Category Archives: Libertarian

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will test the instincts of Kentucky's Republican heavyhitters in the U.S. Senate, who have come to represent two schools of thought on foreign policy in the party. One is already claiming vindication.

Sen. Mitch McConnell issued dire warnings Tuesday of a resurgent Taliban, regional instability, and a reconstituted al-Qaeda if the Biden administration stays committed to its withdrawal timeline. The GOP minority leader said he opposed the idea even under the previous administration.

"I said then this is a shortsighted decision, and sure enough... a reckless rush for the exits is becoming a global embarassment," the senator declared.

But for the time being, polls show strong public support for ending the two-decade-long conflict. It's unclear whether news of Taliban gains could eat away at that confidence.

Currently the Biden administration is still debating how best to protect Afghans who aided the U.S. war efforts and now risk reprisals from hardline Taliban. Sen. Rand Paul, a vocal campaigner for scaled back U.S. foreign intervention, argued that shuttling Afghan allies out would only speed the defeat of forces friendly to the U.S.

"I would encourage them rather to stay and fight," the libertarian-leaning senator said of thousands of more "Westernized" Afghan partners caught in the unfolding transition. "The future of Afghanistan could be a bright future, but they're going to have to fight for it."

The Associated Press reports the governments Refugee and Repatriations Ministry estimates Taliban encorachments have forced more than 5,600 Afghan families to flee their homes, mostly throughout the northern swath of the country.

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Kentucky's Senators Have Long Differed On Afghanistan. Their Hunches Are Being Tested. - WUKY

Following the New York City primaries last month, the debate over ranked-choice voting is heating up elsewhere across the country.

The sixth largest city in Michigan and the most populous county in Washington are both considering adopting ranked-choice voting for future elections. But in Alaska, a lawsuit is challenging the state's new election system, which includes ranking candidates for general elections.

Ranked-choice voting saw a successful citywide debut in New York City, despite a tallying blunder by the Board of Elections. While some critics tried to blame the alternative voting method for the issues, proponents noted the mishap was caused by human error unrelated to RCV.

Outside of the Big Apple, ranked-choice voting was also used for the Virginia Republican Party's nominating contest for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. And this year almost two dozen cities in Utah have opted to switch to ranked-choice voting for mayoral and city council races.

Here are three more places where the alternative voting method is making waves:

On Monday, the Lansing City Council moved to put a ranked-choice voting initiative on the November ballot. If voters approve the measure, the new system will be adopted at the beginning of next year for mayoral, city clerk and city council elections.

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The council also approved a second ballot initiative that would eliminate local primary elections if the ranked-choice voting system is adopted. Instead, there would be a general election with a wider pool of candidates.

Currently, the only city in Michigan that uses RCV is Eastpointe.

Council members in King County, which includes Seattle, announced this week that their campaign for ranked-choice voting will be put on hold temporarily.

Last month, Girmay Zahilay and Jeanne Kohl-Welles proposed a ballot initiative to adopt RCV for certain county-level races, including the county council. The original plan was to have the new system, if approved by voters, go into effect next year. But Zahilay tweeted Monday that their proposal will be delayed until 2022 due to time constraints brought on by ballot initiative deadlines.

Earlier this year, a bill that would have allowed cities and counties in Washington to decide which elections, if any, to use ranked-choice voting failed to pass through the Legislature. King County is exempt from that prohibition.

Last year, Alaska became the second state, after Maine, to adopt ranked-choice voting for statewide elections. Starting next year, Alaska will use a new system in which the top-four primary candidates, regardless of party, will advance to a ranked-choice general election.

Despite a majority of voters approving these reforms during last year's election, some Alaskans don't want to see the changes go into effect. This week a judge heard a case that challenges the new election system for alleged constitutional violations.

The lawsuit was filed inDecember, a day after the election results were certified, by Alaska Independence Party Chairman Robert Bird, Libertarian Scott Kohlhass and Republican attorney Kenneth Jacobus.

"Marginalizing political parties, as this system does, harms the right of Alaskans to free political association, and allows those with money to take control," Jacobus argued in a recent court filing.

However, Alaska's assistant attorney general, Margaret Paton Walsh, argued the new system does not violate the constitution and the plaintiffs' claim is just a policy objection.

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After NYC, where will ranked-choice voting go next? - The Fulcrum

The debate over stablecoins has come a long way since Facebook announced the creation of Libra (now rebranded Diem) almost exactly two years ago. An obscure corner of the digital sphere that was poorly understood then is now subject to increasingly intense scrutiny by central bankers, regulators, and investors. The stakes, including for financial stability, are high. Market capitalization, or circulating supply, of the four leading US dollar stablecoins alone exceeds $100 billion.

But more intense scrutiny does not mean better understanding. Start with the belief that stablecoins are intrinsically stable because they are fully collateralized. The question, of course, is: collateralized by what?

Naive investors in dollar-linked coins assume that the collateral takes the form of dollars held in federally-insured US banks or their close equivalent. But that is only partly correct. After being criticized for its opacity, the leading stablecoin issuer, Tether Ltd, recently revealed that it held barely a quarter of its reserves in cash, bank accounts and government securities, while holding nearly half in commercial paper and another tenth in corporate bonds. The second leading stablecoin by capitalization, USD Coin, says only that it holds its reserves in insured US depository institutions and other approved investments." Whatever that means.

Such murkiness creates risks for stablecoins themselves, for their investors, and, critically, for the stability of financial markets. Lack of transparency on what quality of commercial paper, what kind of corporate bonds, and what other approved investments are held as collateral is a source of fragility. This kind of information asymmetry, where investors dont know exactly what has been done with their money, has given rise to bank runs and banking crises through the ages. In this setting, a fall in the value of commercial paper or in the corporate bond market could easily spark a stablecoin run. And the fact of falling bond prices would mean that the stablecoin issuer lacked the wherewithal to pay off its holders.

In addition, there is the danger of contagion: a run on one stablecoin could spread to others. What are the chances that a run on Tether would leave confidence in USD Coin intact? The European Central Bank, which knows a thing or two about financial contagion, has warned against just this scenario.

To limit such problems in the banking system, governments insure retail deposits, and central banks act as lenders of last resort to depository institutions. Some commentators, such as former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, have suggested that central banks should provide similar support to issuers of stablecoins.

The authorities would agree to this, of course, only if those issuers were subject to stringent supervision designed to limit the incidence of problems. Stablecoin purveyors would have to apply for the equivalent of bank charters and be subject to the relevant regulation. A stablecoin would then be nothing but a so-called narrow bank, authorized to invest only in Treasury bills and deposits at the central bank, with a Paypal-like payments mechanism built on top.

Alternatively, stablecoins could be regarded as the digital equivalent of prime money market funds, which similarly invest in commercial paper. The problem with this model, as we learnt during the 2007-08 global financial crisis, is that normally liquid commercial paper can abruptly become illiquid. When this happened in 2008, the US government sought to quell the ensuing panic by temporarily guaranteeing all money market funds. To prevent that from happening again, the US Securities and Exchange Commission then issued rules requiring that funds, rather than maintaining a $1 share price, post floating net asset values as a reminder to investors that money market funds are not without risk. It allowed money funds to institute redemption gates, under which they can limit withdrawals and charge temporary fees of up to 2%.

Revealingly, Diems latest white paper similarly foresees redemption gates and conversion limits to protect the stablecoin against runs. But a stablecoin that is redeemable only for a fee or that cant be redeemed for dollars in unlimited amounts wont be an attractive alternative to US Federal Reserve money, just as shares in money market mutual funds are an imperfect substitute for cash.

The more worrisome financial stability problem is that the market capitalization of the four largest US dollar stablecoins already approaches that of the largest institutional mutual fund, JPMorgan Prime Money Market Fund. A panic that forced these coins to liquidate a significant share of their commercial paper and corporate bond holdings would jeopardize the liquidity of those markets. And dislocations to short-term money markets can disrupt the operation of the real economy, as we also learned at considerable cost in 2008.

The upshot is that the stability of stablecoins is an illusion. They are unlikely to replace Federal Reserve money, unlikely to revolutionize finance, and unlikely to realize the dreams of their libertarian enthusiasts. 2021/Project Syndicate

Barry Eichengreen is professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

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The stability of stablecoins is just another financial illusion - Mint

This past Saturday, the Libertarian Party of Guadalupe County participated in Seguins Biggest Small-Town Fourth of July Parade, and despite our entry having far fewer participants than previous years (due to prior commitments), Guadalupe County Libertarian Party County Chair Darren Pollok, Guadalupe County Libertarian Party County Treasurer Julian Mardock, and I promoted the same message of personal and economic freedom that the Libertarian Party advocated for 50 years (and growing) loud and proud.

The foam boards that Darren and I held throughout the parade route represented individuals who advocated for libertarianism since the Libertarian Partys founding in 1971. These figures depicted the partys founder David F. Nolan; Tonie Nathan, the first woman in American history to receive an electoral vote due to a faithless elector back in 1972; former Congressman Ron Paul, who is a lifetime member of the Libertarian Party and was the presidential nominee for the party back in 1988; Mark Tippetts, the record-breaking 2018 Libertarian candidate for Texas governor; Jo Jorgensen and Spike Cohen, the 2020 Libertarian Party presidential and vice-presidential candidates; and finally, the late John McAfee, the famed cybersecurity entrepreneur who ran for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination in both 2016 and 2020.

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Nolan Schmidt is an independent filmmaker, and serves as Vice Chair for the Guadalupe County Libertarian Party.

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Schmidt; The real identity of liberty, and the Libertarian Party - Seguin Gazette-Enterprise

The Libertarian Party of Mississippi is hosting an all-day event titled Breaking Boundaries for Liberty on Saturday, July 10th, 2021, starting at 10 a.m. The event will be held in the ballroom of Tunicas Horseshoe Casino, Resort and Hotel. Speakers featured will include Douglas Carswell of the MS Center for Public Policy, Mississippi Representatives Dan Eubanks and Dana Criswell, We Are the 74 President, Donnie Collins, activist Adam Kokesh of Phoenix, AZ, NFL Hall of Fame Nominee and retired Jaguars Wide Receiver, Jimmy Smith; and the keynote speaker Spike Cohen, 2020 Libertarian Vice Presidential Candidate.

Breaking Boundaries for Liberty is teaming up with the We are the 74 Rally by assisting Spike Cohen and Adam Kokesh to be in attendance downtown Hernando at the DeSoto Courthouse Friday evening at 6 PM. Jimmy Smith will be available for autographs on Saturday.

The day will include door prizes from sponsors, a raffle for exciting prizes such as a 43 Smart TV, and the evening will end with a dance and karaoke.There are still a few tickets left for Sundays brunch with Spike, Adam and Jimmy.

This event is an opportunity for Mississippians to come together and learn how others are breaking the boundaries that prevent our freedom and liberty, says chair of the Libertarian Party of Mississippi, Vicky Rose. So many times, I see people playing the lone wolf, trying to fight on behalf of others. I believe this is a great time to meet others and network and fellowship and build alliances to fight for things like criminal justice reform and decreased government regulations.

If you would like to attend the event pre-registration is available atbit.ly/bb4liberty. Tickets will be available at the door for $20 per person. Raffle tickets will sell for $1 each.

Sundays brunch ticket opportunities are limited. There will be tables reserved for media who would like the opportunity to speak with any of the speakers, or simply set up their equipment.

See the article here:

Libertarians of Mississippi to host rally on navigating politics - DeSoto Times-Tribune

It is much too easy to overthink things. If this were an Olympic sport, I would be competing on national TV every four years.

Libertarianism is one such overthink for me. Over the past 50 years libertarianism and I have lived through an on again, off again relationship. It first seduced me as a college freshman and member of Young Americans for Freedom, then the home for all nuances of conservative-thinking college students. Our chapter had strong defense, support-the-war members. There were also the social issue conservatives, this being the time of heated abortion debates. Of course fiscal conservatives were there as well, decrying the Johnson and Nixon administrations for financing budget deficits with inflation. Most of us could place ourselves in most if not all these metaphysical caucuses.

On the fringe were the libertarians. I wasnt even sure what they believed, as YAFs libertarians ran the gamut from limited government, Constitutional purists to extremists bordering on complete individual freedom not much different from libertinism (same word root but different applications of the concept of liberty).

I thought them crazies, although I will admit we didnt have many at my local university. It was only after I attended the national YAF convention in 1971 that I got a true glimpse into the libertarian soul, such as there was an observable one. How could a 20-year-old reconcile responsible liberty with the demands of a long-haired, marijuana-smoking, free-loving group which appeared to rejoice in its offensiveness toward anything and anyone traditional?

It was not something a small-town boy from Indiana could reconcile.

It only got worse as I realized the fringe libertarians were not much different from the radical left in the Students for a Democratic Society. One insight I gained was that the political ideology spectrum was not a straight line running from right to left but more closely resembled a circle that didnt quite connect at the extremes.

What I failed to comprehend at the time was that this was merely a fringe, outliers who neither defined libertarian belief nor even agreed with it as a structured philosophy.

Then a wife, a child and a pressing need to graduate pushed libertarianism into the attic of my cluttered mind. A second child and a mortgage slammed the door shut. Almost. There always has been something seductive for me in libertarian theory.

For most of my adult life, traditional conservatism seemed the best fit for a husband and father who had to get two children through college on a modest income coming from a job that somehow became more and more demanding as my career advanced. There just wasnt time for esoteric philosophical musings.

So what brought me back to libertarianism? Certainly retirement was a factor, providing more time for rigorous and systematic thought. But that simply created the environment which made this thought process possible. I could blame the writings of The Indiana Policy Review, which kept pushing me toward thinking beyond the merely possible and into a brave new world that, ironically, pointed backward in time to the Founding Fathers and their dream for our nation. But the thunderbolt that shocked me into a reconsideration of libertarianism was the orchestrated attack on our very civilization by an unholy alliance of Marxists, nihilists and anarchists, and a total surrender to them by the governing class. I first realized their possible destructiveness about four years ago.

So why would the current crop of self-proclaimed revolutionaries push my return to a college era philosophy that repelled me for its extremity, at least so far as I could remember the ideological foment on campus 50 years ago? I still had issue with the libertines who try to fit themselves into the libertarian tent. And then there is Rand Paul, the self-appointed high priest of libertarianism who never sees a hill he isnt willing to die on. We wouldnt have all the Obama Care mess today, for example, if he hadnt refused to vote for an 80 percent repeal bill only because it didnt repeal it all. Perfect is nearly always the enemy of good. Pauls conscience is clear but were still stuck with Obama Care.

In spite of Rand Pauls serving as the poster child for irresponsible libertarianism, I still couldnt abandon it completely. For this I can credit The Indiana Policy Review once again. At one of its annual winter seminars, a presenter mentioned almost in passing an economist by the name of Arnold Kling. Kling theorized that Americans are divided into three tribal coalitions speaking entirely different languages: libertarian, conservative and progressive. Libertarians view issues on a liberty-to-tyranny axis, conservatives from civilization-to-barbarism and progressives from oppressed-to-oppressors.

Which am I? Well, I certainly am a conservative as I believe Western Civilization is one of mankinds greatest intellectual achievements. My disgust with and fear of the current barbarian horde which has breached our gates attests to my self-placement in this tribe.

On the other hand my reading of the Founding Fathers and Ive done a lot of this in the past few years has pushed me into the libertarian tribe also as I see more and more of my freedom being usurped by overreaching politicians and an insatiable government bureaucracy. Read The Federalist Papers to get a clear sense of how Madison, Hamilton, et. al., envisioned a limited government instituted to protect liberty. Covid was more than the camels nose under the tent for this overreach. Is there any going back? Not that this born-again libertarian can foresee.

Can I be in two tribes at the same time? Why not? Klings thesis notwithstanding, it seems to me that moving between two of these languages is a sign of an incisive intellect operating in a healthy political climate. But then I cant gainsay Klings proposition that Americans have insulated themselves into a single language and thought discipline, although discipline is certainly the wrong word to describe this lack of intellectual rigor.

So plant me right on the libertarian-conservative 50 yard line. My problem is that I also see some things that fit on the progressive axis, if a heartfelt desire to help those less fortunate than me at every opportunity is the qualification. Am I a progressive? Every synapse in my gray matter screams, No! Yet, I give of my time and treasure to help those in need, so maybe I belong with the progressives too. Is this even possible?

I needed Alexander the Greats sword to cut this Gordian Knot. And I found it, in a book by an Indiana Policy Review Foundation scholar, D. Eric Schansberg. It is really quite simple. It is a matter of properly dividing governmental fiat from private energy. It is a matter of voluntary action versus coerced action.

First, a step back in my non-linear thinking. I have listened to more than enough lectures from well-well-intentioned friends asserting that it is impossible for me to reconcile my political affiliation with my Christian faith. Voting for Republicans is mean-spirited and oppressive. How can I be so insensitive to the needs of the oppressed that I vote for those (insert your favorite epithet here) Republicans?

Its Klings different languages hypothesis on steroids, the steroid here being Identity Politics. Stuff someone in a bucket and, according to the progressive creed, he forfeits all capability for independent thought and action and you dont even get to choose your own bucket, certainly not by personal philosophy. All identity is by outward stereotype. You are what you look like, not what you feel or think.

I no longer expect a modern progressive to understand how a Christian looks at his fellow man. By the time the human mind reconciles original sin with objective justification (all are conceived in sin while at the same time all are redeemed by Christ), there is no room for Identity Politics. All are equal sinners in Gods eyes, and all are covered by His Sons sacrifice. Try explaining that to a social justice warrior. Hate the sin but love the sinner. Now thats a non-starter for minds closed by Identity Politics.

That said, it is quite simple to put a Christian, even a libertarian one, on a progressive axis ... but with this essential caveat: The Christian is motivated by his faith to help those in need and to do so on a voluntary and personal basis. Recall that most social welfare in the United States as well as Europe was provided by churches until the government determined to co-opt most private charity. And with what result? Compare poverty rates, single parent households, drug use, educational attainment and violent crime then and now. Do you still want to call this progress?

Remember the WWJD bumper stickers? What would Jesus do? The motorists who displayed this bumper sticker wanted people to treat other people just like Jesus would. It was a call to personal action. We all are our brothers keeper.

So what would Jesus do? Heres what Jesus never did: When exhorting His disciples to care for the poor, He did not send them off to petition the Romans to pass a law to tax everyone else to provide poor relief. This has become the great divide between those on the left and those on the right using the coercive power of government to get others to do what I want them to do rather than taking personal responsibility to do it myself.

Examples in the Gospels abound. The Good Samaritan did not dump the poor traveler at some government-run halfway house; he cared for him as best he could and then told the innkeeper to send him the bill. Jesus spoke to Zacchaeus heart, who responded by personally refunding those he overtaxed. Then there is the disciple Matthew who quit his lucrative government gig to follow Jesus. And the Sermon on the Mount stresses the private, non-public nature of Christian charity (Matthew 6:1-4).

My kingdom is not of this world ... or my servants would have been fighting ... (John 18:36 ESV). These are not the words of a social revolutionary bent on overthrowing the government through violent action as has become commonplace today. Reformation Era theologians developed the doctrine of the two kingdoms, that of earthly government and that of the church. Both kingdoms function under Gods majesty and Christians are commanded to be faithful citizens of both, acting within the earthly kingdom as guided by the precepts of the heavenly one. Civil disobedience may have its place but its God-pleasing exercise is quite rare.

Where does this leave me? I simply refuse the dilemma put forward by the ultra-left. I am neither conflicted nor confounded in attempting to reconcile libertarianism with Christianity. Libertarianism, understood through the lens of the Founding Fathers, not only supports Christian belief but also creates the political environment to encourage its manifestation in individual action. This is played out daily by kind-hearted (sorry, social justice warriors, not mean-spirited) people of faith who joyfully give of their time, talents and treasures to help others. A 2018 research study documented a correlation between voting Republican and higher charitable contributions compared with those voting Democrat. The authors attempted to rationalize this with the spurious justification that liberals are just as charitable as conservatives when taking into account higher tax rates in their jurisdictions. Bingo. Coercion versus charity. That explains everything today, to our hurt.

Am I a conservative? Yes. The barbarians are at the gates screaming for the destruction of nearly everything I hold dear. Am I progressive? Not really, as I see charity as a personal and voluntary act rather than a political lobbying effort to induce government to compel others through confiscatory taxation and other repressive measures. Am I libertarian? I guess so, after reading the Founding Fathers and thinking about the Orwellian world awaiting my grandchildren.

No, let me restate that. I am desperately libertarian. It is our civilizations only hope.

Mark Franke, M.B.A., an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review and its book reviewer, is formerly an associate vice-chancellor at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.

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One man's journey to the nexus of Libertarianism and Christianity - Shelbynews

Its happening. After several attempts to trigger a recall election against Gov. Gavin Newsom since 2019, Californians now have a set date for deciding whether to remove the governor from office. Last week, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis announced the recall election would be held on Sept. 14.

Will Gov. Newsom face the same fate as Gov. Gray Davis did in 2003?

Will a prominent Democrat enter the race?

Will Democratic voters rally to Newsoms defense?

Will Newsom benefit from a relatively early recall election?

For these questions and more, well find out soon enough.

As of this writing, the pro-recall campaign seems to face an uphill battle.

In May, the Public Policy Institute of California reported that nearly six in 10 likely California voters would vote to oppose the recall.

Likewise, the Institute of Governmental Studies based at UC Berkeley reported five months ago that 36% of Californians said they would vote to remove the governor.

Months later, recall support remained stagnant.

Perhaps these favorable figures for the governor are a function of polling. Perhaps there are many more Californians willing to back the recall than could be reflected in surveys. Again, time will tell.

Obviously, Californias Democratic establishment believes an earlier than anticipated election will benefit Newsom.

But there are risks.

Wildfires, power outages, the impacts of drought and any sudden return of lockdown policies could aid the efforts of recall supporters.

Either way, expect a lot of money to be raised and spent by special interests on both sides regardless of what successes and failures occur.

Then theres the matter of candidates.

In 2003, there were 135 candidates on the ballot. This time, along with some outliers, theres a whos-who of California Republican and Libertarian alternatives in the running.

From celebrities such as Caitlyn Jenner to former elected officials like Doug Ose and Kevin Faulconer to elected officials Republican Assemblyman Kevin Kiley and Libertarian Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Hewitt, there are plenty of significant names.

But will they be able to energize voters in the way Arnold Schwarzenegger? Will they need to? That all remains to be seen.

One thing is clear. The recall is a legitimate tool from the state constitution empowering the public to keep elected officials in check. Now that a large number of Californians worked to trigger a recall, its time to pay attention to the arguments for and against recalling Gov. Newsom.

Over the next two months ahead, thats what we intend to do.

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Get ready for the Sept. 14 recall election - San Bernardino County Sun

Once again, the Internet comes through with another silly list that is fun to argue about precisely because it is pointless to do so.

Indiana, we are told by the website WalletHub, is the sixth-worst state in the union for the independence of its citizens, better only than the awful quintet of Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina and Alaska.

Using a set of metrics including the states dependence on federal money, individuals bad habits (such as opioid abuse and social media addiction) and the rates of bankruptcy and foreclosure, the site says we Hoosiers are just not a self-sufficient lot.

Utah, the same survey said, is the most self-sufficient state, which struck me as odd. Just this morning, that states governor was on TV, boasting to a smarmy news reader about how proud she was of the states COVID-19 rules compliance and long-range plan to fight climate change.

That sounds like sucking up both to Washington and the whole world at the same time.

Outraged on behalf of my beloved Hoosier state, I went looking for other rankings.

According to cheatsheet.com, which considers only the percentage of a states general revenue that comes from the federal government, North Dakota is the most independent state at 16.8%. Indiana doesnt do so well on that list, either, ranking 10th worst at 38%.

Perhaps Gov. Eric Holcomb will keep that in mind the next time hes inclined to gripe about federal interference. Strings, Governor, strings.

At thetopten.com, a different criterion is used: How would a state do if cut off from the rest of the country? Texas, with a robust economy, diverse and energetic population and a National Guard that could defeat many countries armies, came out on top, followed closely by California and New York.

Makes sense. Bigger is better, no matter how much their current politics might be screwed up.

Both intrigued and puzzled, I then sought the ranking of states on libertarianism.

The Cato Institute says the most libertarian state, based on the degree of personal and economic freedom its citizens enjoy, is Florida, followed by New Hampshire and hooray for us! Indiana. On the Mises Institute list, Florida and New Hampshire are first and second, but Indiana falls to 10th, still not bad.

How can Indiana be both one of the least independent states and one of the most libertarian?

Because, remember silly and pointless. Self-reliance is, by definition, something possessed by or lacking in individuals, not a quality that can easily be applied in the aggregate to a whole people.

And its a state of mind. Most of the things that give most of us a sense of independence are, ironically, things that also connect us to others, such as our cars and the ubiquitous smartphone.

Because my parents had to buy so much on credit, I feel naked without a certain amount of cash in my pocket, never mind that my debit card is almost universally accepted.

But what if we were suddenly cut off from everybody like, well, like Texas or California adrift from the union?

My brother has the right idea. He has several weeks worth of water and emergency food supplies laid in, and hed probably lose his mind if somebody spirited it away.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency recommends we all have at least a three-day disaster kit at home, including food and water and everything from a flashlight and battery-operated radio to a First-Aid kit and garbage bags.

How many of us do? How about an emergency kit for the car in case it breaks down in the middle of nowhere in the middle of winter?

Show me that list of who is emergency ready and who isnt and Ill tell you whether the state is independent or not, silly though it may be.

And remember, there is a fine line between self-reliant and self-defeating. In other words, if I may refer to an old Twilight Zone episode, if you dont have a fallout shelter, you really ought to be friends with a neighbor who does.

Original post:

Leo Morris column: Indiana - an independent state it its own way - The Herald Bulletin

Since a mysterious figure named Satoshi Nakamoto first created bitcoin after the 2008 financial crash, cryptocurrencies have multiplied. There are now thousands of coins in circulation, with names that sound like jettisoned intergalactic missions: Libra, Ethereum, Stellar, Auroracoin. Though they differ in branding, almost all cryptocurrencies share a common fantasy: to remove the money supply from the hands of politicians and sidestep the financial institutions that govern the movement of cash across the Earth. But its recently become obvious that cryptocurrencies can escape neither of these things.

Indeed, the libertarian dream shared by their early proponents appears to be dying at the very moment cryptocurrencies have broken through to the mainstream. Stablecoins are pegged to the value of national currencies, while the US Federal Reserve is developing its own digital currency. Elsewhere the Bank for International Settlements recently lent its support to central bank digital currencies for the first time. These developments turn the original purpose of stateless money on its head. Even El Salvadors recognition of bitcoin as legal tender is being criticised by true believers for forcing consumers to accept the cryptocurrency, thus undermining the very principle of choice.

Despite cryptos futuristic branding, its intellectual origin story is more mundane. The idea of a stateless money supply first arose in debates over a common European currency. While the 1992 Maastricht treaty paved the way for the introduction of the euro in 1999, this wasnt the only currency model on the table at the time. A lesser-known idea, proposed by the German economist Herbert Giersch in 1975, imagined a parallel currency called the europa that would circulate alongside and compete with national currencies rather than replacing them. Along with fellow economist members of the neoliberal Mont Pelerin Society, Giersch thought what he called currency competition in the title of a 1978 book would gradually draw people away from their lira, francs and drachmas.

Gierschs student Roland Vaubel, who would help found the Alternative fr Deutschland (AfD) party nearly four decades later, was drafted by the European Commission to explore the idea. Meanwhile, in 1976, Friedrich Hayek, who was in regular contact with Giersch and Vaubel, published two pamphlets with the rightwing Institute of Economic Affairs. Hayeks essays one on choice in currency, the other on the denationalisation of money became touchstones for those who wanted to bring stateless money into existence.

But once it was clear that the euro had beaten out the europa, libertarians began to look elsewhere for places to experiment. By the second half of the 1990s, the internet seemed to offer a space that lay beyond national sovereignty and earthly territory. In 1996, the internet activist John Perry Barlow proclaimed that legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply online. Some libertarians went further than Barlow and pragmatically observed that the old laws of property might be more secure than ever in cyberspace, where users could escape the reach of national governments and taxes. In 1998, the runner-up for the Mont Pelerin Societys Hayek prize forecast that the internet would undermine the monopoly supply of money by governments and allow people to choose between different private money suppliers.

This vision of money without states was captured in a 1997 libertarian manifesto written by the investment adviser James Dale Davidson and former Times editor William Rees-Mogg (father of the Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg). Disguised as an airport paperback, The Sovereign Individual: How to survive and thrive during the collapse of the welfare state predicted that the internet would denationalise money. People could forgo reliance on the legal tender approved by governments and instead use immaterial cybercash, which the authors imagined as encrypted sequences of multihundred-digit prime numbers. Cybercash, they argued, will bring Hayeks logic vividly to life.

Their book proved popular with a little-known venture capitalist in San Franciscos Bay Area. The young Peter Thiel was enthused by Davidson and Rees-Moggs vision for a nationless digital currency, and in 1999 he launched PayPal, bringing their prophecy closer to reality. Thiels company was just the beginning of what would later become a proliferation of different digital currencies. But in recent months, a less starry-eyed future for crypto has come into focus. The first flaw in the bitcoin model used by the majority of cryptocurrencies is, ironically, a consequence of its own success. Solving the equations to acquire new bitcoins (referred to as mining) requires large volumes of computer hardware that frequently overheats and is extremely energy intensive. Estimates put the annual energy usage of bitcoin mining between that of Sweden and Malaysia.

And as these mines multiply, their operations begin to stretch and even overwhelm national power grids. Iran banned bitcoin mining last month after it led to blackouts and possibly the shutdown of a nuclear reactor. Multiple provinces in China, one of the worlds biggest producers of bitcoin, banned mining too, leading to reports of miners relocating their hardware to sites of more traditional underground extraction in Canada, South Dakota and Texas.

Chinese crackdowns are extending to holdings in crypto too, sending the value of bitcoin tumbling. South Korea recently seized tens of millions of dollars of crypto assets from its wealthy citizens in a clampdown on tax avoidance precisely what the techno-libertarians hoped digital cash would make impossible. And earlier this month, the US Justice Department announced it had managed to track down and recover most of the ransom paid in bitcoin to hackers of the Colonial Pipeline. The traceless currency leaves a trail after all.

Chained to the Earth by cables and wire, crypto is more likely to live on as an extension of the nation state than as a means of escaping it. Like goldbugs before them, crypto fans may have to acclimatise to their hobby horse being, at best, a volatile new asset class for high-risk hedging rather than a truly alternative global currency (though even on this, opinions differ). Most travellers to the crypto craze since its initial spike in late 2017 seem to be drawn not by the possibility of bringing Hayeks vision to life, but by a willingness to take risks for speculative payoffs. Indeed, the future for crypto now looks less like a techno-utopian dream or libertarian fantasy, and more like subordination to the very thing it was designed to overthrow: the nation states monopoly over the money supply.

See more here:

Cryptocurrencies dream of escaping the global financial system is crumbling - The Guardian

Floridas Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed a bill to protect against indoctrination in the states colleges and universities. The new law, which went into effect on July 1, requires Floridas public colleges and universities to conduct an annual survey measuring intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity on their campuses. The laws goal is to assess the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented and how free students, faculty, and staff feel to express their beliefs and viewpoints.

The Florida law does not specify what will be done with the survey results, but Gov. DeSantis suggested that budget cuts could result if universities and colleges are found to be indoctrinating students. It used to be thought that a university campus was a place where youd be exposed to a lot of different ideas, DeSantis said. Unfortunately, now the norm is really these are more intellectually repressive environments.

DeSantis is currently a frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Indeed, he edged former President Donald Trump in a recent straw poll taken at the Western Conservative Summit. The problem DeSantis has identified is not unique to Florida Indianas Republican governor signed a similar bill last month and it traces directly to the political biases of the processes by which faculty are hired. Many of the same colleges and universities that tout tenure as a way to encourage free thought censor it by not allowing conservative and libertarian faculty candidates who think freely to get in the door.

I once suggested on the ConLawProf group email list that law schools need to hire more conservative and libertarian candidates (with more meaning, at a minimum, at least one). The reaction? One law professor posted that I was nuts to suggest such a thing. Libertarian law professor Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz quipped at a Federalist Society conference on intellectual diversity in the legal academy that his leftist colleagues at Georgetown felt that three conservatives on a law faculty of 120 was plenty and perhaps even one or two too many.

Anecdotes aside, Northwestern University law professor James Lindgren has published detailed statistical surveys that document that Republicans and Christians are the groups most under-represented in the law professoriate. If the small handful of right-leaning and Christian law schools is excluded from the dataset, the problem is actually worse. Additional studies demonstrate that lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty extends campus-wide. For example, according to research conducted last year by the National Association of Scholars, Democratic professors outnumber their Republican colleagues by a ratio of 8.5 to 1 on top college campuses.

Research since World War II has consistently found overwhelmingly left-oriented political attitudes and ideological self-identification among college and university faculty the report notes. The report also found that the most drastic differences in the ratio were among professors of English, at 26.8 to 1, sociology, at 27 to 1, and anthropology, 42.2 to 1. Less subjective majors such as mathematics (5.5 to 1), chemistry (4.6 to 1), and economics (3 to 1) were less politically biased.

Not surprisingly, DeSantis critics are throwing fits. Nikki Fried, the Florida agriculture commissioner who is challenging DeSantis for governor next year, compared the governors actions to what authoritarian regimes do. Charles P. Pierce wrote in Esquire that DeSantis is a wingnut who is as full of crap as the Christmas goose. Steven Benen toned it down a bit for MSNBC by merely opining that the new law is absurd.

What DeSantis critics fail to appreciate is that truth is most likely to emerge from the clash of ideas. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously referred to it as the marketplace of ideas, while John Stuart Mill expressed this same view in his classic book On Liberty. The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, Mill wrote. Posterity as well as the existing generation those who dissent from the opinion, still more those who hold it.

Gov. DeSantis received his undergraduate degree from Yale and his law degree from Harvard. He should be commended for recognizing that faculty need to start behaving like professors again.

Scott Douglas Gerber is a law professor at Ohio Northern University and an associated scholar at Brown Universitys Political Theory Project.

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Gov. DeSantis and the need for viewpoint diversity in higher education | Column - Tampa Bay Times