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Why Are People So Oblivious To Government’s Fiscal Follies?

Posted on September 12, 2017 in Liberator Online, Libertarianism, News You Can Use, Philosophy by Alice Salles Comments are off
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Why Are People So Oblivious To Government’s Fiscal Follies?


This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

Two years ago, I worked on an article that looked into a California coalition attempting to raise taxes on the wealthy without offering a justification for their efforts.

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At the time, I wasn’t just trying to understand why common Californians weren’t as concerned about the budget and the gloomy state of the local government’s finances, I was also trying to understand why anybody would simply ignore budgetary concerns anywhere in the country. After all, if the state notices it has run out of your money to pay its bills, the only way it has to make ends meet is to take more from taxpayers. Shouldn’t people be worried about that?

In order to find an answer to my question, I talked to Truth in Accounting (TIA)’s Founder and President Sheila Weinberg. And while I wasn’t surprised she was as smart as I would have imagined, I was in awe of the simple answer she gave me when discussing the importance of talking about balancing the budget before trying to raise taxes.

“The way it is now,” she calmly explained, “taxpayers can’t hold their elected officials accountable because they are getting more government than they are paying taxes for.”

As simple as it may sound, I thought, the fact that people are getting “more government than they are paying for” is exactly why they are not paying attention.

If the taxpayer isn’t bothered by the amount of taxes he pays, that might be because, perhaps, he isn’t paying for as many of the agencies, programs, and regulations as he is being told. Instead, governments (both local and federal) often run on credits, borrowing, federal grants, and yes, on taxes, but mostly they are always in the red, borrowing from future generations in order to pay for yesterday’s debt.

Taxpayers don’t notice their future is in jeopardy because they believe their taxes are covering it all — except they aren’t. So when higher taxes are announced or when local officials begin to talk about bankruptcy, individuals are often oblivious to how they got there.

As the tax burden grows, under those circumstances, taxpayers who are targeted and forced through legislation to give more end up fleeing to find greener pastures elsewhere, where they get to keep more of their money. As a result, the number of taxes being collected drops and entire cities (and sometimes states) break.

And it’s precisely because the overwhelming majority of locals simply get more government than they are paying for that they often ignore the warning signs that doomsday is just around the corner.

After Obamacare, Let’s Repeal All Government Involvement In Health Care

Posted on July 19, 2017 in Economic Liberty, Healthcare, Liberator Online, News You Can Use by Alice Salles Comments are off
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After Obamacare, Let’s Repeal All Government Involvement In Health Care

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

Everyone is talking about health care.

If you consider yourself a conservative, you might have felt a spark of excitement when Congress motioned to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, only to be let down once you learned lawmakers fell short of putting an end to President Barack Obama’s signature law.

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But to those who are serious about free market principles, the entire debate revolving around the end of of ACA is somewhat frustrating. That’s why health care in the United States hasn’t been good for decades, and Obamacare just made it a tad worse.

By the mid-1960s, the United States started to experience what heavy-handed intervention in the market does to supply and demand of services, and how it inflates the costs of such services.

With the passage of Medicare and Medicaid and new regulations that artificially trimmed the supply of doctors and hospitals, Americans noticed an increase in health care prices that, according to Mike Holly, “responded at twice the rate of inflation.”

Over time, medical special interests continued to lobby government for more regulations, further restricting competition and making it harder for members of the medical profession to make their services available at a lower cost.

With government’s involvement, demand for medical services increased thanks to subsidies, but with the restrictive regulatory monster only growing stronger with each passing decade, the supply of physicians, clinics, hospitals, and pharmaceuticals was further restricted.

As consumers began reporting hardships having access to care thanks to government’s overbearing involvement, government decided to act once again, targeting high costs by “partnering,” once again, with well-connected service providers and offering even more subsidies.

ACA, or Obamacare, is what happens when government tries to fix the problem by repeating its past mistakes.

With the passage of Obama’s signature health care law, the government ramped up subsidies, causing demand to continue to grow artificially while the supply was reduced thanks to the greater number of restrictions imposed on the market. As a result, powerful health care industry leaders grew into more powerful monopolies while entrepreneurs and independent physicians and clinics became overwhelmed and were forced to succumb to the system or get out of it completely.

So when Congress talks about repealing Obamacare as the only measure necessary to put an end to the incredibly maddening situation we find ourselves in today, don’t believe them.

For America to have a true free market system that will guarantee lower prices and increased supply of health care services to everyone, we must look beyond Obamacare. Or, as Mises Institute’s Ryan McMaken put it, we must “focus on repealing and undermining the edifice on which Obamacare was built: the highly regulated, subsidized, and manipulated healthcare markets that dominate today.”

Is Congress listening?

Are We Really the Land of the Free?

Posted on June 28, 2017 in Liberator Online, Libertarianism by Advocates HQ Comments are off
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This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

If America was a corporation, its company slogan would most likely be “land of the free and home of the brave.” It seems every time a politician gets on stage he or she can’t help but mention how America is prosperous because it embodies this slogan. There’s constant talk about freedom, yet everywhere I look, I see a society that has to pay government permit fees in order to do…almost anything. Here are some common examples:

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- In most states, it’s illegal to own a house unless you pay the government property tax every year

- It’s illegal to own a car unless you pay the government vehicle licensing fee every year

- It’s illegal to drive a car unless you take a government test and pay for a government license permit

- It’s illegal to have a passenger drinking alcohol in your car while you drive unless you pay yearly permit fees in order to have a government permitted transportation company (like a limo or executive transportation company)

- It’s illegal to educate yourself and become a lawyer unless you pay a fee and pass a government certified test

- It’s illegal to start a company and try to better your life unless you inform the city, county, and state in which you live of your business intentions and pay their yearly permit fees

- It’s illegal in California to cut hair for a living unless you pay for government permission and certification

- It’s illegal to get married unless you pay for a government marriage permit

- It’s illegal to hire someone to work for you unless you pay them at or above a government-set wage

- It’s illegal to build a house from the ground up unless you pay your local government permit fee’s which can (in California) easily add $50,000-$80,000 cost to your new home

- It’s illegal to replace the roof on your home unless you pay for a government permit

Is America truly the “land of the free,” or is everyone so used to permits that they don’t realize that the government is stealing our rights and selling them back to us?

Government Facial Scans Are Here, Here’s Why You Should Worry

Posted on June 27, 2017 in Liberator Online, News You Can Use, Personal Liberty by Alice Salles Comments are off
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Government Facial Scans Are Here, Here’s Why You Should Worry

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

What starts as “common sense” legislation often ends up opening up the gates for more government intrusion, putting the freedom and privacy of Americans at grave risk.

That’s what’s happening now as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)’s “Biometric Exit” program is starting to be used at airports in certain parts of the country.

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Congress, decades ago, passed legislation pushing federal officials to take steps to track down foreign nationals as they entered and left the United States. The idea, born out of a perceived necessity to keep track of foreigners who overstayed their visas, soon became the basis for yet another idea. That’s when the thought of creating a database filled with scans of American faces came to life.

Without going to Congress or consulting the public, the DHS launched the Biometric Exit program. Slowly, the agency started implementing the scanning initiative, making American citizens and green card holders, as well as foreigners, have their faces scanned before embarking on certain international flights from both New York and Atlanta.

To kickstart this program, DHS partnered with Delta in Atlanta and New York and with JeBlue in Boston, making these face recognition scans mandatory when run by Delta and voluntary when run by JetBlue.

To those going through JetBlue, the company gives passengers the option of ditching the physical ticket altogether for a face scan.

Despite the different approaches, both of the systems already in use are just the start of something larger that could soon turn into a nationwide launch of Biometric Exit. As a result, everyone, both foreign and American, would be subject to having their faces scanned and their details added or matched to a federal database.

If this system becomes mandatory, the issues associated with errors could be a major headache for individuals on the receiving end of the extra scrutiny. With government goons taking the facial recognition tool much too seriously, a case of mistaken identity could put an absolutely innocent person at risk of being detained, while other, smaller mistakes, could cause passengers to miss their flights or spend extra hours at secondary screenings.

Aside from these potential issues, the very idea that the federal government would be collecting this information from anyone leaving the country raises questions regarding the constitutionality of these scans. After all, does the collection of information on innocent Americans without a warrant pass the Fourth Amendment test?

Many legal scholars say that it wouldn’t. So why is the DHS putting this in motion without Congress’ approval?

Well, quite frankly, because they can. As government grows larger and more intrusive, it also grows more certain it may operate outside existing laws that theoretically restrict them from infringing on people’s most basic rights. And that is the problem that must be addressed.

Hyperbole Is NOT Your Friend

Posted on February 8, 2017 in From Me To You, Liberator Online by Brett Bittner Comments are off
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Hyperbole Is NOT Your Friend

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

How many times have you been listening to a policy discussion or debate and you hear a stat, fact, figure, or talking point that just seems completely unbelievable? You go home afterward and find out after some research that it’s actually false or misrepresented.

As libertarians, you and I don’t need to be doing things like that. We don’t need to embellish or exaggerate the facts. Today, government gives us so many real, yet unbelievable, examples to prove our point, that exaggeration and embellishment are completely unnecessary. We see things that happen daily that we never thought were possible, but they actually happen. Government is the cause.

If we do things to exaggerate, embellish, or use hyperbole to make our point, we erode trust with those we talk to. This can ruin our chances at future persuasion, not only in conversations you’ll be having with them, but also when other libertarians do as well. That lessens your credibility, as well as anyone else they encounter that identifies as a libertarian.

The bottom line is, if the REAL every day horrors brought about by government don’t persuade, hyperbole, histrionics, and exaggeration aren’t going to change someone’s mind, you may as well move on to a different approach to try to bring them to embrace a libertarian perspective.

At the end of the day, let’s remember that hyperbole is NOT your friend.

Who Owns Jobs: The Government or the Employer?

Posted on February 7, 2017 in Economic Liberty, Economics, Liberator Online, News You Can Use by Alice Salles Comments are off
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Who Owns Jobs: The Government or the Employer?

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

Reuters has reported that the Donald Trump administration’s pick for head of the U.S. Labor Department has admitted to hiring undocumented immigrants in the past. More specifically, he admitted to employing a foreigner who wasn’t legally allowed to work in the United States as a house cleaner.

EmployerThe pick, who serves as the chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants Inc, made the revelation on Monday, adding that the employment had taken place for a few years. The statement he released also claimed that he and his wife were unaware that the worker wasn’t allowed to seek employment, but that once they were made aware they terminated her, offering her help to obtain legal status.

This piece of news is sure to be explosive, considering the scrutiny the current administration’s picks for cabinet positions have been receiving in the past months. Nevertheless, this story matters for a much more important reason. After all, who owns the job, the government or the employer?

While countries have boundaries by default due to the state’s need to set rules and impose restrictions on everything from migration to commerce, it is important to remember that only the individual employer owns the job he or she is creating.

Regardless of where you stand on immigration, it is up to the job owner to determine whether a particular individual is fit — or not — to perform the duties available in exchange for what the employer is willing to pay. It is also the employee’s right to accept the offer, whether or not the federal government has wage restrictions imposed. After all, if an unskilled mother of five who has just lost her husband is willing to take a job for $9 per hour, what authority does a lawmaker have to tell her she can only find a job that pays $15?

Employers willing to pay that much will undoubtedly hire someone with skills, leaving this poor individual out of the workforce and, what’s worse, in the hands of the welfare state.

When it comes to immigration, racism and security concerns aren’t what’s at stake. Instead, we must understand the basic principle of economics: supply and demand. If there’s a demand for workers willing to take on certain jobs and a supply of workers willing to do them, it will happen. Whether the government allows it or not.

Allowing individual job creators to take on the burden of understanding this risk makes them better employers, which also helps the country, by making sure that only hard workers who keep their promises and follow local rules are getting employed. When government imposes restrictions, workers are forced into the shadows. Putting their lives, the lives of their children, and employers at risk.

How about handing the burden back to the individuals involved in the transaction? It saves us money, boosts the economy, and helps us weed out those who aren’t serious about their intentions.

Bill Would Stop U.S. Aid to Middle-Eastern Terrorist Cells

Posted on December 15, 2016 in Liberator Online, News You Can Use by Alice Salles Comments are off
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Bill Would Stop U.S. Aid to Middle-Eastern Terrorist Cells

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As the United States government announces it’s sending more troops to war-torn Syria in order to support rebel militias — the same tactics used in Afghanistan in the early 1980s — U.S. lawmakers are now pushing a bill that would stop the aid to rebels acting in the Middle East completely.

TerroristIf a private U.S. citizen decides to send money, weapons, or any kind of support to al Qaeda or members of ISIS, the congresswoman behind the bill told the House on Thursday, he will be “thrown in jail.” In spite of the laws, the U.S. government continues to use taxpayer money to do just that, helping “allies and partners of [al Qaeda], ISIL, Jabhat Fateh al Sham and other terrorist groups with money, weapons, and intelligence support.”

If the bill becomes law, the U.S. practice of assisting extremist groups directly or indirectly would be made illegal.

Other nations found to be involved in aiding al Qaeda, ISIS, or the highly lethal Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly known as Al-Nusra Front) would also suffer the consequences if the bill passes.

The piece of legislation would also require the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to offer Congress a list of individuals, nations, or terrorist organizations implicated in this matter.

By aiding groups such as Fursan al Haqq, legislators argued, the U.S. government is aiding al Qaeda, whose members are participating in the offensive against a foreign government alongside the Syrian rebels.

With this bill, congressmen hope to simply force the government to abide by the same rules being applied to citizens. A notion often lost on the hundreds of lawmakers lurking the Capitol building.

Regardless of where you stand on the foreign policy subject, it’s important to note that the current U.S. policy in the Middle East is extremely similar to the policy applied in Afghanistan. In the early 1980s, the federal government boosted its aid to rebels in the region fighting the Soviet Union. As many may still not know, this aid may have played an important role in supporting and helping to train terrorists in the region who went on to help create al Qaeda.

The very notion that the U.S. government is wisely using taxpayer money to veto the rebels being now supported by America is hard to back up, especially when you take into consideration how inefficient bureaucracies are.

While it’s still early to know whether this bill will see the light of day, it’s important that these tough issues are being brought up and discussed broadly. After all, the same way domestic interventionist policies create unintended consequences, interventionist policies applied abroad will have the same effect.

Under Gov’t Pressure, Facebook & Others Plan to Censor ‘Terrorist’ Content

Posted on December 7, 2016 in First Amendment, Liberator Online, News You Can Use, Personal Liberty by Alice Salles Comments are off
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Under Gov’t Pressure, Facebook & Others Plan to Censor ‘Terrorist’ Content

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

As the United States remains entangled in a series of long-lasting wars abroad, people have given in to fear.

Recently, a poll showed that nearly half of Americans seem to believe that torture can be “useful,” a trend that has been going on ever since the United States invasion of Iraq took place.

SmartphoneWith the constant exposure to war talk, Americans become fearful for their lives and security. The obvious result is that, as more individuals become fearful, they also become more likely to support anything the government will tell them to keep them safe.

One of the actions often embraced by government agencies is censorship, even if officials never use this word to describe their actions.

But with the war on terror abroad being gradually expanded to cover every aspect of the American life experience, going as far as hurting freedom of speech across the board, other groups of Americans are being directly impacted. And, as a result, organizations like Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft, and Twitter are being increasingly pressured to “do something” about the “terrorist threat.” What we’re now seeing is that, instead of allowing these companies to set their own rules, bureaucrats are now making sure social media websites are blocking content deemed dangerous.

As a result of peer pressure, these companies are combining forces to “curb the spread of terrorist content online.” And now, they are exchanging data on their users with one another in order to identify “violent terrorist imagery or terrorist recruitment videos or images” so they can be removed from their forums.

According to Tech Dirt, this type of approach appears modeled on arrangements used to track child pornography. But while child pornography is illegal, “terrorist content” is an abstract idea that hasn’t been outlawed — yet.

Instead of acting out of a legal concern, these organizations are making what Tech Dirt calls “a judgement call.”
Once these groups start labeling certain types of content as bad, “false positive designations” will begin flowing across the platforms.
Because mistakes will be made, good people posting content deemed as dangerous will be blocked, leading to a war on information that Tech Dirt calls valuable and necessary.

While private organizations are free to set up their own rules, this decision appears to have stemmed from government pressure. As the line that divides private organizations and government policy remains blurred due to the crony capitalist nature of our government, it’s easy to see why these companies have had a hard time ignoring government pressure.

Instead of censoring or pushing organizations to censor their own users, we should be a loud voice of reason, urging organizations to, instead, allow this type of content to roam freely so that the majority of online users are able to take part in one of the most effective anti-terrorism actions there is: Mockery.

After all, when we are aware of where the problem is coming from, we can act in a decentralized fashion, attacking on different fronts and doing what centralized power often fails to do: Bring awareness to a serious problem and find its solution.

Texas Could Soon ‘Nullify’ Federal Gun Control Measures

Posted on November 15, 2016 in Gun Rights, Liberator Online, News You Can Use, Personal Liberty by Alice Salles Comments are off
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Texas Could Soon ‘Nullify’ Federal Gun Control Measures

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

This week, a Texas state representative took a step that could effectively nullify any past or future federal gun control measures.

According to the Tenth Amendment Center, Representative Matthew Krause, (R-Ft. Worth) prefiled House Bill 110, which would prohibit the state of Texas to offer any resources in support of several federal gun control measures, whether they have already become law or haven’t yet been discussed by Washington D.C. legislators.

Open_Carry_March_Erika_Rich_03_1_jpg_800x1000_q100Since the federal government often relies on state governments to ensure its laws are being enforced, states that withdrawal their participation end up leaving the federal government empty-handed. As a result, enforcement is eliminated in practice.

HB 110’s text makes it clear that any “agency of this state or a political subdivision of this state, and a law enforcement officer or other person employed by an agency of this state or a political subdivision of this state” is not allowed to provide any assistance to “a federal agency or official” upholding a rule or regulation that targets firearms, gun owners, firearm accessory, or firearm ammunition. If the regulation “does not exist under the laws” of the state of Texas, local agencies and officials would be barred from assisting the federal government with enforcement.

As we all know, the federal government is running out of resources and nullification efforts explore this reality, making it difficult for federal officials to get their will imposed on states.

By passing laws that ensure states refuse to participate in tyrannical policies embraced by the federal government, states send a clear message to Washington, D.C., letting federal bureaucrats know that local governments are, in a way, more powerful than a centralized administration will ever be.

But this is not the only benefit of seeing similar efforts being embraced nationwide. Taxpayers are also spared millions, since state agencies will not have to bend backwards to follow the federal government’s orders.

While many believe that a Republican White House won’t attempt to pursue any restrictive gun control regulations anytime soon, Texas doesn’t have any assault weapon law. Locals are also allowed to own firearms without registering their guns, purchase them without a permit, and able to purchase magazines without having to worry about capacity restrictions and they like it that way.

Live In Peace

Posted on November 10, 2016 in From Me To You, Liberator Online by Brett Bittner Comments are off
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Live In Peace

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

Well, another election happened.

As we get further from Tuesday, we are going to see that the conversations and discussions that we were having just a week ago, driving our lives (and probably driving us crazy) are going to fade and become distant memories, if we remember them at all.

So, now what?

The election is over. The results are in.

We have an opportunity now to really focus. We can focus on ourselves. We can focus on our families. We can focus on what’s happening around us. We can take some time to focus on our hobbies.

The beauty of all of this is, we’re NOT focused on the government anymore.

Personally, I’m going to take some time to do the things that make me happy. We’ve discussed previously that I’m only involved in politics so that I don’t have to be.

So, I’m going to focus on my happiness. I’m going to take this time to connect… Connect with myself, connect with my family, connect with my friends, many of whom were ignored over the last few weeks and months as politics consumed me. I’m also going to be able to connect more people, and new people.

As I connect with new people, I’m not going to let politics drive that conversation or that relationship. What I’m going to do is focus on learning more about them, their interests, and relate them, as we work to make a difference in each others’ lives. We can make a difference by making one another happy. We can make a difference, working to together to change someone else’s life.

What I’m going to do is that rather than at the end of my life, rather than resting in peace, that I spend the time here living in peace. I encourage you to do the same.

Go out and find what makes you happy and spend your time doing that. Meet some new people and experience new things, like we discussed just a couple weeks ago. You might find new things that make you happy.

Don’t focus on the endgame, where you will be resting in peace. Take this time to live in peace.

Creepy County Officials Stalk Grocery Shoppers in Search for Unlicensed Pets

Posted on November 4, 2016 in Liberator Online, News You Can Use, Personal Liberty, Property Rights by Alice Salles Comments are off
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Creepy County Officials Stalk Grocery Shoppers in Search for Unlicensed Pets

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

When collectivists get their way, life gets complicated. And over time, even expensive.

The movement to ensure pets are properly taken care of has created a nightmare to some residents in Seattle, Washington, to the point that their privacy is now at risk.

PetsAccording to Komo News, thousands of pet owners in the county are receiving letters from local officials telling them to license their pets. The letter adds that, if they do not comply, they could face a 250 fine.

For the last four years, King County officials have been using the data gathered by the company paying stores such as Safeway and QFC, a supermarket chain based in Bellevue, Washington, to have access to customer data registered in their system every time consumers use a reward swipe card. By having access to this data, King County officials have access to information on what these consumers are purchasing, making pet owners an easy target of local authorities.

When thousands of residents received this letter, many felt officials were “snooping around in a place where they shouldn’t be.”

But according to representatives from the local Animal Services, this is just a “standard marketing practice.”

But should government have access to this information?

To defend their actions, local officials claim residents are being made aware of the requirements and benefits associated with pet licensing. But to companies like Safeway, the county’s approach is wrong and in the long run, it might even cost them business considering the company promises its customers it does not give their data to third parties.

Last year, this sneaky practice helped county officials bring in $100,000 in new pet license revenue. But at what cost? Data on how much King County pays third parties for customer information doesn’t seem to be factored in, and with what pet owners pay the county yearly to keep their pets licensed, they could be instead investing in other much more necessary pet-related purchases.

As far as the privacy issue is concerned, the fact that a county official has access to your grocery list opens up your private life to further scrutiny. Instead of minding their own business, officials might soon be using this privilege to target you for other products you purchase regularly, going as far as using this access to help piece together criminal enterprises that never took place.

In the great haystack of data, officials end up targeting innocent individuals at time, wasting taxpayer-backed resources just like mass online surveillance does.

What Is Right Isn’t Always What Is Legal

Posted on November 3, 2016 in Communicating Liberty, From Me To You, Liberator Online by Brett Bittner Comments are off
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What Is Right Isn’t Always What Is Legal

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

When discussing libertarianism with others, never forget that we have one of the best tools at our disposal at almost all times. We have the biggest recruiter to libertarian philosophy, and that is government.

One of the best ways that we can utilize that tool is that we can talk about the difference between what is right and what is legal.

Those two are NOT one in the same. On the one hand, we can talk about the things that are right. We can talk about the things that we know to be true. We can talk about the things that are the result of the decisions that you and I make about what is right for us.

On the other, we have what is legal. Those decisions aren’t necessarily something we were a party to. Many times these things were decided before we were even born, and often, they were decided hundreds or thousands of miles away from the situation at hand by people we’ve not met and we’ll never meet. They know nothing about our situation.

Do you honestly believe that we would see people that were arrested for feeding the homeless without a permit if we were focused on what is right vs. what is legal?

Do you think we would see people fined for growing their own food, instead of having a lawn? Or for having chickens in their backyard for fresh eggs? Or want to be more self-sustaining?

Would we see children suffering because they aren’t able to get the medicine that their doctor would otherwise prescribe if it were legal?

We can utilize these examples and many more as we talk about the difference between those two things, because we can then drive the discussion to be about how when we let others make our decisions, we’re at their mercy. We aren’t deciding for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. We outsource that morality to somebody else.

When you outsource that decision-making, when we outsource that morality to someone else, you’re at the mercy of what they believe to be right, good, and true, and not what is the best outcome for you and for me.

When we’re talking about libertarianism, we can really take an opportunity by focusing on the difference between right and legal. Again, they’re not the same, and we don’t need to let people think that they are.

 

Americans Starting to Lose Faith in Centralized Power

Posted on November 1, 2016 in Elections and Politics, Liberator Online, Libertarianism, News You Can Use by Alice Salles Comments are off
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Americans Starting to Lose Faith in Centralized Power

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

If you are mostly accustomed to getting your news from established TV and news sources, you might not know that a new poll suggests that most Americans have lost faith in how the media covers politics in the country. But if you have been paying attention, you probably agree with them.

PeopleA poll carried out by Suffolk University and the USA Today asked individuals “who do you think the media, including major newspapers and TV stations, would like to see elected president: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump?” While the question itself could have been presented differently, taking into consideration the fact that, traditionally, the job of the news reporter is to be unbiased and faithful to facts, the fact 75.9 percent of respondents said they believe the established media wants to see the Democratic candidate win proves they know that cronyism has taken over.

According to the poll, most of those who responded believe that the media is overwhelmingly in favor of one presidential candidate, discarding not only the choice of the second most established party, but also both the Libertarian Party and the Green Party candidates.

That brings us to the realization that, as individuals begin to notice the subjects playing a role in the U.S. presidential elections are also partly responsible for influencing our decisions, they also realize that our central government is filled with individuals who have made their way to the top under far from ideal circumstances.

Instead of living by principles and the idea that they represent those who have elected them, these politicians only hold promises to those who have bankrolled their campaigns.

The “pay to play” scheme, after all, is not only a reality among clusters of politicians who are being eviscerated by those paying attention. It’s also a reality wherever a centralized form of government is in place.

Centralization of power is, at the end of the day, the right environment for corruption to thrive.

In Human Action, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises writes that “there is no such thing as a just and fair method of exercising the tremendous power that interventionism puts into the hands of the legislature and the executive,” explaining that, in “many fields of the administration of interventionist measures, favoritism simply cannot be avoided.”

As interventionism remains an innate part of governing, what we, libertarians, can take away from this recent poll is that the access to information provided by an open wide web of ideas, such as the Internet, has helped us understand these powerful alliances, seeing their result right before our eyes on a regular basis.

People are no longer going along quietly. And that’s why we should be celebrating.

What This School District in Pakistan Teaches the World About Choice

Posted on October 23, 2016 in Education, Liberator Online, News You Can Use, Personal Liberty by Alice Salles Comments are off
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What This School District in Pakistan Teaches the World About Choice

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

According to Al Jazeera, the most literate district in Pakistan is not heavily subsidized by the Pakistani government.

HunzaKnown for being a success story in a country torn apart by war and poverty, Hunza Valley beats all other Pakistani school districts, boasting 95 percent literacy rates among both genders. Meanwhile, districts across the country have some of the lowest literacy rates in the world, with the average adult literacy rate at 55 percent and female adult literacy rate at 42 percent.

When analyzed closely, Hunza Valley’s uniqueness is easy to identify. After all, their schools are not run by the government. Instead of waiting for government to do something, the local community decided to take matters into their own hands in the 1980’s, starting their own independent community school system.

What started as a way to fill in the gap left by government turned into a success story, thanks to the private initiative of villagers.

Muhammad Ibrahim, the chairman of the local Ismaili Community, says that village residents “all joined hands to start a community school [that would] produce students who can compete with the challenges of the modern world,” giving birth to the most successful education story coming from Pakistan in the past years.

The plan worked so well that currently, parents will power through any kind of struggle or difficulty to ensure their children are attending a community-run school.

“Education is the top priority” for Hunza residents, Hunza Public School principal Mehraban Karim told Al Jazeera. And to ensure their children are educated, “they have and will eat grass but will not compromise on their kids’ education. That’s the reason we have 95% literacy rate,” Karim added.

In Pakistan, education is free and mandatory up to secondary school. While classes start at a young age and the enrollments are high, the community-run schools in Hunza are much more popular, outnumbering government-run schools.

According to a World Bank study from 2014, another mountain district five hours away from Hunza Valley has a 5 percent female literacy rate. A huge difference when compared to Hunza, where local communities work together to educate their young without the help of government.

While infrastructure-wise, Hunza Valley cannot be compared to many — if any — school districts in the United States, the results of Hunza residents’ efforts are tangible.

That’s what happens when parents, educators, and community leaders come together to ensure their children have an option. When government fails, individuals step up, doing a much better job at educating children so they won’t become dependent on government assistance throughout their early years and even long into their adulthood.

Hopefully, parents in America can learn a thing or two from these Pakistani parents, becoming more involved and more interested in learning more about how they should go about amplifying school choice nationwide.

Without a National Government, Spaniards Have a Taste of Freedom

Posted on October 3, 2016 in Liberator Online, Libertarianism, News You Can Use, Personal Liberty by Alice Salles Comments are off
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Without a National Government, Spaniards Have a Taste of Freedom

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

For the last ten months, Spain has had no official government in place. And apparently, Spaniards couldn’t be happier.

It all began when neither of Spain’s major parties was able to secure a majority of seats in the national legislature. Since these parties are also unable to agree on a coalition government out of disdain for their opponents, the country of 47 million people is being left with a caretaker government instead of an officially elected body.

SpainAccording to the New York times, locals are glad.

To Félix Pastor, a local language teacher, the situation has produced positive outcomes. After all, “no government, no thieves.” Ana Cancela, a civil servant, agrees. She adds that “[w]e already knew that politicians were corrupt, but now we also see that they can’t even make politics work.”

As Spain dealt with corruption and scandal throughout the last two administrations, the current situation is being welcomed by those who believe that powerful politicians do less harm when left out of power.

For the past 300 days, basic government services have continued to be funded, but in the meantime, no new legislation is being considered and infrastructure and other government-run projects are frozen. And, unlike pessimistic predictions, things are actually getting better, with interest and energy rates staying low, and the economic growth forecast showing a 2.9 percent increase by the end of 2016. According to the New York Times, that’s twice the 1.6 percent average for the eurozone expected by the European Commission.

According to the Mises Institute, this period has been important for Spaniards. Now, they are finally able to get a taste of how resilient a society can be when left alone, without the paternalistic presence of a higher body regulating every aspect of people’s lives.

Instead of chaos, the absence of a centralized power gave Spaniards economic growth, a strong tourism industry, and a safe haven for consumers, who are expected to reach Spanish shores in droves.

To libertarians, this experience should be celebrated — and shared — widely. Not just because Spain has been surviving remarkably well without a government in place, but because common Spaniards are also celebrating the current situation, instead of giving in to fear.

How Egg Regulations Hurt the Environment — And Your Pocket!

Posted on September 24, 2016 in Business and Economy, Economic Liberty, Economics, Liberator Online, News You Can Use by Alice Salles Comments are off
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How Egg Regulations Hurt the Environment — And Your Pocket!

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

Government has a way of making us all question our sanity. Especially when it comes to food regulations and its environmentally unsound consequences.

In many countries across the globe, the practice of washing eggs is seen as anti-hygienic. Because when egg producers wash fresh eggs, they also remove a layer of protein known as cuticle.

EggsThe cuticle is important because it prevents the egg shell from being porous. With a porous exterior, eggs are vulnerable to bacteria.

In the 1970s, regulators with the U.S. Department of Agriculture concluded that egg producers should invest in “fancy machines,” as NPR puts it, to shampoo eggs with soap and hot water. But once the eggs were washed, regulators added, producers should place them immediately in a refrigerator.

To justify the addition of yet another requirement for the egg industry, regulators claimed this step helped to avoid salmonella contamination. But washing the egg’s exterior does little to prevent contamination.

As NPR explains, the cuticle “is like a little safety vest for the egg, keeping water and oxygen in and bad bacteria out. Washing can damage that layer and ‘increase the chances for bacterial invasion’ into pores or hairline cracks in the shell, according to Yi Chen, a food scientist at Purdue University.”

Salmonella enteritidis often infects a chicken’s ovaries, which tends to impact the yolk before the shell hardens. The bacteria can be killed when consumers cook it. Washing the exterior of the egg does little to prevent contamination. As expected, salmonella continues to expose about 142,000 individuals to infections each year.

While many contend that washing the egg and refrigerating it or leaving the cuticle both work, only the method adopted by the United States government requires a great deal of electricity use to ensure the product’s safety. Considering only 10 percent of the total U.S. energy consumption comes from renewable sources, it’s hard to see why environmentalists are not urging government to nix this particular regulation.

But too much energy consumption is not the only negative consequence of egg-washing. The cost of purchasing an egg washing machine, the device’s maintenance, required labor, and the cost of electricity employed in maintaining the product shielded from contamination all add up, increasing the price of eggs and harming the consumer.

With reports showing just how salmonella is still a problem despite the regulatory requirements imposed on the egg industry, it’s hard to contend forcing all producers to wash their eggs is somehow productive. Especially when so much electricity is required to maintain the eggs refrigerated.

Why not try freedom for a change?

Give Them Hope!

Posted on August 25, 2016 in Liberator Online by Brett Bittner Comments are off
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Give Them Hope!

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

I took the opportunity to see the movie Sausage Party (REMINDER: THIS MOVIE IS NOT SAFE FOR KIDS) over the weekend. While filled with raunchy adult humor and innuendo, near the end of the film, there was a line of dialogue that struck me as important for our conversations with those who aren’t libertarians yet… Give them hope!

hope

Conversations about politics right now center around how terrible both old parties’ candidates for president are, and we have a terrific opportunity to discuss libertarian ideas in the vacuum without any good ideas.

In the movie, there is a moment when the lead character can shatter an entire belief system (and does) to share the truth. He has two choices: he can disrespect their beliefs as he tears down their entire way of life, or he can offer them hope as he shows them the truth. At first, he adopts the former, yet moves toward the latter as he sees no fruit borne by his first efforts.

As libertarians, we should strive to adopt the second route.

We are LITERALLY the only people who can offer a world that is peaceful, prosperous, and free.

We need to offer the hope that outcome provides as we bring more people toward our way of thinking.

Think about it for a minute… We’re opening their eyes to something that goes against what the authoritarians have been touting their entire lives. We can either persuade them gently and bring them into the fold, or we can disrespect everything they’ve known their entire lives and lose them.

Those who want control and to use force over others build up the tool they use… The government.   They portray it as the only way to do anything, regardless of consequence. Our ideas and beliefs run counter to that, and that change is often hard to swallow after a life filled with being taught what we know to be false.

So, when we work to change hearts and minds, we can do so with a welcoming elegance and grace, shepherding our new brothers and sister in liberty to embrace what we already do, or we can do so clumsily and without lasting effect.

Homeland ‘Security’? Gov’t Wants to Collect Travellers’ Social Media Info

Posted on August 22, 2016 in Foreign Policy, Liberator Online, News You Can Use, Personal Liberty, Property Rights by Alice Salles Comments are off
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Homeland ‘Security’? Gov’t Wants to Collect Travellers’ Social Media Info

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

In Omnipotent Government, Ludwig von Mises writes that tending toward “a transgression of the limit” of the application of violence is a natural impulse among professionals who use violence in their line of work, even if the particular application of violence is seen as legitimate.

These transgressions are seen everywhere, from instances of police brutality to the ever-growing presence of law enforcement agents on our borders and airports.

SmartphoneNow, this transgression is entering another realm, making way for law enforcement to have an even more formally accepted online presence.

According to a new Department of Homeland Security proposal, officials are considering asking visitors entering the United States under the Visa Waiver Program to disclose information pertaining to their social media presence.

If the DHS has its way, visitors would have to fill out a form with links to their Twitter, Facebook, and other online applications. According to the DHS, the collection of this information would “enhance the existing investigative process and provide DHS greater clarity and visibility to possible nefarious activity and connections by providing an additional tool set which analysts and investigators may use to better analyze and investigate the case.”

But the wording in this new proposal is broad enough to allow officials to dig at will, increasing the risk of abuse of power—a surveillance issue that has already been associated with 4th Amendment violations in the past. To privacy advocacy organizations like Restore The 4th, this new transgression is everything but legitimate.

In a press release, the organization explained that the DHS new proposal is toxic.

In a letter addressed to the US Customs and Border Protection, the group along with “over two dozen human rights and civil liberties organizations” outlined the program’s “disproportionate risks, excessive costs, and other serious shortcomings.”

According to the letter, the DHS will be further invading individual privacy, putting freedom of expression at risk if this proposal is implemented. Furthermore, the federal government would have to worsen the national debt due to the high cost of implementation. The maintenance of this program would also cost taxpayers greatly, Restore The 4th added, and these costs “appear to be unaccounted for in the DHS Paperwork Reduction Act statement.”

The advocacy group also claims that the DHS would ignite the expansion of the surveillance state by opening a new window into the traveler’s private life. If implemented, this new rule could impact particular groups of travelers, allowing law enforcement to refer to their racial and religious bias in order to do their job.

Restore The 4th explains:

“This ‘disparate impact will affect not only travelers from visa-waiver program countries, but also the Arab-Americans and Muslim Americans whose colleagues, family members, business associates, and others in their social networks are exposed to immediate scrutiny or ongoing surveillance, or are improperly denied a visa waiver because of their online presence.’”

The letter urges CBP to dismiss the DHS proposal altogether. ​

If not you, who? If not now, when?

Posted on August 4, 2016 in Ask Dr. Ruwart, Communicating Liberty, Liberator Online by Mary Ruwart Comments are off
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If not you, who? If not now, when?

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

QUESTION: Sometimes when I criticize government, I am told that if I don’t like it here, I should go somewhere else. Essentially, the old “love it or leave it” line. What’s a good response?

QuestionMY SHORT ANSWER: One response I use goes like this:

“I love my country and its heritage of liberty. When I see it going astray, I want to help it get back on track.

“Our government once endorsed slavery. Where would we be today if the abolitionists had left, instead of helping our nation extend its heritage of liberty to slaves?

“When our government makes a mistake, it’s up to us to correct it. If not us, who?”

Don’t Be Fooled by the DOJ’s Proposed Legislation

Posted on July 18, 2016 in Criminal Justice, Liberator Online, News You Can Use, Personal Liberty by Alice Salles Comments are off
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Don’t Be Fooled by the DOJ’s Proposed Legislation

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

Two years ago, Microsoft refused to comply with a warrant concerning information hosted in Ireland, and the case was brought to court where justices ruled against the tech giant. Recently, however, the 2nd Circuit appeals court ruled in favor of Microsoft, claiming that the US government warrants do not apply to data stored outside of the country.

DOJDespite the ruling, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is now proposing a piece of legislation that would affect Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs), allowing the US government to force companies like Microsoft to unlock a server abroad.

According to the proposed legislation documents, Assistant Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik claims that the ideas proposed by the DOJ would help the US government investigate foreigners suspected of being involved in terrorism, urging Vice President Joe Biden to consider having Congress look at the DOJ’s solution.

In a post crafted by a former DOJ lawyer, the proposed legislation would allow the US government to have access to communication from non-US citizens who are located in foreign countries. Pieces of communication subject to the proposed rules would only be available for what the DOJ calls “criminal investigations,” which legalists claim to be helpful, since this restriction could help prevent current MLATs from being used with the purpose of gathering intelligence. Despite the carefully crafted piece of legislation, concessions aren’t enough to cover up for the DOJ’s goals to expand the agency’s reach.

According to Tech Dirt, the DOJ is using this proposed legislation to target laws and statutes that the agency has been abusing for years. Is the DOJ trying to make its work easier?

Take the Wiretap Act for instance, a law that has been rendered toothless ever since the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) used a single state judge in California to build a massive wiretapping operation in the Los Angeles suburbs. If the DOJ’s proposed rules are considered and signed into law, remaining restrictions imposed by the Wiretap Act would be lifted for good, making incidents like the one that took place in California more common across the country.

But that’s not all, restrictions imposed by the Stored Communications Act, which was used by the DOJ in its fight against Microsoft, as well as the criminal Pen Register statute would also be lifted under the proposed rules, Tech Dirt reports.

If the DOJ is lucky and Congress goes along with its plan, the dubious wording in the proposed rules would give officials authority to carry searches related to the “prevention, detection, investigation, or prosecution of serious crime, including terrorism.” Targets of investigations would have to be in countries that have executive agreements with the United States.

According to Tech Dirt, the proposal may superficially seem to cater to privacy advocates, but “The self-written loopholes allow for plenty of ‘search first, ask permission later’ action.” If Tech Dit’s assessment is correct, the proposal rules’ dubious wording could further entrap US citizens, helping the authorities to destroy even more of our liberties in the name of security, while targeting foreign servers in the meantime.

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