Glibertarians.com 2017 Archive

Category: Big Government

Catalonia – “Our situation is one of stable instability”
Don Swissxote checking in on Catalonia… Hmmm. Looks like another vote. When last we left this mess, the former Catalan Regional President, Carles Puigdemont, had fled to Belgium, to avoid the fate of other members of the regional government – imprisonment (which didn’t stop campaigning. *Chicago area politicians perk up*). Note, however, that the international warrant for Puigdemont was withdrawn (should he go back to Spain, I have no doubts the handcuffs would be on him in seconds).

The scenarios for post-vote Catalonia are numerous. I will glibly lay out what they are:
1. On the one hand, voters have been scared off from independence – by the use of force by Madrid (cops beating down people voting in the October referendum) or the number of business HQ’s fleeing Barcelona, or having second thoughts about being wholly responsible for themselves (in a national sense) now. So, they end up with MILFy Ines Arrimadas in charge….the independence movement returns to Quebec or Scotland levels of annoying/festering.
2. On the other hand, independence favoring parties win small – but squabble while trying to form a coalition to govern, and accomplish little to nothing before collapsing and needing new elections (see post-war Italian and Belgian governments). Being the cynical SOB that I am, I think this will end up happening… and the sound of cans being kicked down the road will echo for years.
3. Or, on the gripping hand, independence parties end up winning bigger – people get a case of the “fuck off, slaver” and one of the three independence parties gets enough of a mandate to lead a coalition….from exile, from jail or in Socialist person. Madrid would again suspend the regional government, send in the coppers and we would reach a decision point… give up under the force employed? Turn into a Basque style guerrilla type conflict? Start Civil War 2.0?
Costa Brava, Catalonia

As a libertarian type, I want force avoided. But, it ain’t my country/language/culture/self-determination at stake. I am not ready to go off and join the Reconstituted Abraham Lincoln Brigade as of yet. But this will be worth watching one way or the other.

P.S. For those that Twitter, follow #catalonia for all sorts of opinion and news.

UPDATE: Check here for results.
December 21, 2017
End of The Road – Truckers are soon to be replaced by Robots, but the State has already been Roboticizing The Driver

Much has been made in recent years of the looming replacement of human drivers with Robots Self-Driving Trucks. I, for one, welcome our new Overlords of The Road, and my concerns lie less in the inevitable evolution of technology, and more in how the state, and large, corporatist, Legacy Carriers, have been slowly chipping away at the autonomy of the individual, Over The Road, Long Haul Trucker. In this article I hope to illustrate the history and recent trajectory of this trend, and explain the extent to which the regulation of the Trucker has destroyed a once honored and noble occupation, and caused me to give up on it for good … even though I’ve had a pretty successful 20 year run in the business. Perhaps, if you wonderful Glibs will have me back, I might comment on why I think those robot trucks are a bit further away than their cheerleaders anticipate, and give some insight as to why certain sectors of the business will probably never be fully automated.

Jimmy Carter Deregulates The Business End of Trucking

Back in “The Old Days”, getting into the trucking business was extremely difficult. A prospective trucker had to seek a license, much like a taxi medallion, to even operate, and any rates you negotiated with your customers were mandated to be public knowledge, and could be interfered with by the Interstate Commerce Commission. Most trucking was done by in-house transport; many shippers had their own trucking fleets, or hired lease operators who had to run exclusively under those shippers’ operating licenses. Of course, this lead to unnecessary inefficiencies, inflated rates, and a rather noncompetitive marketplace. And that’s not even considering the effects of one James Riddle Hoffa. *(Warning, shameless plug for one of my favorite commentators and pod-casters, well known to the readers of this site.

All of this mess in the marketplace was somewhat corrected, and the field further opened to competition, by the passage of The Motor Carrier Act of 1980, signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on July 1, 1980. Similar legislation followed, both provincially and federally, in my homeland of The People’s Soviet Republic of Canuckistan.

Of course, this momentous bit of de-regulation was met with howls of protest by the dominant legacy carriers, who were now losing their oligopolies, and, to this day, is also complained about by that portion of the truck driving community who do not understand what free markets actually mean in practice. God knows I’ve been wincing at their economically illiterate commentary since I was a kid, especially given that de-regulation allowed for once small, independent operators, like my former employers here, to grow from a tiny, family run operation, to having a fleet of nearly 100 tractors and 300+ trailers, a warehousing division, and to such size that they now employ over 200 people.

That’s the good news part of this article.

Any Action Will Be Met With an Equal and Opposite Reaction

The late 1980’s and early 1990’s saw a massive increase in the competition in the trucking marketplace, which also saw the growth of 3PL’s, also known as load brokers. Many more new companies were opening, many more independent owner/operators were hitting the roads, and the marketplace continued to evolve. Things at the operational end of the business, however, were also evolving, and not always in a good way.

The state, as it is want to do, can never leave a good enough thing alone, and major increases in roadside enforcement operations began to take place. One thing that had not changed over this period of de-regulation of the marketplace was the hours-of-service (HOS) rules governing the amount of time a Trucker could work, how much rest was required, and when. What had also not changed, since their introduction in the 1950’s, was the use of paper log books, by which truckers were supposed to record their driving hours, location, odometer readings, commodity being hauled, and base of operations, such that enforcement personnel could keep an eye on us. The Nanny State was not satisfied with this arrangement, and through fits and starts in the early 2000’s they began to dismantle a regulatory framework, which, when matched with the ‘pliability’ of paper logs, allowed for an easier to manage compliance situation for most drivers smart enough to work with, through, or around the rules.

From the linked wiki –

Between 1962 and 2003, there were numerous proposals to change the HOS again, but none were ever finalized. By this time, the ICC had been abolished, and regulations were now issued by the FMCSA. The 2003 changes applied only to property-carrying drivers (i.e., truck drivers). These rules allowed 11 hours of driving within a 14-hour period, and required 10 hours of rest.^[9] These changes would allow drivers (using the entire 14-hour on-duty period) to maintain a natural 24-hour cycle, with a bare minimum 21-hour cycle (11 hours driving, 10 hours rest). However, the retention of the split sleeper berth provision would allow drivers to maintain irregular, short-burst sleeping schedules.

The most notable change of 2003 was the introduction of the “34-hour restart.” Before the change, drivers could only gain more weekly driving hours with the passing of each day (which reduced their 70-hour total by the number of hours driven on the earliest day of the weekly cycle). After the change, drivers were allowed to “reset” their weekly 70-hour limit to zero, by taking 34 consecutive hours off-duty. This provision was introduced to combat the cumulative fatigue effects that accrue on a weekly basis, and to allow for two full nights of rest (e.g., during a weekend break).^[2]

In 2005, the FMCSA changed the rules again, practically eliminating the split sleeper berth provision. ^[10] Drivers are now required to take a full 8 hours of rest, with 2 hours allowed for off-duty periods, for a total of 10 hours off-duty. This provision forced drivers to take one longer uninterrupted period of rest, but eliminated the flexibility of allowing drivers to take naps during the day without jeopardizing their driving time. Today’s rule still allows them to “split” the sleeper berth period, but one of the splits must be 8 hours long and the remaining 2 hours do not stop the 14-hour on-duty period. This rule is confusing and impractical for most drivers, resulting in the majority of drivers taking the full 10-hour break.

The split sleeper provision, such as it was, was the tool in our HOS regimen which gave us the flexibility to meet the demands of life on the road, shipping schedules, traffic, you name it. If you were held up at a customer, unpaid and with nothing you could possibly do about it, as is a common practise and endless source of frustration for the average trucker, you could at least log that time in the bunk, and make up the driving time later. No more.

In 2005, the FMCSA changed the rules again, practically eliminating the split sleeper berth provision.

This rule change, as well as the introduction of satellite linked electronic log devices, or ELDs, which become the law of the land this month have pretty much eliminated the possibility of most truckers being able to work around any schedules, traffic, weather, or this little thing called ‘life’; and to my great disgust, further remove any autonomy one might have as a trucker. As has been posted here in a thread by yours truly a few weeks back, this is certainly not good news to the over 3 million truckers in North America who are being affected by these changes. I mean, who doesn’t want Uncle Sam riding shotgun with you, telling you when you can eat, sleep, or shit, or undermining your fourth amendment rights against your privacy? Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

Some anecdotes from my last trucking job about how that effects your life on the road –

Situation a – I am dispatched from my former employers home base in Syracuse, New York, to a trailer manufacturer in Cheeseheadville, Wisconsin, to pick up a brand new trailer. Around midnight, I get tired, and pull in to the Petro Truck Stop at Angola, Indiana. No problem, right? Yours truly wakes up at a little after 630am, pre-trips the truck, has breakfast, and is ready to roll at 730. But according to Uncle Sam, and the mandated logging device in my truck, I cannot go anywhere til 10am, when the minimum required 10 hour break is up. So I have 2 and a half hours to catch up on the fun and excitement to be found here at Glibertarians Dot Com, but not make any fucking money, all because some enlightened public servants pieces of shit at the FMCSA have deemed that my sleep patterns must fit into what they believe is a proper regimen of rest.

Situation b – Yours truly is on his way back to Syracuse, on a similar trailer retrieval mission as situation a. Approaching Cleveland, I am about to run out of available driving hours, and pull into the last service plaza on the Ohio Turnpike prior to the 90 splitting off into the west side of Cleveland. Guess when my ten hour rest period allows me to drive again? Right in the middle of morning rush hour. Under the old regimen of paper logs and the split sleeper provision, or if I worked in a civilized place that allows for 16 hour (or more) windows for your drive time to be completed, or allow more driving time (such as Canada, where it is 13 hours, or Western Australia, which is quite similar), I could have kept driving through Cleveland in the evening, and parked on the east side of town, thus avoiding contributing to rush hour traffic. The next time you are sitting in traffic in some major metropolitan area, and you’re wondering why all of these trucks are on the road at the same time, you know who to blame.

And there are millions of situations like this taking place every day, in every subdivision of the trucking industry. Imagine being a cattle hauler, and you have a full load of calves on board, and it’s winter time. You run out of your 11 hours driving time, and have to stop, in the middle of winter, most likely at a location where you can’t unload your cargo and get them inside somewhere where they won’t freeze to death. Or imagine that you are me, or one of the many other people who used to run The Ice up North (remember this stupid piece of crap of television?), and your run basically can’t be done, because it’s 16 hours from Yellowknife to the mine under optimal conditions. In fact, there are so many of these situations, that dozens and dozens of industry groups that depend greatly on trucking are lining up and begging for exemptions to the rules.

And the trucking industry continues to wrestle with a driver turnover problem, that, although it has decreased slightly through 2015, appears to be on the rise again. Gee, I wonder why?

It also seems that many of the older guys on the road, gents who have been trucking for many decades and are used to managing their own schedules, regardless of what Uncle Sam has to say about it, are going to take early retirement or find something else to do.

At Werner, as Leathers explained, the number of drivers in the 60-67 age group had held steady for “a long, long time,” as a few would retire and about an equal number would move up.

In the 90 days leading up to the hours-of-service change, that number fell by half.

“It’s my belief that’s a representative sample across the industry of drivers who just said, ‘I’m out. I’m done. Thanks, but I’m moving on,’” Leathers said. “That’s been the silent victim of these changes: The drivers that are probably some of the most-qualified we have are saying, ‘I’ve had enough and I’m not going to do it.’ That’s concerning.”

Steve Gordon, COO of Gordon Trucking Inc., offered a similar take.

“The thing that’s most unfortunate is we’ve worked very hard to build a better lifestyle for our drivers – more out-for-a-week, home-for-a-weekend opportunities. The new restart has been most painful for those folks,” Gordon said. “They can’t leave the house until after 5 a.m. If they get hung up somewhere, they lose that time the next week. So the very people we’re trying to tell, ‘we’re going to do right by you, we’re going to get you home to see your family,’ they’re the ones paying the price.”

Think about this for a minute. A job which attracts people who typically want to be left alone, or have some kind of ‘adventure’, or at very least not be under the nose of their boss all day, is being regulated to a degree which gives you very little room to schedule your day, virtually dictates your sleeping patterns, penalizes you for taking naps or otherwise attempting to make the most efficient use of your time, and provides the government with an instantly accessible record about where you have been, 24/7, and gives them unlimited access to review your HOS compliance and issue fines at will. WHERE DO I SIGN UP?

Where Do We Go From Here?

For the liberty minded professional driver, the situation looks bleak. I doubt very highly that the FMCSA is ever going to change the HOS regulations to match more humane and productive provisions in places like Canada or New Zealand, where a guy can drive 13 hours a day and, at least in Canada, has a bit more flexibility with shifting hours around. And I also doubt very highly that the FMCSA or any state level DOT is going to give up on the rolling cash cows that are ELDs. If you are an owner operator and you have a truck with a model year older than 2000, you are exempt from the ELD mandate, but that doesn’t help with the stupid HOS regs, and many large carriers won’t take on owner operators who choose to run older equipment. (And don’t get me started on the EPA rules and how they have completely screwed up the engine marketplace, such that Caterpillar quit making on-highway diesel engines. Another article entirely …. ) Trucking is an ultra-competitive marketplace for rates, and the little guy has an enormous hill to climb in competing against legacy carriers, who benefit both from economics of scale, and being large enough to enjoy the privileges of regulatory capture. Hell, some of these arseholes, through cronyist organizations like The American Trucking Association, go right along with all of these stupid laws because they know they can comply with them. The Provinces of Ontario and Quebec instituted mandatory truck speed limiters, restricting trucks to 105km/h (65mph) by law, even for carriers not based there. These rules were not proposed by the Ontario Ministry of Transport, or it’s analogs in Quebec; they were proposed by mega-carriers like Challenger Motor Freight, and their crony mouthpieces in the Ontario Trucking Association.

So what’s a guy to do? As reported above, many older drivers who were already close to retirement are just going to pack it in. Some, like myself, are young enough to move into other fields of pursuit, and some, perhaps, already have training or qualifications in other fields. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the business, and the demographics of people who it typically draws from, this is not the case for the majority of people behind the wheel. What are they going to do? What was once considered a free-wheeling, adventurous, decent paying gig, looks more and more like a rolling prison from which many may not escape.

December 6, 2017
OK, I lied…More on Catalonia.

I thought the topic was done with. The Catalonian leadership had waffled, Madrid had growled and it looked like the whole thing was done. A bluff called and folded.

Remember, Sully, when I promised not to talk about Catalonia anymore?

But, as in many things…I was wrong. The Spanish central government appears to want this over with, once and for all. As I have been questioning – what does this matter to a libertarian? Is this a case of “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them“? Or just a bunch of whiny Socialists saying “What do we want? Socialism! Where do we want it? Here!” Should that even matter?

And now my bid to win a Judge Napolitano Medal for Meritorious Question Marking:

A good point Playa Manhattan had brought up – at what point is enough of the populace saying “we want out” enough? The referendum that trigger this shitstorm did not see even majority of eligible voter participation. Is there a number where you can draw a line and say “OK, there it is, enough to call it just”?

What happens to someone who wants to remain Spanish? You see a lot about the Spanish Constitution saying Spain is indivisible – does that hold for people who were not even born, or of age when it was adopted?

Will Madrid’s continuing crackdown push Catalans to say “hey, maybe the independence types are right…Madrid really does want to crap on us!”?

Can we just airdrop STEVE SMITH or send Zardoz over there to solve the whole thing?

I am torn…but if pushed, I would say that I would reluctantly back the Catalans. I do truly believe that Governments are instituted among Men,deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. But I can be convinced this is not the case here. Discuss, debate and snark, as you will.

October 19, 2017
Come See The Evil that Regulation Can Do.

I have often thought I have burned out all the absolute rage in my life….sometime after leaving Iraq. I heard a particularly powerful sermon at church on, yes, you guessed it….loving one’s enemies. After tears, contemplation and talking to the pastor…the last of the burning rage I felt… left me. But I felt an ominous stirring of the old rage, because of it. What is “it”? A story that illustrates actual evil, made possible by regulation.

A bit of background – I am from the city of Rockford. I grew up there in the 1970s and 1980s, when it went from a stodgy, stolid middle class town based on tool and die and specialty industry (and the band Cheap Trick!) the second largest city in Illinois….to a shrinking, crumbling city, fighting as hard as it can to hold on. The city had three hospitals – my father worked at one of them (not the one hurt in this story). So I was pleasantly surprised to hear the old home town had a hospital that was going to build:

The health system unveiled plans in April for a four-story, $70 million structure to serve women and children that would include an intensive care unit upgraded to the highest-rated level of care for newborns. Other upgrades would include the addition of 10 psychiatric beds, an expansion of the emergency department, and additions to the surgery and catheterization lab areas of the hospital.

But, we cannot have an increase in the ability to heal the sick, care for the newborn or the mentally ill! Heavens no!

“The applicants have exceeded the State standard size requirements” for six of 14 expansion-development areas, according to review board documents. Those areas include a nursery, emergency and surgery departments, medical-surgical inpatient unit, cath-angiography unit, and neonatal intensive care unit.

This was a shock, since:

The board in June OK’d SwedishAmerican’s plan to develop the highest-level neonatal intensive care unit, which is expected to open in the hospital’s current tower location in 2019, Kirby said. The plan is to relocate it to the new women’s and children’s tower. The board is “asking for a resubmission of our modernization project, which includes our women’s and children’s tower plan,” Kirby said.

There was no written opposition to SwedishAmerican’s expansion plan and no public testimony in opposition. More than two dozen supporters formally backed the plan, including City Council members and other elected officials.

Oh, and…

In 2015, the board approved Mercyhealth’s request to build a 188-bed hospital on 263 acres in far east Rockford. Construction is underway on the $505 million project.

OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center in Rockford is adding 78 single-patient rooms as part of an $85 million expansion expected to be completed in spring 2018.

So how in the absolute rage inducing Hell could this vital boost to a hurting city get stopped? Why, politics, of course!

The “how” – we see what many libertarians have railed against, Illinois has a “Certificate of Need” law. Want to punch a wall while screaming in rage, vomiting and crying at the same time? Check this little intro out:

The Health Facilities Planning Act (Act) (20 ILCS 3960), established Illinois’ certificate of need (CON) program. The CON program promotes the development of a comprehensive health care delivery system that assures the availability of quality facilities, related services, and equipment to the public, while simultaneously addressing the issues of community need, accessibility, and financing. In addition, it encourages health care providers to engage in cost containment, better management and improved planning.

No, you sanctimonious shitheels, it allows you to stop people from building hospitals, clinics, nursing homes and other useful things, so you can protect established players in the field from competition. Period.

So, if nobody “publicly” spoke out in opposition…how did this get beat (for now)? Well, you need 5 of 7 members voting to approve. In our case here:

Members Present: Chair, Kathy Olson; Senator Deanna Demuzio; Joel Johnson; John McGlasson, Sr.; Marianne E. Murphy; Richard Sewell
Member Absent: Senator Brad Burzynski

So there were only 6 present – Senator Brad Burzynski happened to skip out. Now why would he do that? Maybe, just maybe a good friend of his, Senator Dave Syverson, asked him to skip out? Gosh, why would he want a member to miss the meeting, and reduce the available votes? Maybe take a peek at his biography. See something at the bottom of the page…

He also serves on the Mercyhealth System Board

My oh my…on the board of a competitor health system?! I am shocked, shocked to find this out! He also just may have asked backers of the plan to withdraw their support, so I was told.

So who voted “no”? The record does not say, and the reporter I conversed with has tried to find out, with numerous calls unreturned. Maybe the chair, who happens to be on staff at local clinic? So why would it matter that she was on the staff of another local provider (other than obvious competition concerns)? Oh, lookie here!

I am in touch with a reporter (I am going to leave names out for this for now) and will do my best to find out the exact no votes. Right now this is only educated guesswork on my part. But I sure seem to have found some terrible looking coincidences, eh?

But no matter the who, and the why – the very existence of something like the “Certificate of Need” is a monstrous evil, serving only to hurt.

September 28, 2017
How to Craft a Narrative, Part 2: Setting the Center of Discussion

Last article was a case study of how the media uses experts and studies to push its agenda. However, that is but one tactic used to sway opinion. The second is their unfettered ability to set the center of the discussion.

In football, “setting the edge” is a term used to describe setting the bounds of the “pocket” where the quarterback can move during a play. The defensive player uses leverage to move the offensive blocker in the proper direction, and the quarterback is contained inside by the defensive player. In essence, the defensive player has shrunk the field accessible to the quarterback.

In politics, the same thing occurs. Most of us are familiar with the Overton window, the bounds of acceptable discourse within society. The media are masters of “setting the edge” in a way that favors their agenda. By containing the public perception of events within certain bounds, the media grabs Orwellian control over the way that politics can be discussed.

There is a psychological theory called price bracketing, where a seller offers two versions of a product to consumers. The first version is the basic version (e.g. a base model car). The second version is the premium version (e.g. a car with option packages). Consumers will buy a certain amount of the basic version (let’s say 60% of total sales) and a certain amount of the premium version (40% of total sales). However, we’re evil greedy Glibertarians, so we want to make more money, which means selling more of the premium version. Being evil and having thumbed through the latest Psychology Today, we decide to try out this price bracketing thing. In order to do that, we introduce a third version of the product on the market, a super-premium version (e.g. a car with all the option packages and even more). Then, we price it so that it’s a poor value in comparison to the premium version. After a few months, we look back at the sales and see that they have changed significantly. Now consumers are buying less of the basic version (let’s say 25% of total sales), sales of the premium version have skyrocketed (70% of total sales), and a few rubes are buying the super-premium version (5% of total sales).

People want to feel like they’re getting a good deal, and you can trick them into thinking they’re getting a good deal by offering them a choice of a comparatively worse deal. The same trick can be played in the political realm.

Bracketing in the Political Context

Isn’t this how it always works out? You have two talking heads on the show, radical SJW leftist professor on one split screen, and establishment Republican think tank fellow on the other split screen. The show’s host sits in between, moderating the bloodbath. This is classic bracketing. In the eyes of the media, you have the basic version of political ideology (establishment Republican) and the super-premium version (the SJW leftist), and you have the bracketed premium version (the progressive leaning host). Inside the average person’s head, they’re thinking “Well, I want something better than the basic version, and the super-premium version costs too much, but that host is asking reasonable questions and making reasonable points.” Slowly, but surely, the culture shifts leftward as the sympathies of the media are ingrained into society.

Contributors as Intellectuals

People tend to defer to those that they find smart. It’s a shortcut we take that’s probably baked into our DNA. Our tribal instincts say “don’t waste your time reinventing the wheel, trust the egghead.” There’s a certain authority that comes with being deemed an intellectual. There’s also a certain condescending attitude. “Well ayctually” seems to be their verbal tic these days. This affectation seems to work because the arguments promulgated by these talking heads spread like wildfire. Their on-air preening signals to the audience that they and their opinions are important.

Cable news networks are notorious for exploiting this natural human deference to intellectual authority. Every segment starts like this: “We’d like to welcome Dr. Ukunwe Selekala, senior research professor of East African Postmodern Banjo Studies at St. Jemima’s-Maple Tap, Vice President of Aboriginal Affairs for the Southern Tennessee Coalition for Crisis Action, and author of a new best-selling book, ‘Twangs of Heart Strings: The Lasting Impact of Colonialism in East Timor.’ Dr. Selekala, thanks for coming on. My first question is why do state governments act in such a racist manner when they’re confronted with their Confederate heritage?”

The fact that is lost in all of the preening and groveling is that “Dr. Selekala” is no more qualified to talk about state politics RE: Confederate heritage than you or I. He’s a puppet, placed on the screen to parrot a predictable opinion with an air of intellectual authority. His last three research papers have been on Saharan ancestral music, and his book is an unreadable and poorly researched emotional screed. However, he’s a radical leftist, and he anchors the conversation in one direction. On the other side is either a withering establishment moderate or a conservative held on a very tight leash by the host. Neither talking head has any experience that is relevant to the conversation, but they play their parts and the unsuspecting viewers are pulled in by the intellectual authority signaled to them by both sides.

Success in the Small Things

When viewed in the big picture, it seems a bit outlandish to assert that the media can drag people kicking and screaming to a new opinion. However, they don’t need to move the whole mountain. They can move it one grain at a time. Merely mixing a lie/mischaracterization/biased statement in with an otherwise completely objective statement can sway viewers. If you do this repeatedly, the lie becomes truth to the viewers. Irma is the most powerful hurricane ever in the Atlantic (except it isn’t)

Part of our perception that the media is going nuts is the fact that they’re doubling down on their injection of lies and half-truths into the conversation. They have lost control of the populace, and they’re trying to get it back the only way they know how, through rigging the debate in their favor. The only problem is that once you load the die too much, it becomes obvious that it’s off-balance.

Part 3 of this series will tie a neat bow on things by explaining how public opinion polling is a complete sham and how the media uses polls to sway their viewers’ opinions.

September 19, 2017
An Apologia for the Non-Interventionists that Voted Trump

Non-interventionists of every stripe from libertarians to paleo conservatives to standard anti-war types have had their dreams dashed this past week after the president announced a troop surge in Afghanistan. To be fair, the president had already been offering mixed results to non-interventionists. Some actions were commendable, such as ending the CIA program that was arming Syrian opposition groups (BBC News), while others were the same interventionist impulses that we’ve seen from every post-World War II administration, such as bombing Syrian airfields (CNN). But even those who justified their support for President Trump’s election by noting his less militaristic foreign policy never truly believed that he would fulfill their long held dreams of closing overseas military bases, and ending American support for quasi-wars undertaken by our allies (such as the conflicts in Yemen or Syria). Writing in the American Conservative (a publication founded by anti-war conservatives opposed to the Iraq War) Robert Merry noted that based off of polling “it seems that the preponderance of public opinion ran counter to both of those foreign policy philosophies [neoconservative and liberal interventionism]. Donald Trump, in his often crude manner, captured this opposition view.”

Relationship status: It’s complicated.

With Trump, it was believed, we would finally have a conversation about our relationship with Russia, which some have argued has been overly hostile and counterproductive since the end of the Cold War (The National Interest and the American Conservative). With Trump we could finally ask the question of whether it is worthwhile to pledge open-ended military support, through NATO expansion, to countries such as Montenegro with little benefit to our own security. With Trump we could finally discuss the cost, both financially and morally, of engaging in and supporting barbaric wars against Yemen and Syria (to name a few), which pose no threat to our country. With Trump, some dreamed, we might finally come to debate the words of President Eisenhower who warned of the unchecked powers being acquired by the ‘military-industrial complex’ or, even better, we might rediscover President Washington’s warning about ‘foreign entanglements’. But, why did these non-interventionists hope that these conversations might be possible, but only with Trump?

President Trump is not a principled or moral man. He is a thrice married, petty man who finds it more important to engage in school yard taunts with his opponents rather than arguing over policy. He is no scholar, as he himself has admitted that he rarely reads (The New Republic) and, with regards to foreign policy, he has said that “I’m speaking with myself [about foreign policy], number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things” (POLITICO). He is, on nearly every issue, malleable. But, since the 1980’s, when Trump first flirted with the idea of running for political office, he has been consistent on two topics: foreign affairs and trade. As early as 1987, during the height of the Cold War, Trump stated that the US “should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves” and advocated for nuclear disarmament (NY Times). During the 2016 campaign, Trump’s advocacy for non-interventionism became a topic of debate, as it was alleged that he had voiced support for the Iraq War, based upon an exchange between himself and Howard Stern. Some Republicans who had voted against the Iraq War, such as former representative John Hostettler, defended the real estate magnate and said “Last night, in the midst of the first presidential debate, the moderator prefaced a question about Sen. Clinton’s vote to authorize the Iraq War with the suggestion that Donald Trump’s comments to a shock jock prior to Sen. Clinton’s vote was equivalent to that vote” (Washington Examiner). There is little evidence to suggest that Trump was ever an interventionist, whereas he has made statements in the past and during the 2016 campaign that delighted non-interventionist advocates throughout the country, such as his skepticism about NATO commitments and opposition to continued military involvement in Syria. Even his recent declaration about a troop surge in Afghanistan was preceded by numerous reports stating that Trump was rebuffing the requests of his generals, and fellow Republicans, who were requesting that surge (The Intercept and POLITICO). It is quite logical to understand why some non-interventionists saw him as a preferable option than the status quo offered by his opponents.

Yet some supposed non-interventionists have gone about berating others who had hoped (and some still hope) that, at the very least, the Trump administration would be nominally better than sixteen years of intense interventionism. These supposed non-interventionists have gone about declaring that they have been vindicated and they have begun pondering whether those who oppose war and voted for Trump are ‘gullible’ (Reason). This is a rather odd assertion to be made, considering that most of these people did not vote for even a nominal non-interventionist in 2016. Of Trump’s 2016 opponents, only Jill Stein was more stringently opposed to adventurism overseas than him. Yet, beyond Stein, the other two major candidates were significantly more predisposed to war than Trump. Specifically, I would highlight the Libertarian Party candidate, Gary Johnson, who was the preferred choice for many of the supposed non-interventionists that are sneering now.

… Also complicated.

In 2012, when Johnson first ran for the presidency, he offered a mixed bag with regards to foreign policy in an interview with the Daily Caller. He suggested a 43% reduction in defense spending, but he also said that “he supports America’s efforts to aid African troops in tracking down Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and that he wouldn’t rule out leaving behind American bases in Afghanistan” (Daily Caller). Around the same time, in an interview with the Weekly Standard, Johnson also said that he supported the notion of the US waging war on humanitarian grounds (Weekly Standard). These positions are almost indistinguishable from the long-forgotten breed of warmonger once known as the ‘Rockefeller Republican’. Make war, but on the cheap. As if cost is the only issue to consider when waging unnecessary wars. More recently, in 2016, Johnson tried to avoid foreign policy issues and became less hawkish and more non-interventionist in his attitude to conflicts. He told CNN in 2016, that in order to solve the conflict in Syria he believed that “There is only one solution to Syria, and that’s being hand in hand with Russia diplomatically to solve that” (CNN). A position, ironically enough, that was nearly indistinguishable from that of Trump. But beyond a few flubs, of which the media exaggerated, Johnson spent little time discussing his foreign policy vision in 2016. So if the contention of these supposed non-interventionists sneering at Trump voters now is that Trump’s past statements, and those during the 2016 race, were not sufficient enough to conclude that Trump would be a non-interventionist than why were Johnson’s decidedly pro-interventionist positions supposed to have made him a better alternative? The only ‘gullible’ voters in 2016 were those who refused to accept what they were hearing.

At this time, it would appear that President Trump is behaving as a standard Republican president with regards to foreign policy, with a few exceptions. Nine months into his administration, we cannot determine if Trump will correct his way and become non-interventionist or continue with the interventionist foreign policy that has dominated Washington since the end of World War II. More likely than not, Trump will end up being more restrained, in some regards, than his two immediate predecessors. Which, some might argue, is still preferable than a continuation of the status quo. In hindsight, it appears that the only moral vote a non-interventionist could have made in the 2016 election was to either vote for Jill Stein or abstain. But at the time, in November 2016, there was good reason for non-interventionists to be hopeful about the prospect of a Trump presidency. And no one should fault them for the choice that they made, based upon the information that they had available at the time.

September 7, 2017
Debt and Growth in America

The United States Government is carrying a frighteningly high level of debt. However, no serious plan has been implemented, by Democrats or Republicans. This high debt will have deleterious effects on the US, including the effect on taxes, economic growth and “entitlements.”

This article will steer clear of specific thoughts on social and political upheaval, since it is too hard to predict such trajectories, and are anyway another subject. Of course, macroeconomic trends can be just as tricky, I am sure many people will have differing opinions on how our national debt will affect the economy in the coming decades.

First, we must cover the current liabilities, debts, and revenue streams of the Federal government. All figures presented will be based on the most recent year available- 2016 data unless otherwise noted.

US GDP: 18.87
Total Federal Governmental Debt: 19.98
Interest rate: 2.232%
Debt as % of GDP: 106%
Interest Spending as % of GDP: 2.36%
Long-term economic growth trend: 2% (estimated based on post-2010 data)
Inflation: 1.26%

Pretty dire straits when debt is above total GDP. Having a debt ratio this high is actually cataclysmic, as pointed out by Salim Furth at The Heritage Foundation due to a phenomenon known as debt drag. I believe this is a fairly intuitive concept. As national debt increases as a portion of the total GDP, it causes a corresponding decrease in the growth of GDP. My personal theory on how and why this happens is as follows: There is a ‘crowding out’ effect by taking investments away from high risk/reward private debts, but also because more and more money is spent servicing debt rather than being spent on goods and services. Why risk your cash when you can get a guaranteed return on investment?

The exact magnitude of the effect is of course debated but is estimated at between 0.18-0.19% lower growth for every 10% GDP debt above about 84% of GDP and 0.16% lower for every 10% above 60% of GDP (see graph below). This seems to indicate that the effect of high debt is a nonlinear decrease in economic growth; however, we will represent the relationship as a tri-linear curve. For a country with debt at 106% of GDP, the effect would be about -0.82% to the annual increase in GDP. This is massive when one considers the historic growth rate of the US in modern times was close to 3%. However, we find now that the growth rate over the past 10 years has never surpassed 3% (year-long average) and is averaging much closer to 2%. This corresponds freakishly well with the increase in Federal debt. 10 years ago debt was about 60% of GDP, which based on empirical evidence does not seem to have a large effect on growth.

Another headwind for the US will be the increasing cost of capital. During the fantastic growth of the national debt interest rates were very low, a favorable position for a debtor to be in; however, the interest rates are likely to increase with the new Fed policy to increase the benchmark rates. This means debt will become more expensive to service, and likely return closer to the historical average rate of about 5%. Debt payments will increase, further accelerating the addition of debt. With the increased debt, revenue growth will slow due to a lackluster economic growth (remember that -0.185% of growth per 10% of debt to GDP?). This all points to a rapidly accelerating downward spiral from this point on unless spending can be reined in yesterday. All evidence in recent history points to the fact that reining in spending is a political no-go, for Millennials, the fiscal hot potato has been tossed around their entire lives. Short term pain will be high if spending is to be controlled, and that only gets worse as the deficits grow.

On top of all this bad news in terms of debt, growth and interest rates we will have acceleration in the costs of the major entitlement programs as the populace continues to age and even grow infirm before their years (some of this can be attributed to the increase in the average American’s waistline). Again, there is no political will to reform these programs. If recent events are any indication, even small cuts to unimportant programs are not possible.

For this thought experiment, let us assume that the Fed is targeting 3% for inflation and that they get it in 3 years. For the sake of simplicity, say that means the interest rate reaches ~5% on treasuries. This is in excess of 100% increase over the current cost of servicing debt for the US. This means our outlays to service debt will increase; making our current budget, which already relies on deficit spending to go further into the red by the same amount. Last year total debt servicing was $432 billion (including interest paid to the Social Security trust fund). If we assume this will double over the next 3 years when interest rates go up, that is a debt cost of 2*$432= $864 Billion. This is still pretty cheap but will be added directly to the deficit (and thus converted to new debt) as our revenue is unlikely to increase any more than the economy does.

Let us review our assumptions:
• (real) Growth rate starts at 2% but is decreased with increasing debt
• Expenditures and Revenue as a portion of GDP is constant (~3% funding gap)
• Inflation reaches 3%
• The interest rates on debt reaches 5%

Now, take a theoretical person “John” he will retire in 2045 and die in 2063. When John retires in 2045, our scenario would predict a real growth rate of 1%, however, because this includes a 1%/annum growth rate in population, average living standards would cease to increase at this time. John’s kids would probably riot since no one wants to be doing only as well as their parents did. This could change our long-term assumptions, so ignore that possibility for now. In 2063 when John dies, the debt to GDP ratio would be equal to 2.7 and real growth would be -1%. Japan aside, it is not clear anyone would be willing to continue to lend to a country with such anemic growth and high-debt.

So, right around when John retires in 2045, we’re likely to have a calamity in terms of funding the government (assuming this sort of steady-state worsening of financial conditions nationwide). We’re likely to see outlays hit, especially for social security, already projected to be something like 75% of promised benefits come 2035.

I think it is reasonable to think that around 2035-2045 something major will change our trajectory, as the combining forces of the elderly being cut off and economic stagnation unheard of in American history caused major political and social upheaval. We will have to have increases in effective taxation rates, decreases in benefits or some kind of default around this time period (or some combination of all three). Combined those efforts would result in an effective decrease in our living standards by about 10% in 2045 without accounting for lost economic growth, which would be another 12%. That is actually a good thing, compared to waiting until 2063 to deal with debt issues when growth would be worse than stagnant, and thus the consequences of the debt carried by the government exacerbated by economic conditions. I would estimate that by waiting until 2063, the decline in living standards by the combination of more taxes and less spending would be close to 16% and an additional 40% loses due to unrealized economic growth.

Further Reading:

https://www.cbo.gov/ has tons of information on projections, but they are very often wrong, for example:

In CBO’s baseline projections, the deficit in 2017 totals $693 billion, $134 billion more than CBO projected in January.

That is a 20% error in the deficit over the course of just one year. You can find the most recent 10-year outlook from the CBO here: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52801

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/feddebt/feddebt_ann2016.pdf

August 31, 2017
Civil War II: A reflection on my hot take from May

In May, I wrote an article about the unlikely chance of Antifa and the Alt-Right coming to blows and kicking off a civil war. The Antifa Brownshirts were agitating about impeachment at that time, but two months later, they’ve changed gears and gone after the skinheads. While that, in and of itself, isn’t of particular concern, there is a more disturbing trend emerging. Antifa feels free to organize against any “unwoke” social gathering and attempt to get some scalps. What used to be a Simon and Garfunkel concert is now a Dropkick Murphys mosh, and the cops are happy to just sit there and watch. Even if there was just a small escalation in arms between the commies and the nazis, it wouldn’t be noteworthy, except for the way that Antifa is being treated by the left and their media hack cronies.

As I wrote in the May article:

Although people joke about “alternative facts,” it’s not a joke. There are two prevailing agendas across the country: 1) Trump is LITERALLY HITLER and A RUSSIAN MOLE AT THE SAME TIME!!! 2) Trump is DADDY and GOD-KING OF KEKISTAN, VANQUISHER OF THE SJWs and CUCKS!!! The left has their educational and media empire churning out outrage by the gallon. The right has their independent media matching the outrage of the left.

Antifa is smashing windows and folks like Based Stickman (who the fuck is Based Stickman and why is he called that??) are bashing Antifa heads in. People are primed to believe that the violence will do nothing but escalate.

This dynamic is still there, and the excuse making for the violence injected by Antifa has come to a fever pitch. It wasn’t enough that Trump denounced all of the violent elements in a volatile situation. No, he specifically had to denounce the supposed “right wing” (read: non-Marxian) “hate group” (read: non-PC group). Now that he’s showing an ounce of backbone in standing up to the Prog-Fascist media, he’s LITERALLY HITLER yet again.

Once again, we approach a crossroads. Will a critical mass of people buy the media’s angle? Will the escalating violence of Antifa be excused away as a righteous backlash against an evil President backed by a malignant social movement? Or, will people cut through the BS and hold both sides accountable for the increasing tension and violence? The first fatal blow has been struck, and it’s just a matter of time before more are landed. Will people give a collective shrug and go back to living their largely unaffected lives, or will they be galvanized to one side or the other by the unaccountable mayhem?

I still think that a widespread conflict is quite unlikely, but let’s jump back through the portal and get comfy in the Derplight Zone once more. What factors are festering under the surface that could bubble up into a civil war?

LITERALLY HITLER

Antifa and their media and political organs are doubling down on the LITERALLY HITLER rhetoric, which is absolutely polarizing and dehumanizing. There’s a reason that people were extremely hesitant to analogize to Hitler in domestic politics for 50 years. The guy was so dangerous that we co-opted an entire nation’s resources for 4 years to end his reign, at immense cost in human and economic terms. When the left compares Trump to Hitler (even implicitly), they’re sending a message to the right, and especially the Alt-Right, that this isn’t just a domestic debate, but a fight to the death.

The dangerous part is when the left leaves no room for dissent. People on both sides of the political aisle have always been susceptible to hyperbole and puffery, but when the left uses the power of boycott, violence, doxxing, and blacklisting on a regular basis, people who believe differently are given no outlet to vent off their pent up political energy. Much like gunpowder, their anger fizzles out when lit in the open, but when contained in a tidy little container, the results are explosive. The increased “all or nothing” attitude from the LITERALLY HITLER left is boxing the Alt-Right up in a tidy little container.

“They’ve Gone Too Far This Time”

I’ve seen a lot of people react this way to the way Antifa has been acting lately. It’s one thing to protest, boycott, shout down, or even make a hostile work or learning environment. It’s a completely different thing to act as a mob. People don’t like mobs, and average non-political folks are taking notice of the mob mentality that has taken hold in certain parts of the left. Antifa has chosen their targets very carefully so far, but one poorly chosen location for a riot could result in a violent response from otherwise unattached people. For most of the unattached, the distance between them in their cozy suburban or rural lifestyle and the violence in the urban liberal college setting is far enough that they don’t feel threatened. If Antifa were to overstep their bounds and perhaps threaten something more relatable to suburban folks (like schoolchildren), the backlash would be swift and violent.

Widespread Acceptance of Increasing Violence

I hate the phrase “the new normal,” but it is apt in this situation. Most people see the increasing violence, rail about it for 24 hours, and then forget about it. Like mentioned above, there’s a comfort in the fact that these goons seem to be contained on Marxist-sympathizing college campuses. However, you get less of what you penalize and more of what you celebrate. While the average Joe and Jane are ignoring the violent protests, the mainstream and leftist media are praising these goons for “punching Nazis.” We’re going to see more of this simply because there are hardly any consequences worth mentioning in comparison to the accolades bestowed upon these “woke” counter-protesters standing up to the evil Nazis. It’s getting to the point where people are resigned to the possibility of a second civil war.

Shifting Reaction to SJWs

The time is starting to come where perceptions of SJWs are shifting from a mix of fear and apathy to abject hatred. The problem is that most SJWs are emotionally stunted and unable to handle rejection. The resulting dynamic is a bunch of SJWs throwing temper tantrums, seeing that their Antifa friends (there is a significant crossover between the groups) are the golden children for breaking windows and harassing “Nazis.” On the other side is the Alt-Right, a reactionary group that makes its hay harassing SJWs and is stepping up its own reaction to these Antifa goons. As much as the Alt-Right dislikes Antifa, they HATE SJWs. They’re looking for an excuse to use Antifa’s tactics against the SJWs.

Economic Downturn

We’re about due for another recession, and people tend to be more amenable to violence when they don’t have a job. This one is fairly self-explanatory and well-documented throughout history.

Floundering Media

The traditional media is dying, and they’re trying everything they can to get people to consume their content. They’ve long since removed their mask and exposed their Marxist-sympathetic leanings, but they get consumers when there is conflict. These days they’ve gone from reporting on conflict to stoking it, and I don’t think there’s an end in sight. They’re going to do everything they can to start a race war, a communist revolution, and a national witch hunt all at the same time. The ratings will be amazing!

Overall, I’m still pessimistic on the chances of widespread fighting. I think the worst we will possibly see is an LA riots type situation. However, as shown in Charlottesville, all it takes is one body for the self-righteous leftist media to climb on top and start agitating. Like a high-stakes game of “Press Your Luck,” both sides keep smacking the button, hoping to hit the political jackpot, ignorant of the lurking Whammy.

August 19, 2017
Why Dreamhost is our host

In alarming, but not surprising, news, the Department of Justice is demanding over 1.3 million IP addresses and associated contact information for visitors to a website hosted by Dreamhost, a Los Angeles-based web hosting company. Our web host.

The only surprising aspect of the case is that it is not Glibertarians.com that is targeted. The website in question is disruptj20.org, “a website that organized participants of political protests against the current United States administration,” according to Dreamhost. Not only is the contact and personal information of the site visitors wanted, the DOJ is also pushing for access to photographs of protesters that are on the site’s server, and what content the website visitors viewed.

If you don’t want something coming back to bite you in the ass, don’t put it online in any form. Almost everyone gets this. (Well, maybe not the assorted criminals who are easily apprehended after posting videos of their criminal exploits publicly on Facebook.) This has been a concern for far longer than the current administration has been around, as I am quite sure the Glibertariat is well aware. Hell, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was established in 1978, and it has been perverted and allowed to be used for nefarious purposes willy-nilly ever since, completely gutting Fourth Amendment protections.

However, web browsing is something that most people do automatically, without thinking too much about the ramifications. Of course, many people routinely block their browsing history from spouses, children, bosses and other people in their daily lives. (Visitors to the Certified Family Friendly website Glibertarians.com should certainly be doing so.) It’s far more difficult to block one’s browsing history from one’s internet service provider, and from the web host of sites one visits.

But back to Dreamhost. Dreamhost has a long history of attempting to protect its users by challenging law enforcement requests for information and legally rejecting them. In 2014, for example, DH was able to legally block 57% of the information requests it received.

I’ve been a Dreamhost customer for a decade, give or take. I use DH for all websites I build and domains I register, no matter who owns the site. One of the first things that sold me on DH was the ability to have one’s domain registrant and contacts protected by DH during a whois search, at a time when most other web hosts and domain registrars simply wouldn’t bother. I was happy to avoid random obnoxious marketers targeting website owners, and the occasional too-ardent admirer.

Since then, I’ve repeatedly seen that Dreamhost makes sincere and real efforts to protect more than my mailing address.

My concern over the gutting of the Bill of Rights by the government has increased steadily since 9/11. That dismantling shows no sign of slowing down. It gives me some tiny measure of comfort that Dreamhost shares that concern.

And THAT is why Dreamhost is our host.

If so led, show DH a little appreciation by commenting on their post (link below) or giving a quick shoutout on Twitter or Facebook.

Read more about it:

Dreamhost’s blog post

DOJ Search Warrant

DOJ Motion to Compel

Dreamhost’s Opposition Motion

Popehat’s take

August 16, 2017
The (Small-l) Libertarian Case For a Non-Libertarian President

What is libertarianism’s best strategy to gain a legitimate amount of power nationally (and then happily cede it to the people)? Libertarians of the small-l and big-L varieties have sought to gain power by either co-opting one of the major political parties (See; Ron Paul Revolution that the GOP squashed) or by finding candidates to run as a Libertarian that appeal to establishment voters (see: Aleppo). But I believe there is a third, and overlooked, option: get a candidate who does some libertarian things that irritate the major parties and the deep state apparatus, and allow those actions to result in political hysterics from ultra-partisans while average Americans see no net loss from the actions and in many cases a serious net gain. I believe this will continue to set in motion a series of events where the government can be shrunk to a level that’s at least tolerable to minarchists and other run-of-the-mill libertarians.

How libertarian is President Donald Trump?

The answer is: not very. I think that’s been established. The man swam in a pool of cronyism sharks his entire professional life. He, through desire or necessity, has been a rent-seeker. He has used eminent domain to further his projects. He has sought special treatment from political entities both domestic and foreign to further his interests. The man is no altruist. But does that make him distasteful, or does it make the system in which he operated distasteful? Personally, I will rarely fault someone for utilizing the same processes his competition would use, so long as it does not originate from a position of government authority. And Trump never held office before his inauguration. In other words, he never utilized political office for financial gain by, say, orchestrating government access to foreign actors that overwhelmingly donated to your personal foundation or for trade groups and banks that hired your unqualified husband to give speeches at ridiculously over-inflated fees. In other words, I don’t hate the player, I hate the game.

And yes, Trump is allowing Jeff Sessions to wage the drug war, which is a sticking point to a lot of libertarian minds. But I ask you, is it better to wage a drug war and uphold the concepts of equal protection and the rule of law (while allowing Congress to do their job and vote to legalize drugs the right way)? Or is it better to arbitrarily enforce duly enacted laws based on the geography of a person and/or their willingness to bend a knee to the state and support legalization with a ton of unlibertarian strings attached?

The sadder these people are, the happier I get.

Some policy positives already achieved and in the works:

So now we come to Donald Trump’s libertarianism or lack thereof. The man, no doubt, will continue some of our military adventurism overseas. But he has already stopped our policy of running guns to terrorists and terrorist-sympathizers in Libya and Syria after the previous admin established those programs and destabilized an entire region, while thoroughly destroying the likelihood that a rogue regime would abandon its weapons programs and try to re-enter the international community (read: we came, we saw, he died). There has been no resurrection of the programs nthe last two administrations ran to ship guns into Mexico through the drug cartels, for different motives yet still in gross violation of Mexican sovereignty. And perhaps he will continue to not carry out targeted assassinations of American citizens that have never been charged with a crime, which the prior admin was all too happy to do in gross violation of the Fourth Amendment. Furthermore, he has already started to roll back our country’s association with liberty-robbing agreements like the Paris Climate Accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Both of those agreements undercut the ability for American companies and consumers to freely negotiate what they were willing to exchange goods and services for. Removing our name from them is a step in the right direction, especially if it’s followed up with free trade agreements that haven’t existed in a century or more. That action is yet to be seen, but at least someone had the audacity to upset the globalist apple cart and stop a little bit of the insanity those agreements put us further along the path to.

Get us out of this circus, please!

As for civil liberties, Trump is still an unknown quantity. His statement about “roughing up” suspects is problematic to say the least. And I can only hope it was hollow bluster. But even so, it sets a very poor example and he should correct it immediately. Now, having said that, he has not furthered Obama’s policy of killing Americans without due process, but that’s not going to be enough. His willingness to stop going after businesses that exercise what should be a fundamental right to free association looks good so far. As do his overtures to Second Amendment causes. As does his willingness to tackle Affirmative Action and Title IX insanity. Holy crap, I just realized he’s been the best president on civil liberties we’ve had in recent memory. People that overlook the substance of these actions due to his boorishness need to reassess what their priorities are, in my opinion.

Furthermore, our business climate has benefited greatly from having an outsider installed as the head of the regulatory apparatus. Trump has already vowed, and started to carry out, a dismantling of the bureaucracies that stifle economic growth and freedom for Americans. From the onerous EPA regulations to CAFE standards being rolled back or passed to the states, there has been a serious uptick in confidence from the business and manufacturing sectors that Trump will get the government out of the way of prosperity. The hilarious irony there is that Trump was a crony his entire life, as I mentioned earlier. But perhaps he had no choice but to play the game the only way that could lead to success: do what the government tells you and push others out. Now, when given the reins, he seems to be more than willing to eliminate programs that he personally benefited from but that create barriers to entry for others. Yes, he could have opposed the system while benefiting from it. But let’s not pretend he’s some awful hypocrite because he played the hand he was dealt. Business “leaders” like Elon Musk, Mark Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, etc, etc, etc have done the same thing and so did their forefathers like Ford, Carnegie, Mellon, and others on back through the ages as long as there was a government agent with a hand in their pocket. So I’m willing to forgive that.

Be happy for this.

And lastly, he put what appears to be a strict constructionist on the Supreme Court in Neil Gorsuch. That is a marked improvement on any names mentioned by establishment candidates on either side of the aisle during the last campaign.

The other intangible positive results of a Trump presidency:

Another thing libertarians have always sought is a diminished reverence for elected officials and other “public servants” whose goals are often at odds with those of the people. Trump’s mere presence has caused probably 2/3 of the political spectrum to demand the reverence for the office be scaled back. They are now calling for more power in the hands of the states or localities and even ::gasp:: the people, on occasion. These are people that have been statists to the core. They are the Big Government democrats and NeoCon statist Republicans. And they are finally unified in an effort to diminish the role of the Executive Branch. This serves to re-establish the separation of powers that has become all-too-muddy with much of the congressional responsibilities being passed to Executive Branch agencies in an attempt to deflect responsibility and ensure easy reelection for entrenched politicians. The more responsibility that is pushed back into the laps of our directly elected officials and down to the state or local level, the better for us. It helps us create a more diverse political environment where “laboratories of democracy” are able to compete for ideas and human investment, rather than an all-powerful centralized state controlling everything. And one need look no further than minimum wage laws (since we have them, I’ll address it) to realize a top-down approach where the minimum wage “needed” in New York is imposed on small towns in New Mexico or Wyoming, where the cost of living doesn’t even come close, is a horrific idea. The Trump era is returning us to an ideal the founders embraced in that respect.

And he is returning us to another ideal the founders cherished: temporary service from business-people and non-careerist politicians. The flood of people on Trump’s coattails from all sides of the political spectrum is refreshing. Sure, many are moneyed and or celebrity candidacies. But so what? Its a step in the right direction any time we start to end political dynasties and careerists that sit in the Senate for 30 years as they grow further and further out of touch from average Americans. More turnover from political novices has a much better potential upside of shrinking our government than does further entrenching those who have pushed us to near financial ruin and reduced individual liberty.

Pucker up!

The net result so far (in my opinion):

So let us all embrace the non-libertarian president. For one of these reasons or for another I might have missed. But embrace it nonetheless, because it has already borne libertarian fruit, and I suspect it will continue to do so for many of the right and some of the wrong reasons. Its the best we could have hoped for and probably the most libertarian moment in America for a hundred years.

August 7, 2017