," says Niklas Anzinger, who runs Infinita VC, a venture capital fund based in Prspera.

"So this way you have insurance [companies] looking at what you're doing in your regulation and like, 'Yeah, this [regulatory scheme] has been done multiple times before [in] multiple jurisdictions, it's cheap. And this one, ah, that's quite new, right? It's not been really tested. So there's gonna be a higher premium because we have to pay experts to assess the risk of what you're doing.' So, this way you have an open process to improve and develop and find the right kind of regulations for different businesses."

When Reason visited, Anzinger was hosting a seminar for companies that operate or are interested in operating here, including a biotech firm, which found it easier to run gene therapy trials at Prspera than in the U.S.

But President Castro has vowed to repeal the ZEDE law, calling it "criminal" legislation and an attempt to "steal our sovereignty."

Brimen says that even if a repeal vote is ratified by the Honduran congress, Prspera is protected by international treaties, and the government will risk paying damages of over $10 billion if it violates them. Brimen says he expects the Honduran government to back down.

"It's not just the cash cost to us [that will stop them]. It's the message that the Honduran government is appropriating a U.S. investment," says Brimen."So, on the one hand, you have this very bad outcome, and on the other, which I think they're starting to realize, begrudgingly to some extent, you have not [only] $10 billion [in damages] but a multiple of that in upside benefits in not just direct investment but of jobs, positive externalitieswhat would you do?"

Fernando Garcia, a former economic Minister whom Castro appointed as presidential commissioner against the ZEDEs, says what Brimen and his company are trying to pull off in Honduras is outrageous.

"It is as if I came to the United States with $500 million or $1 billion and asked for a constitutional amendment to buy Central Park in New York, to create a state within a state," says Garcia, speaking in Spanish.

He says that President Castro is defending the Honduran constitution and its national sovereignty by dismantling the ZEDE law because zones like Prspera "will later become free states, independent of her [political] process" if she doesn't act now. Brimen says ZEDEs are far from a threat to political sovereignty.

"It's the opposite. It's an exercise of sovereignty" says Brimen. "One has to more fully understand what sovereignty is to begin with. Sovereignty is about self-determination. And the power to be self-determined properly rests upon the people, not upon some institution that rules them."

Jorge Colindres is the technical secretary of Prspera ZEDE,* roughly the equivalent of its mayor. He says that his experience running a law firm in Honduras has made him acutely aware of the ways in which corruption and weak rule of law have crippled the country, which is why he became involved with the project early on.

"I've seen corruption at almost every government or institution. I've seen it at the municipalities, I've seen it with the prosecutor and the judges, at the environmental agency, at the health care agencies, essentially all over," says Colindres. "And on top of that, you have people demanding bribes and payments. It's horrible."

Colindres says that because Prspera must work to attract and keep investors and citizens, it's incentivized to eliminate corruption from its governance. Bomgar says this competitive structure will make all the difference.

"Unlike other governments, we don't have a monopoly of the use of force and coercion," says Bomgar. "So we live by the principles of nonaggression, self-ownership, and the rule of law and property rights. And unique to Prspera is the right to join but also the right to exit."

Voice matters here at Prsperaresidents will be allowed to elect five of the nine members of the city council once the population surpasses 10,000but political power mostly derives from exit, or voting with your feet. Colindres says that, for example, in a 10-story building, floor seven could be in Prspera, floor six in the general free zone regime of Honduras, and the remaining floors governed by the national regime.

"The basis of the legitimacy of government is consent of the people," says Colindres. "We do have consent of 100 percent of our residents, and that's where our powers stem from."

This opt-in arrangement has allowed Prspera to expand from five acres to 58, and then, during the height of the pandemic, the project expanded to more than 1,000 acres of a nearby resort and villa called Pristine Bay. The hotel at the center of that development remains outside Prspera's jurisdiction, and individual homeowners in the villas will be able to opt in or out.

Another major problem that many South and Central American countries have faced is runaway inflation. In the '90s, Honduras' inflation peaked at around 34 percent; it currently stands at about 9 percent. Prspera will have its own financial overseer who will make sure businesses have selected an applicable regulation standard for themselves, and Prspera is home to a bitcoin cafe and education center devoted to promoting the use of the cryptocurrency on Roatn.

"We provide educational support, technical support setting up [point-of-sale bitcoin infrastructure]," says Dusan Matuska, who runs the Roatn Bitcoin Center and says more than 50 merchants currently accept bitcoin on the island. "I think Prspera's main payment infrastructure will be bitcoin over time."

Prspera is primarily a governance model, so its territory doesn't have to be contiguous. We took a ferry ride to the mainland city of La Ceiba to visit another large territory that's participating in the project.

Though everything about Prspera has been voluntary to date, it's no wonder that Hondurans are worried about foreign businessmen violating their national sovereignty. La Ceiba happens to also be a key battlefield in a successful 1911 coup backed by the American business magnate Sam Zemurray, who would later become the president of the United Fruit Company. Concerned that the president was hostile to his expansion plans, Zemurray used his wealth and influence to bring about regime change in a foreign country.

We drove along an unpaved road once partly occupied by railroad tracks that used to carry banana harvests to the port.The land was eventually abandoned and now is part of Prspera, which hopes to develop it into a major manufacturing hub.

Eric Paz manages the site, which is currently occupied by a tiny office building, a rundown schoolhouse, and several single-room homes lacking electricity and running water.

"Historically, this has been a community that has had a great lack of opportunities to develop, to be able to study, to be able to have access to health care, to be able to have access to decent work or to decent housing," says Paz.

Paz says Prspera has letters of interest from three companies eyeing the sitea medical supplies manufacturer, a maker of prefabricated housing materials, and an aeroponic farmer.

"Prspera is an opportunity for the region, and I could dare to say that it is an opportunity for the country, because we are trying to do something different," says Paz.

The ZEDE law made it through Congress on the grounds that it would attract investment and bring new opportunities. Garcia says that it hasn't made good on that promise because Prspera said it would generate 10,000 jobs by December 2021 but has only reported 1,000 to the government.

But Colindres says that it's absurd for the Castro regime, which has hamstrung special economic zones and imposed economically destructive policies after several years of COVID pandemic stagnation, to criticize the rate of job growth within the ZEDEs.

"Frankly, the Honduran population, they're not happy with this new socialist government," says Colindres. "In their first year, they butchered over 100,00 jobs and left tens of thousands of people without a formal job. While we are seeing an economic and democratic deterioration at the national level, here in Prspera, we're still creating jobs."

Back on the island of Roatn, some of those jobs have gone to locals from the island, like a carpenter who repurposes excess construction material to make furniture. Or Virginia Cecilia-Mann, Prspera's head cook, who lives in the neighboring village of Crawfish Rock.

"Until Prspera came here, there are moms that never had a job in their life," says Cecilia-Mann. "They don't have the educational level. Or maybe they don't speak the language that they need or just maybe other things, like they have kids at home and there's no one to watch them so they can't get a job that offers mother hours. All of those things, Prspera is offering to them."

Cecilia-Mann also spearheaded the creation of Prspera's on-site school, which teaches local kids using Khan Academy virtual learning. Victor Andino, who lives with his family in a house on the beach that directly abuts Prspera, sends his kids to the school.

"Nobody [else] is going to give you a teacher, who teaches English for free," says Andino. "I don't know much English. I can learn from my boy."

Andino is an electrician, and his wife works maintaining Prspera's many plants.

The company fills many of the location's administrative, security, and construction jobs with workers from the mainland. A mason from the mainland told us that work dried up during the pandemic and that outside of Prspera new construction projects tend to get held up by red tape.

"The permitting process is really slow," he said, speaking in Spanish. "You have to make bribes."

At a fork in the road at the top of a hill leading down into Prspera Village is a small convenience store where construction workers congregate at the end of the work day.

The owner, Lorena Webster, has lived here for 36 years. She's suspicious of her new neighbors.

"[Prspera's leadership] used to come and eat with us and talk with us and talk about the development that they [would] bring in [a] project to benefit the community in the future," says Webster. "So then we [were] always, well, happy because, at last, the place is going to grow, you know?"

Webster says members of the community changed their minds when they found out that the ZEDE law allows companies like Prspera to partner with the government to expropriate their land.

"Never again will the stereotype of a banana republic wear heavy upon us," said Castro in her U.N. speech. She regularly compares ZEDEs like Prspera to the United Fruit Company, which took advantage of politically weak Central American countries to boost its profits in banana cultivation.

Forty-three years after financing a coup in Honduras, United Fruit CEO Sam Zemurray helped orchestrate covert CIA operations in neighboring Guatemala, which led to the removal of another president he considered hostile to his company's business interests.

This legacy of corrupt governments colluding with powerful private landowners has left many locals wary of the ZEDEs.

"Maybe [at] the beginning it will benefit us because they may give us jobs. But in the future, the laws give them the privilege to take our land," she says, though she told Reasonthat nobody from Prspera has ever threatened to take her home or even offered to buy it.

"They say 'No, we won't [take your land.]' But does that guarantee that they won't? No," she says.

In the adjacent fishing village of Crawfish Rock, a store owner expressed the same fears.

"We live here. We [were] born here, we [were raised] here, and this is what we have," she says. She believes Prspera plans to take all of Crawfish Rock but toldReasonthey haven't done anything yet to make life worse in her village.

"They haven't bothered us, not at all," she says.

Though Prospera prohibits expropriation in its charter, the ZEDE law does permit the zones to partner with the government to take private lands for public infrastructure development.

Brimen says that Prspera's charter prohibits expropriation and that anyone who attempted to do so on behalf of the organization could be held personally liable. He says he's long supported a reform to the ZEDE law that would make the practice illegal.

"Prspera specifically cannot receive expropriated land into its jurisdiction, period. End of story. It's in our charter, it's in our bylaws, and, if we did, the people involved are personally liable," says Brimen. "I'm against expropriation as a matter of principle."

Brimen is originally from Venezuela, where socialist President Hugo Chvez became notorious for expropriating land and businesses, which eviscerated the economy.

"I think [seeing Venezuela's collapse under socialism] was a very visceral experience of what otherwise would've been read in a book and not understood firsthand," says Brimen.

Brimen says that when he enrolled in college, he wanted to study economic development and poverty to figure out why some countries get rich while others, like Venezuela, stay poor despite having abundant natural resources.

"I thought that what I wanted to do in my life was somehow eradicate poverty," says Brimen. "Yet I realized that I was asking the wrong question. It's not about how you end poverty but rather how you catalyze prosperity."

He says that when he studied the problem from this new perspective that the answer became obvious.

"I was unavoidably led to the empirical evidence that shows that in order for there to be maximized human prosperity, you need freedom. You need economic freedom," says Brimen. "And so the invention of Prspera is mostly around the business model, the public-private partnership approach to deploying an economic system with rule of law that is proven throughout history to unleash human potential."

Will this ambitious experiment catalyze prosperity in Honduras? Can a properly designed private government thrive and avoid the corrupt and violent fates of the 20th-century banana republics?

A lot is riding on Prspera's success or failure: the future of ZEDEs in Honduras, the promise or folly of separating governance and state. It's a bold test of the limits of the proposition that the private sector does everything better and that the profit motive is less corrupting than political processes for obtaining state power.

Brimen and his team say they'll deliver on the promise of creating a bastion of freedom and prosperity, just as long as the national government holds up its end of the deal.

"My vision for the next one to five years is you come back and see as big a leap it was to go from nothing to 1,000 acres," says Bomgar. "Perhaps not in just sort of geographic size but in vertical developmentbuilding the city toward the sky."

Brimen says that growth and investment are accelerating and that their biggest obstacle in the near term isn't economic or physical but political.

"The main wild card is how the Honduran government chooses to proceed," says Brimen.

*CORRECTION: The video version of this story originally identified Jorge Colindres as the "technical secretary of Prospera Inc." He is the technical secretary of Prospera ZEDE, which is a different legal entity.

Photos: TEDxJackson/Flickr/Creative Commons; TEDxJackson/Flickr/Creative Commons; Everett Collection/Newscom; Everett Collection/Newscom; Inti Oncon/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom; Camilo Freedman/SOPA Images/Si/Newscom; Inti Oncon/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom; Simon Liu/Flickr/Creative Commons; Seth Sidney Berry/SOPA Images//Newscom; Seth Sidney Berry/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Milo Espinoza/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Milo Espinoza/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Gustavo Amador/EFE/Newscom; Milo Espinoza/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Humberto Espinoza/EFE/Newscom; Seth Sidney Berry/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Seth Sidney Berry / SOPA Images//Newscom; Album/Oronoz/Newscom; Gustavo Amador/EFE/Newscom; /Flickr/Creative Commons; /Flickr/Creative Commons; Seth Sidney Berry/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom

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Building the World's First Private Libertarian City - Reason

Over 100 candidates of La Libertad Avanza (LLA) filed a presentation assuring they werent asked for money to run, after presidential hopeful and LLA coalition leader Javier Milei was accused of selling candidacies for his party.

A document signed by 120 candidates was presented before the National Electoral prosecutors office on Tuesday. Ramiro Gonzlez, the prosecutor in charge, started an investigation against LLA last week following the claims.

We were never asked for any money in hopes of being proposed for a candidacy, the document reads. The candidates also rejected the false accusations Milei and his party are facing, saying everything is being orchestrated by spurious interests.

Last week, the prosecutor cited the seriousness of these claims as a reason to open a preliminary investigation and determine whether electoral law had been broken. The first step of the investigation was to call in those making the accusations, including businessman and politician Juan Carlos Blumberg, liberal political leader and former LLA member Carlos Maslatn, and former LLA activist Mila Zurbriggen, among others.

Blumberg accused the coalitions political organizers Carlos Kikuchi, Sebastin Pareja, and Javiers sister, Karina Milei, of selling places on the ballots. There are people who paid US$50,000 for a counselor position, Blumberg said in an interview with La Red radio station.

Pareja was the first one on the list of people who signed the document dismissing the accusations.

Former LLA ally Maslatn testified on Friday. Blumberg sent a letter to the prosecutor expressing his total willingness to assist with the investigation. Meanwhile, Zurbriggen and former Milei ally Rebeca Fleitas, who is currently a Buenos Aires city LLA law-maker, testified this Tuesday.

Zurbriggen said that she learned about the candidacies being for sale through third parties and that she fears for her safety, according to sources from the investigation cited by Tlam.

Around six months ago, Zurbriggen had told Tlam that candidacies were being sold for sexual favors.

Fleitas, on the other hand, said her issues were not with LLA, but another party. According to Fleitas, they wanted to choose her legislative advisors after she won a seat at the BA city Legislature following the 2021 elections, the same sources said.

In response to the backlash he is facing, Milei sent a letter to Attorney General Eduardo Casal saying Gonzalez investigation is an illegitimate intrusion in the electoral process.

Milei said that the only purpose of the prosecutors preliminary investigation is to undermine the public image of the party and himself, and asked Casal to investigate if Gonzlez started the inquiry following a request by other parties or candidates.

He also asked Casal to determine whether the investigation was launched with the only purpose of confusing voters, undermining the democratic process and harming his image towards the elections. Last week, Milei had said that Blumbergs allegations are the product of spite, since he was rejected as a candidate for Buenos Aires province governor and that all candidates for La Libertad Avanza have to self-finance their campaigns.

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Libertarian candidates say they were not asked for money to run - Buenos Aires Herald

I recently posted how a passage from David Schmidtzs Living Together: Inventing Moral Science reminded me of a line from a decades old essay written by Theodore Dalrymple. But that was far from the only time a passage in his book triggered a long dormant memory. In another case, David Schmidtz outlines an idea for evaluating politics I learned many years ago from my father.

My dad held a wide spectrum of views over his life. He described himself in his younger years as a ponytailed hippie definitely not a persona that made one popular in those days in Texas. By the time I was becoming aware of and interested in politics, he had shifted towards being largely Republican in his political orientations, with some libertarian leanings thrown in for good measure. Those leanings led him to cast his vote for the Libertarian candidate in the 2016 and 2020 elections he couldnt accept the idea of voting for Trump, whom he saw as antithetical to everything conservatives and Republicans should support. But the lesson Im referring to came up in a discussion we had in the early 2000s.

In those days, the PATRIOT Act was being hotly debated. Like so many issues, supporting or opposing it seemed to sort very neatly into party lines. One day, I asked my dad what he thought about the PATRIOT Act. The standard response from most Republicans in those days was to offer their support for it after all, it was passed under a Republican administration, and in response to a massive terrorist attack. It also seemed to line up with standard Republican points about the importance of a strong defense against foreign threats. But that was not the response I got. Instead, he told me that he opposed the PATRIOT Act and when I asked why, he told me because it failed what he called the Hillary test.

What was this test? Simple. He just asked himself if he would be okay with the federal government wielding the kind of powers granted to it by the PATRIOT Act if that government had Hillary Clinton as its chief executive. And he didnt like the idea of that so he didnt support the PATRIOT Act. After all, there is no guarantee that the government will always be headed by trustworthy people with good values. Government shouldnt have the level of power that would best enable good work to be done by wise and trustworthy public servants government should only have as much power as you would be comfortable being held by someone who is your worst political nightmare. Because, one day, someone that nightmarish will actually get elected, and they will gladly pick up any of the tools made available to them.

Republicans should ask themselves whats the most power they would want the government to wield, if that government was headed by people like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And Democrats should ask themselves how much power they would want the government to wield if that government was headed by people like Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, or Donald Trump. (Insert your own personal political boogeyman as needed.) Odds are, you wouldnt want the government in those hands to wield too much power and if your response to this conundrum is to say the government should wield greater powers anyway and just make sure only good people get elected to wield it, youre playing a very dangerous game that history shows you cannot win.

David Schmidtz makes this same point in his book, charging much of what passes as ideal theory in political science as asking fundamentally the wrong question. As Schmidtz put it:

Officials not only enforce rules, but also interpret, amend, and so forth. Smith saw this and perceived a further chronically tragic reality: this power to oversee markets is what crony capitalists are buying and selling.

Smiths observation changes everything. Imagine concentrated power in the hands of the worst ruler you can remember. Now, assume what you know to be true: concentrated power has a history of falling into hands like that. As a preliminary, then, when theorizing about what is politically ideal, we can ask two questions. (1) Ideally, how much power would be wielded by people like that? or (2) Ideally, how much power would be wielded by ideal rulers?

Which of these two versions of ideal theory is a real question? Can political philosophy answer the one that truly needs answering?

Why isnt it trying?

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David Schmidtz and My Dad on Asking the Right Questions - Econlib

INDIANAPOLISA seventh candidate for Indiana governor was announced this week, as former Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill attempts to put his past groping controversy behind him in his quest to regain public office.

Former Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill.

Hoosiers are hungry for a proven conservative leader with the courage to stand up for the traditional values upon which our Republic was built, Hill said in a press release.

Hill was accused by four women of drunkenly groping them in 2018 and had his law license suspended in the lead-up to the 2020 Republican state primary, resulting in delegates selecting current AG Todd Rokita over Hill.

He has denied the accusations, publishing a statement back in 2018 that said, The allegations against me, which continue to change, are vicious and false. At no time did I ever grab or touch anyone inappropriately.

Two years later, after the suspension was handed down, a Hill press release said, I accept with humility and respect the Indiana Supreme Courts ruling of a 30-day suspension of my license with automatic reinstatement.

Hill returned to the political scene last year, running in the primary to be the Republican nominee to fill the U.S. House of Representatives seat that was open after Rep. Jackie Walorski died in a car crash in August 2022. Rudy Yakym won the primary and the general election.

Hill will continue to attempt a political comeback by joining the increasingly crowded field of candidates for governor.

Our campaign will emphasize a positive vision for Indiana, restoring faith in our institutions, protecting our children, investing in our law enforcement, prioritizing the rebuilding of our economy and placing the needs of Hoosiers above the manipulation of Washington, D.C., Hills statement said.

During his time as attorney general, Hill criticized Marion County prosecutor Ryan Mears for saying he wouldnt prosecute people for possessing an ounce or less of marijuana and testified in front of the Indiana General Assembly against a bill allowing cities to create needle exchange programs without approval from the state.

He also partnered with faith-based organization Indianapolis Ten Point Coalition in an attempt to reduce crime. The coalition does peace walks to build relationships with the community and has members who work as liaisons to get information about crimes from community members to the police.

And in 2017, Hill wrote an opinion article for The Statehouse File criticizing NFL players kneeling, saying, Rather than kneeling in silence, they should choose to stand as men of character and courage and tackle black-on-black violence.

Hill joins three other Republicans, two Democrats and a Libertarian in the race to succeed Gov. Eric Holcomb, who is term limited from serving a third consecutive time.

U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, Republican, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2018 after spending three years in the Indiana House of Representatives.

Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, Republican, went from being a state representative to state auditor to her current position, lieutenant governor under Holcomb.

Eric Doden, Republican,has never held public office but was president of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation under Gov. Mike Pence for two years.

Jennifer McCormick, Democrat, served as superintendent of public instruction under Holcomb but has since switched party allegiance.

Bob Kern, Democrat, is a perennial candidate who, since 2012, has appeared in primaries for the U.S. House, Indiana House, Indiana Senate and, most recently, Indianapolis mayor.

Donald Rainwater, Libertarian, is most known for his 2020 governor run in which he received 11.4% of the vote.

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Indiana governor's race grows more crowded with addition of ... - The Statehouse File