Free to Disagree

When it comes to personal opinions there are endless things that I disagree with fellow libertarians on. What makes us Libertarian isn’t that we agree on everything but that we don’t want to force our ideal world on each other, but build the world we believe in on consent and voluntarism and let the better more compelling ideas win in a market that arises from our every single choice and action.

Now when you at least agree on the value of one’s life and ability to make choices in their own domain there is some clear implications. Ending destabilizing wars, ending the destructive drug war, reducing regulations that price out newer and smaller market participants, and reducing the taxation and incarceration that supports these systems of control.

We are fighting for a world where we can be free to live, disagree and resist and not be taxed, hurt or jailed for doing so.

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The Libertarian Party is a Free Market for Libertarian Change

Anyone who knows me knows I’m personally quite enamored with the functioning and benefits of markets. When you have open groups of people cooperating with each other while competing against other groups to achieve the same goal (provide milk, education, healthcare) there are several things that occur:

– The competition drives each group to find better ways to cooperate, coordinate and work together in their group.

– The competition drives each group to optimize resources.

– The competition forces people to think more deliberately about what their value proposition is, too broad a proposition can lead “One Size Fits None” products and this necessary reflection results in better products.

– Marketing requires not only that each group work together better, optimize resources, and develop their value proposition but also learn how to communicate it better than the competition resulting in better, clearer communication which improves growth and adoption of all competitors growing their market.

To me the Libertarian Party is a market for libertarian political change and activism, and the dynamics above are exactly what I see among the different factions trying different strategies and approaches to providing movement towards a more libertarian world.

Markets are a learning process, and they can take time but the result is more robust and sustainable and just another reason to be optimistic about the future of the Libertarian Party.

Libertarianism Put Simply

I saw that an older version of this image was making the rounds and figured I’d re-release a new version with some of the fixes the old one needed.

The elegance of libertarian thought is something I always found beautiful in its essential “treat others as you want to be treated” conclusions and processes.

Beyond philosophy is a real human cost when we get further and further away from libertarian ideals. There are real lives lost, families destroyed, and wealth squandered when we struggle to control each other through war, prohibition, regulation and taxes.

It’s the human cost of each of us failing to have the mutual respect to let each other live our lives that drives me to work endlessly to change it. It’s the cost of treating each other’s lives, body and property as means to build a world of our own design without consideration for the motiovations of another that drives me to build the momentum for change.

I hope you can join me in building that change, that respect, that acknowledgement of our individual spirit. I hope you can join me in being Libertarian.

I’m Tired, Let’s wake up Libertarian Style!

Are you tired? I am!

I am tired of the lives lost in the wars abroad and in the drug war that seem to only be sources of instability and government debt. I’m tired of hardworking people seeing their income a savings eroded by ever growing taxation, distortionary monetary policy and cost increasing regulations at every turn.

I am tired of people telling me that all this suffering is necessary and that the answer is only more of it.

You know what wakes me up? The image of a world where people can work hard and keep the fruits of that hard work. Where communities thrive and can afford the time and resources to come together and solve each other’s problems. A world where your parent, your sibling or your child is alive and well because we realized the answer was freedom all along.

Join me in waking up, Join me in the Libertarian Party.

Let’s be #Libertarian Together

Protectionism Doesn’t Work

Everything evolves, those who want things to stay the same whether it’s the prominence of a certain industry, culture or anything generally develop an anxiety from growing change. Being a benefactor of the way things were makes someone believe that this is a way society or the economy “should be”. As things change they become increasingly convinced using the state to prevent these changes are imperative to protecting what they consider is a successful society. This is protectionism.

Whether it’s putting tariffs on goods, taxing new industries to protect old ones, controlling immigration or one of an endless assortment of approaches the result is always the same. Society changes anyways but the state becomes empowered and more oppressive from the cultural or economic protectionist efforts.

You want less government you will have to embrace cultural and economic evolution, the reality that things will change meaning you will have to adapt. Give it a shot, I guarantee you’ll like the way it feels.

Diversity Works Not Only Cause People will Get Along but also cause they won’t

Recent I was in a debate arguing in favor of Multi-Culturalism. I usually frame my fondness of cultural pluralism in a positive framework of the wonderful things that come out of the free Exchange of ideas usually citing Korean Tacos to make my case.

Although, diversity isn’t good just cause of what comes out of working together but also cause the bad things that are prevented because we become skeptical of each other and even work against each other. Below is what I said in this discussion which I figured many would find interesting.

I don’t disagree, pluralism may lead to less trust but I think that’s a feature. A society with more skepticism will be skeptical of the use of the state to benefit other groups vs a more more homogenous group that will be less sensitive to growth of the state due to the beneficiaries being people they trust or feel they trust.

This is why I feel a lot of European nations have more robust welfare states because they are less bothered by it due to cultural homogeneity and to me that powerful a state is not a good thing.

I agree pluralism leads to conflict but that leads to decentralization like conflict and competition between enterprises leads to decentralized provision of goods, innovation, and other benefits.

I’m not a multiculturalist cause I expect everyone to get along but because I don’t think they will.

But like markets there are enterprises that find synergies and work together and it’s the same with different cultures. It’s a market.