Category Archives: Libertarianism

The cryptocurrency exchanges have only done what is legally required of them when sanctioning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, unlike the mainstream financial institutions whose restrictions on the Russians generally exceeds what is required by law. This column argues that the implications for the future of cryptocurrencies will be considerable.

The fundamental idea behind cryptocurrencies was the creation of a currency and a financial system that exist outside of the mainstream, motivated by libertarian visions of the world. The crypto advocates often say the mainstream system is corrupt, and the only way to fix it is technology that is pure. A lovely idea in theory, but what about practice?

The financial authorities dont like financial intermediation that bypasses their demands. Standards such as know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering become meaningless if the unsavoury elements of the financial world can do their business in crypto exchanges that refuse to comply with what the financial authorities see as legitimate demands and bypass any inconvenient rules (Bindseil et al. 2022).

For the crypto exchanges, however, reality came knocking. The financial authorities were too powerful, and most crypto exchanges now comply with KYC and anti-money laundering demands. After all, the alternative is being cut off from the rest of the financial system, which would not be good for business. If one cannot make a round trip from fiat to crypto back to fiat, most clients will allocate money elsewhere. Some rogue exchanges have refused, catering to the diehard libertarians (plus criminals and those subject to sanctions).

The crypto exchanges maintain their independent streak. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the governments in the West imposed sanctions, targeting a small set of individuals intimately connected with the Russian regime (Kwon et al. 2022). Many mainstream financial institutions, such as Visa and MasterCard, have gone above and beyond that to further limit Russian access to their firms services. Russian names find it very difficult to operate in the West, not usually for legal reasons but because the financial firms servicing them have opted not to do business with them. Whether legal or not, these firms act with the connivance of the financial authorities and the strong support of political leadership and popular opinion.

Not crypto. The crypto exchange Binance said, To unilaterally decide to ban peoples access to their crypto would fly in the face of the reason why crypto exists. And its competitor Kraken was more explicit: Bitcoin is the embodiment of libertarian values, which strongly favour individualism and human rights. It cited the law, saying it cannot freeze the accounts of our Russian clients without a legal requirement to do so.

How important is crypto to Russia? I suspect the Russian government couldnt care less what the crypto exchanges do and that its longer-term goal is to prevent crypto use in Russia, as it gets in the way of social control. Crypto is especially useful in countries where the government is most likely to dislike it, places where governments like to closely monitor and control citizens and/or extract significant rent from the financial system. Most legal restrictions on crypto use come from such countries (Danielsson 2021).

While the Russian government might not like crypto, that does not apply to the regular Russian citizen. On the contrary, they are enthusiastic crypto users, in the top 20 of crypto adoption and third in crypto transfers.

The difference in attitude between the crypto exchanges and mainstream financial institutions raises interesting questions that will continue to reverberate. For example, suppose the consensus is that Russian names should be punished for what the Russian government is doing, for whatever reason. In that case, those Western firms that refuse to do so are put under a difficult political spotlight.

The political attitude of the crypto experiences can only strengthen the hand of crypto opponents. Expect to see increased calls for restrictions on crypto activity in the West, motivated by the Ukraine innovation and the prevalence of bitcoin as ransomware payments.

The crypto exchanges do not want to engage with these issues and have remained neutral on the Russian sanctions, citing political ideology for only doing what is required by law. The reason is clear. The most vocal crypto advocates are the libertarians who want to keep their money outside the mainstream. The crypto exchanges need to be seen as echoing those views, regardless of what they do in reality. That political mission is key to crypto success.

Compliance with legal and political demands from financial and political authorities, as well those of the public, threatens crypto adoption and the price of cryptocurrencies, raising interesting questions about the future of crypto. The libertarian values, so dear to crypto advocates, are meaningless if the financial authorities can compel the crypto exchanges to comply with their demands.

The crypto exchanges will be in a particularly tricky situation if the Russians are seen to be using cryptocurrencies on a large scale to avoid Western financial sanctions, both legal and political.

The crypto exchanges might be damned if they do and damned if they dont.

Suppose they operate in a jurisdiction that complies with the demands of the mainstream system. In that case, the authorities can force them to cut off today those Russians that the governments put on their sanctions list and then to comply with whatever the authorities choose to demand in the future. Some crypto exchanges will find a way to operate outside of the long arm of the Western financial authorities. Even then, it will be a struggle for them to maintain access to mainstream financial institutions that can provide fiat settlement.

When the crypto exchanges comply, they join the mainstream, taking cryptocurrencies with them. So, the ideology is flushed down the drain, and one of the main selling points, if not the main selling point, for crypto is gone. So, it would not be good for the price of bitcoin.

If the crypto exchanges do just the bare minimum and issue political statements justifying that, like Binance and Kraken, they are seen as favouring the opponent of the day today Russia, tomorrow, who knows? That creates opposition, fuels calls for banning crypto and makes regular investors reluctant to invest in crypto. Not good for value either.

Crypto has joined the mainstream. The war in Ukraine exposes the consequences. Exciting times for it.

Authors note: I received excellent comments from Nikola Tchouparov on this piece. All errors and opinions are mine.

Bindseil, U, P Papsdorf and J Schaaf (2022), The Bitcoin challenge: How to tame a digital predator, VoxEU.org, 7 January.

Danielsson, J (2021), What happens if bitcoin succeeds?, VoxEU.org, 26 February.

Kwon, O, C Syropoulos and Y Yotov (2022), Extraterritorial sanctions: A stick and a carrot, VoxEU.org, 4 March.

Link:
Cryptocurrencies and the war in Ukraine | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal - voxeu.org

March 9, 2022

March 9, 2022

On March 15, 1982, Ronald Reagan paid an official visit to the state of Tennessee. Upon landing, the president traveled directly to The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson's historic estate. After laying a wreath to commemorate the 225th anniversary of his predecessor's birth, Reagan delivered an address to a joint session of the state legislature. "In this time when we and our people are so severely tested," he told the audience, "it will help to remember the courage that President Jackson could summon from the convictions in his heart."

Last night, almost exactly 40 years later, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) appealed to Jackson in similar terms. Speaking at the Reagan Library in California, Cotton claimed Jackson as the guiding spirit of the GOP. Noting that former President Donald Trump also placed himself in Jackson's lineage, Cotton contended "that old Democrat" prefiguresthe Republican future.That may well be true, but it's far from clear Cotton himself will be able to get there.

His remarks were partly a campaign preview. Despite his ritual disclaimer of interest in the presidential election, Cotton is laying the basis for a possible run in 2024 if Trump doesn't compete. Content aside, the Reagan Library event illustrated some of the obstacles he'll face. Like his Senate counterpart Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Cotton looks and sounds like a precocious high school debater.

The speech was more interesting, then, as an intellectual exercise than an electoral one. On one level, it was an act of synthesis. Rejecting the claim that Republicans must determine whether to follow the example of Reagan or Trump, Cotton asserted "a deeper continuity in the beliefs of our 40th and 45th presidents." The title of the lecture series, echoing Reagan's 1964 speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater, is a "Time for Choosing." But thoughthe Republican Party isstill fractured by Trump's legacy, Cotton argued no choiceis necessary.

Yet the speech was also an act of intentional division. On trade, criminal justice, and, above all, foreign policy, Cotton made his now-familiar case against libertarian influences in the GOP. Demanding a general revival of toughness, Cotton even ventured to criticize Trump: The First Step Act, which eased standards for releaseand lowered sentencing requirements for some categories of federal crime, was the worst mistake of his presidency,Cotton charged.

Even as Cotton nudged libertarians to the fringes of the Republican coalition, though, he also developed an implicit critique of so-called national conservatives, who promote a more active role for the federal government in economic affairs while sharing some of libertarians' objections to worldwide projection of American military power. Even as he denounced "globalism" for distracting from civic responsibility and the national interest, Cotton contended that a "new Iron Curtain threatens to fall" over Ukraine. The Cold War ended while he was in middle school, but Cotton remains a hawk who instinctively divides the world into opposed camps.

Cotton wants to perform this21st-century balancing actdraped in the Jacksonian mantle. But can he?

Part of Jackson's appeal to generations of American politicians is that his long and colorful career includes something to please almost everyone. As Cotton noted, Abraham Lincoln was inspired by Jackson's staunch support for the Union. Theodore Roosevelt admired him as an independent executive who asserted his constitutional prerogatives against a recalcitrant Congress. FDR, who helped elevate Jackson to a status equal to Jefferson as a founder of the Democratic Party, characterized Jackson as a defender of "social justice." Lyndon Johnson cited him as an inspiration to the struggle for freedom everywhere in the world. These interpretationsare not identical and, in some ways, not even compatible.

Jackson hardly lacks for critics, either. One reason Cotton framed the speech around "Old Hickory" is that he's among the once-revered figures whose stature has been undermined by accusations of racism in recent years. Those accusations are not unfounded. Personal opinions notwithstanding, Jackson was a large slaveowner, protagonist of Indian removal, and, in consequence, responsible for the successful spread of the plantation economy to Alabama, Mississippi, and other parts of what would become known as the Deep South. The paradox of which Jackson is hardly the only symbol is that policies and decisions which successfully extended democracy to many Americans denied its promise to others.

More than specific deeds, though, Jackson stands for a distinctive political disposition. "Neither an ideology nor a self-conscious movement," historian Walter Russell Mead argues, Jacksonianism is characterized by suspicion of centralized government and its credentialed functionaries, impatience with formal institutions and corresponding admiration for strong leaders, and an opposition to taxation that doesn't prevent the enjoyment of federal benefits for those who are presumed to deserve them. Sometimes described as "folk libertarianism," it's a contradictory set of attitudes that makes less sense on paper than in practice. But that's exactly why it's so appealing to the large numbers of Americans who think of politics as an exercise in common sense rather than a challenge of philosophy.

Jacksonians, so understood, don't think about the rest of the world all that often. When they do, they're sympathetic to underdogs, jealous of national honor, and predisposed to seek decisive solutions in military force rather than protracted negotiation. As in domestic affairs, the results aren't always theoretically coherent. But they are predictable. While populist figures including Fox host Tucker Carlson and Trump himself have expressed sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin,a student of the Jacksonian tradition would have known that the Russian invasion of Ukraine would not go over well among Americans with these inclinations.

Cotton didn't quote Mead in his remarks at the Reagan library, but he's known to be a student of the writer's work. His argument, in effect, is that the Republican future lies with witting or unwitting Jacksonians. Such voters might have supported Democrats in the past but are alienated by that party's association with the kind of highly-educated scolds whom Jackson promised to dethrone 200 years ago.

The analogy isn't perfect, of course. Perhaps the biggest difference is that Jacksons' supporters were a clear majority of anewlyexpanded electorate, albeit one limited to white males. Today's Republicans often seem more interested in restricting voting than in attracting new supporters. Moreover,19th-century Jacksonians were mostly favorable to immigration, partly because they saw it as a source of votes. Although Cotton paid appropriate tribute to immigrants' patriotism in his Reagan Library speech, he's been a leading advocate of restricting legal immigration and stepping up enforcement against unlawful residence.

In good Jacksonian fashion, though, these tensions may be more theoretical than practical. Although the Jacksonsian disposition is historically associated with the "backcountry" culture of Scots-Irish settlers, it's proved capable of assimilating generations of immigrants and their descendants including millions who supportedTR, FDR, and Jackson himself. Precisely because new Americans are enthusiastic about American ideals and institutions, moreover, they tend to be skeptical of the iconoclastic tendencies that have been turned against Jackson himself.

The irony of Cotton's speech is that his ability to foresee the promised land may not earn him a place in it. Whatever the strength of his historical or political insights, he lacks the personal charisma Jackson's most successful heirs possessed to such an outstanding degree. Trump was able to forge an extraordinary connection with his supporters, but turned off even more Americans than he thrilled. That leaves Republicans still waiting for a new Jackson,a more broadly appealing leaderwho can turn widespread discontent into a governing coalition. Cotton isn't it.

Original post:
Tom Cotton is no Andrew Jackson - The Week

Over the past half-century, libertarians have played a critical role in the ever-growing war against governmental nonsense. If you want to read the best critiques of wasteful transit policy, sports stadia, government pensions or cancel culture, you can find it among liberty-minded outlets like Reason magazine, the Cato Institute and numerous free-market think tanks. They have provided a strong and necessary voice for free-market capitalism at a time when it faces serious challenges, notably from China and other state-directed systems.

Yet in recent years, libertarians increasingly seem less concerned with how their policies might actually impact people. Convinced that markets are virtually always the best way to approach any issue, they have allied with many of the same forces monopoly capital, anti-suburban zealots and the tech oligarchy which are systematically undermining the popular rationale for market capitalism.

Perhaps after the endless regulatory assaults of the Covid years, we could be nudging to a libertarian moment, the Wall Street Journals Gerard Baker hopes. But this would depend on having a vibrant social base, whose personal wellbeing is at stake, to push society in that direction.

The critical issue here is class. Libertarians tend to enjoy theory, but flounder when it comes to addressing the actual needs of people. Barely anyone today looks to former House speaker Paul Ryan, with his notions of privatising social security, or to other Fountainhead politicos of his ilk for leadership. The corporate superstructure has moved to the Democrats, while a large part of the GOPs class base notably small businesspeople, artisans and skilled workers feels abandoned by the corporate free-market Republicans and is more attracted to populist politics.

Nowhere is the disconnect between libertarianism and its traditional base of small-property owners more obvious than in housing. In their zeal, sometimes justified, to end the worst zoning abuses, the libertarians have allied themselves with two forces, monopoly capital and social engineers (also known as city planners), whose goal is not to expand the blessings of ownership, but to squelch it for all but a few. Their end game is to leave most people stuck in small apartments.

Libertarians have served as fellow travellers and allies to the hyperactive, oligarch-funded YIMBY (Yes in My Backyard) movement. In essence, as former Cato fellow Randal OToole notes, the libertarian right has betrayed the very middle class that most supports conservative causes. OToole, who had been Catos land-use expert since 2007, was forced out in favour of an alliance, as he puts it, working hand-in-hand with left-wing groups seeking to force Californians to live in ways in which they didnt want to live.

Read the rest of this piece at Spiked.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: Mr.TinMD via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

Read the original post:
The Limits of Libertarianism - newgeography.com

With an ambitious speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Monday night, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton became the latest Republican presidential aspirant to try and get himself anointed Donald Trump's populist successor. Cotton's remarks were noteworthy primarily for establishing him as a master of obfuscation who will go to almost comical lengths to paper over the party's many disagreements and contradictions.

One way to describe the fissures in the GOP is to contrast Reagan and Trump. The first was sunny and optimistic, a confident defender of democratic ideals who took a strong stand against the Soviet Union while championing immigration, free trade, and limited government at home. The second trafficked in anger and resentment, openly admiring dictators, denigrating NATO, and favoring closed borders and protectionist policies designed to insulate American workers from market forces.

Cotton elided these many differences by claiming that Reagan and Trump belong to the American populist tradition that traces back to President Andrew Jackson. According to Cotton, this tradition is known for proudly and unapologetically defending America's interests in the world and the interests of ordinary Americans against corrupt economic and political elites.

Cotton then set himself up as the truest successor of the Jacksonian tradition by calling out the biggest mistake made by each of his populist predecessors. Reagan, he claimed, should never have gone along with an immigration amnesty as part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. As for Trump, his greatest error was supporting and signing the First Step Act, which passed the Senate in 2018 with 87 votes. (Cotton was one of 12 Republicans to oppose the bill.) It was championed by libertarians and widely hailed for its efforts to reform criminal law, sentencing guidelines, and federal prison policy to enhance fairness and reduce the inmate population.

As far as Cotton is concerned, the current surge in violent crime can be traced directly to this law, which supposedly encouraged the hiring of progressive prosecutors who engage in "nullification" by failing to prosecute criminals. The law also resulted in a drop in the prison population by "more than 400,000 inmates in 2020 alone," driven by the "faddish claim that our country has an over-incarceration problem" when in fact "we have an under-incarceration problem."

Combine this diatribe with other passages of the speech denouncing "globalism" and chain migration, calling for presidential medical adviser Anthony Fauci to be fired and "held accountable," denouncing the indoctrination of "our kids with extremist nonsense" in schools, railing against China, and mocking President Biden's appeasement of Russia and listeners could be forgiven for assuming Cotton's vision of Jacksonian populism amounts to a nastier and more competent version of Trumpism that's also an outright repudiation of Reaganism.

If that's what Tom Cotton wants the Republican Party to stand for, he can certainly try to make it a reality and ride it all the way to the Oval Office. But he should admit the truth that this vision has as little to do with Reagan as it does with Abraham Lincoln, another president Cotton attempted even more absurdly to fold into the Jacksonian tradition. Anything else is deliberate mystification.

See the rest here:
Cotton can't square the circle between Reagan and Trump - The Week

During an appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC earlier this week, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had some choice words for crypto bros navigating questions of deplatforming amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"If the Ukrainians with our help can impose enough economic pain on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and, sadly, the Russian people, combined with providing weaponsthat might be the only waythat I can see us getting to a stalemate that might save the Ukrainian people from even greater tragedy," said Clinton, referring to the broad-based sanctions imposed by Western governments on Russian financial institutions and state-owned companies.

Clinton added,"I was disappointed to see that some of the so-called crypto exchanges, not all of them, but some of them are refusing to end transactions with Russia for some philosophy of libertarianism or whatever,"later in the segment. "Everybodyshould do as much as possible to isolate Russian economic activity right now."

Maddow, who seemed to agree with her guest, responded by calling crypto "an escape hatch" with potential to stymie "multilateral action."

That's precisely the point. Crypto's transcendence of national borders is a feature, not a bug.

On Sunday, Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov instructed crypto platforms to freeze the blockchain addresses of Russian and Belarusian users. Many major players in the crypto world bristled at this, pointing to the fact that administering such sanctions or deplatforming people based on nationality runs contrary to the liberatory promise of crypto.

Of course, many country's governments can and have cracked down on crypto exchanges in recent months by layering on reporting requirements for whenever large amounts of crypto are bought or sold. To a certain degree, exchanges are still subject to the rules of the countries they operate inas opposed tocold wallets, which are offline means of storing your crypto. Since widespread crypto adoption is still in its infancy, governments are still ironing out their regulatory approaches; expect lots of different frameworksand subsequent workaroundsin the coming years.

None of that is to say that broad-based economic sanctions won't be effective in applying pressure on Putin, but people within the crypto world tend to approach deplatforming people with major trepidation. Right now, ordinary Russians are being punished by sanctions for the sins of their strongman and it's important to take seriously the pain that will be felt by them.

For now, Russian users are still serviced by cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance and Kraken, which allow people to retain some amount of financial freedom even as their prospects look grim. Perhaps more will flock to those options in the future; they should have both financial and physical exit from their country available to them if they so choose. And, where crypto possibly helps everyday Russians, it also helps the Ukrainians under siege, who are facing the financial instability that accompanies war.

See more here:
Hillary Clinton Is 'Disappointed' by Crypto Exchanges' 'Philosophy of Libertarianism' Hillary Clinton Is 'Disappointed' by Crypto Exchanges'...

Should the United States do more to support Ukraine in its fight against Russian invaders? Will financial sanctions against Russia work and are they moral? What does a libertarian foreign policy predicated on "realism and restraint" look like?

Today's guest on The Reason Interview is Will Ruger, the newly appointed president of the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), who holds a Ph.D. in politics specializing in foreign policy. He's a veteran of the war in Afghanistan and was a prominent voice in calling for U.S. withdrawal. Ruger was nominated to be ambassador to that country late in the Trump administration (his confirmation was never brought to a vote).

He's a proponent of what he calls "libertarian realism" when it comes to foreign policy, meaning that America's interventions abroad should be focused on defending a narrowly defined national interest and that the use of military force should be strictly subjugated to diplomacy. Ruger is skeptical that the United States can or should play a leading role in defending Ukraine and he doesn't think sanctions are likely to accomplish anything, especially in the short run.

We talk about all that, how NATO, the European Union, and China figure into current events, and what he plans to do as the head of AIER, one of the oldest free market think tanks in the country.

Original post:
Will Ruger: How Libertarians Should Think About Ukraine Invasion - Reason

When approaching a problem of government excess, the conservative approach is straightforward: trim the fat, eliminate government restrictions and let the free market work. Moreover, both parties share that approach after all, Presidents Kennedy and Reagan both slashed income taxes, and President Carter deregulated the airlines.

In contrast, what is the conservative solution when approaching a problem of corporate excess? Unfortunately, that is the problem conservatives now confront with Big Tech, the enormous corporations that control what Americans can do and see online with almost no government oversight.

To the libertarian, the answer is easy: Do nothing. Laissez-faire economics is effectively a religion requiring strict adherence. As Calvinists believe that sinners are in the hands of an angry God, libertarians believe that consumers are at the divine mercy of the invisible hand. They are the chosen few who dedicate their lives to the strict view that government and only government is a threat to the free market.

So it is no surprise that libertarians have been up in arms to combat bipartisan bills to rein in Big Tech, such as the Open App Markets Act and the EARN IT Act. But conservatives such as Sens. Marsha BlackburnMarsha BlackburnThe damnable religious inklings of the Big Tech libertarian Trump holds GOP candidate forum at Mar-a-Lago Lawmakers condemn Putin, call for crippling sanctions on Russia amid military operation MORE (R-Tenn.) and Lindsey GrahamLindsey Olin GrahamOvernight Defense & National Security Russia expected to escalate war with Ukraine Russia widely expected to escalate violence in Ukraine Senate gears up for confirmation of first Black woman to Supreme Court MORE (R-S.C.) recognize that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. A hands-off approach to Big Tech may work for libertarian purists, but it fails to confront the real problems Americans are facing.

Take, for example, todays app stores. Apple and Google control more than 95 percent of the mobile app store market. For years, theyve had free rein to charge app developers up to a 30 percent tax for the privilege of competing in the mobile space most small developers are paying these tech giants more than they contribute to the federal fisc.

To lock in that tax, Apple has prohibited apps from offering their own payment methods, infamously locking out Epics Fortnite when it dared to provide players with an alternative. Making it worse, Apple has agreed to the Chinese Communist Partys request to censor free-speech apps that would allow repressed Uyghurs, persecuted Christians and pro-democracy advocates to communicate.

The libertarian response? A shrug.

But when Blackburn joined Sens. Amy KlobucharAmy KlobucharDemocrats press top pharmaceutical representative on price increases The damnable religious inklings of the Big Tech libertarian Five things to know about Ukraine's President Zelensky MORE (D-Minn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) to introduce the Open App Markets Act? Outrage.

The claims are absurd, bordering on parody. Although the Act expressly lets consumers choose to sideload apps not available on an app store, libertarians claim it will reduce consumer choice by making Apples app store slightly less distinct from Googles. Although the Act lets alternative app stores compete for a consumers business, libertarians argue that allowing more app stores might somehow lead to higher consumer costs. And the libertarian response to more free-speech apps? That the senators might not like everything said on those apps.

Or consider the online market for child sexual exploitation. The International Labour Organization estimates that women and girls comprise99 percent of victims of forced sexual exploitation. Worse, 25 percent of the victims are children. Significantly, online predators continually use social media sites to recruit and sell young girls for sex 59 percent of recruitments (65 percent of which involve children)happened on Facebook alone. Yet, tech companies frequently use Section 230 as a sword to provide them with immunity from liability, even if accused of participating in child sex trafficking.

The libertarian response? Meh.

But when Graham introduced the EARN IT Act to crack down on Big Techs facilitation of child sexual exploitation? You guessed it, more outrage.

Again, libertarians engage in hyperbole, arguing that the EARN IT Act will somehow erode encryption, leaving us as exposed as Lady Godiva riding through Coventry. In reality, the EARN IT Act makes modest amendments to platforms Section 230 liability when they take a blind eye to users they know to be engaging in sex trafficking on their platforms.

Its perfectly conservative to have a knee-jerk reaction to new government rules. But its indulging in a foolish consistency to stop there. When the fate of entrepreneurs, civil discourse and children are on the line, conservatives must face the facts and rethink their priors. When Big Tech respects the commands of a foreign censor more than the free voices of the American people, laissez-faire cannot be the answer.

Instead, conservative sentiments support reining in the power of Big Tech. And we are lucky that conservatives in the Senate are willing to reach across the aisle to forge sensible, bipartisan solutions. No matter how much the little statesmen protest, the philosophers scream and the divines rage.

Joel Thayer is the president of the Digital Progress Institute, a nonprofit seeking to bridge the policy divide between telecom and tech through bipartisan consensus.

Visit link:
The damnable religious inklings of the Big Tech libertarian | TheHill - The Hill

It is difficult to discuss the American libertarian movement without considering the late economist Murray Rothbard. On this date, which would have been his 96th birthday, we present and discuss the radical ideas of Rothbard.

Born in the Bronx in 1926 to Jewish immigrant parents from Poland and Russia, Rothbard grew up as a self-described right-winger, influenced greatly by his father who, in Rothbards own words, believed in devotion to the Basic American way: minimal government, belief in and respect for free enterprise and private property, and a determination to rise by ones own merits and not via government privilege or handout.

In the 1940s and on, Rothbard became exposed to the libertarian ideas of economists like Ludwig von Mises as he pursued and received degrees in mathematics and economics, including a doctorate in the latter.

Beginning in the 1950s, he began working on a book aimed at explaining Mises work that resulted in Rothbards signature economic treatise Man, Economy and State, which was published in 1962. Like Mises work, Rothbards economic approach was predicated on the idea that economics could be explained from first principles, which center on human action.

In Rothbards view, individuals ought to be free to make their own choices and associate with each other voluntarily as they see fit.

Radically, Rothbard believed that there were no functions currently undertaken by governments that couldnt be done by the private sector. He viewed governments and those advocating expansive government skeptically, as institutions and individuals incenticized to leverage the force of government on increasing spheres of life for the sake of power. This radicalism led him to view the direction of the United States critically.

In rhetoric, America is the land of the free and the generous, enjoying the. .. blessings of a free market, he wrote in 1967. In actual practice, the free economy is virtually gone, replaced by an imperial corporate state Leviathan that organizes, commands, exploits the rest of society and, indeed, the rest of the world, for its own power and pelf.

One can only imagine what hed say about matters today.

In 1969, Rothbard explained to Young Americans for Freedom that, as a libertarian, he no longer considered himself a part of the American right and cautioned libertarians against going along with conservative-libertarian fusionism, which came to dominate the Republican Party over the next few decades.

I got out of the right wing not because I ceased believing in liberty, but because being a libertarian above all, I came to see that the right wing specialized in cloaking its authoritarian and neo-fascist policies in the honeyed words of libertarian rhetoric, he wrote.

Though Rothbard would, toward the end of his life, himself veer off into being politically allied with right-wing populists, his 1969 warning to those who value liberty is instructive. It highlights why theres been an ongoing struggle between libertarians and conservatives, who, despite having much in common, fundamentally disagree on key matters, like the value of liberty versus state-enforced commitment to tradition.

Rothbard certainly wasnt perfect, holding and promoting self-evidently ridiculous views that persist in some factions of the libertarian movement particularly a preoccupation with engaging in apologia for the Confederacy. But, his overall body of work and life was focused on promoting individual liberty, free markets and peace. For that, we remember him.

Read this article:
Remembering the ideas of Murray Rothbard - Daily Breeze

Gary North, a leading Christian Reconstructionist who argued for the biblical basis of free market economics and urged people to prepare for societal collapse, has died at 80.

North was a prolific writer, simultaneously penning a 31-volume Bible commentary on Austrian economics; turning out regular warnings about financial catastrophe; and firing off a seemingly endless stream of columns on the gold standard, government overreach, Gods covenants, and the greatness of libertarian Ron Paul.

He was perhaps most mainstream when he supported Pauls longshot presidential bid in 2012. He boosted the candidate throughout the Republican Party primaries, alternately explaining monetary policy to newly converted libertarians and hyping the chances that the Texas politician could actually win the White House.

He was most well-known, though, for his warnings about Y2K. North was convinced that a computer programing shortcutcoding years with two digits instead of fourwas going to lead to catastrophic crashes when the year 99 became the year 00 and the worlds digital infrastructure reset itself. He eagerlyeven gleefullyheralded the collapse of civilization and coached Christians on how to stockpile food, gold, and guns.

For his part, North thought his most important work and true calling was explaining how the alternative economic theories of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard (both nonpracticing Jews) were deeply biblical. Free market economics should be grounded, he believed, in the Bibles account of Gods covenants, the scarcity that follows the Fall, and the divine mandate in Genesis 1:28 that people should take dominion over the earth (KJV).

North conceived his magnum opus as a Christian version of Adam Smiths The Wealth of Nations but acknowledged it would probably never have the influence or the readership that he wanted. Really, he said, he was writing for a very small group of people.

Who are the likely readers? A remnant, he wrote. I mean those Christians who are convinced that there are serious problems with the modern economies of the world. I also mean those who are convinced that there are biblical alternatives to the collapsing secular humanism of our era. I write for those who are convinced that there had better be a distinctly Christian economics, and not baptized Marxism, baptized Keynesianism, or baptized Friedmanism, let alone the unbaptized varieties.

When North died in hospice care in Dallas, Georgia, on February 24, his books were available for free online.

North was born on February 11, 1942, in Horn Lake, Mississippi, to Peggy and Samuel W. North Jr. The family relocated to Southern California in Garys childhood, so his father could surveil the Socialist Workers Party for the FBI.

It was a deeply conservative home, committed to anti-Communism, but North nevertheless experienced a political awakening at 14 when he heard a lecture by Australian Fred Schwarz, head of the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, about beating global Communism, the unbeatable foe. Soon the teenager was not only opposed to Marx and Lenin, but also Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal, and Social Security.

North became a regular at the Betsy Ross Book Shop, a critical hub of Southern California conservatism, and a faithful reader of The Freeman, the libertarian magazine produced by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), the first free market think tank in the United States.

At 17, he became a Christian and became fascinated by the idea of connecting libertarian economics with his faith. Several people claimed to be doing this at the time, but in Norths estimation, they fell short. A Dutch Calvinist businessman was republishing the work of Austrian economist Eugen von Bhm-Bawerk and calling it Progressive Calvinism, but it wasnt notably more religious than the work of other Austrian theorists. J. Howard Pew, the Presbyterian oil magnate and Christianity Today financier, was publishing a twice-monthly journal called Christian Economics, but it didnt seem to be particularly Christian.

The authors were first-rate free market economists, and many of them were Austrian school economists, North later recalled. But there was no attempt by the authors to integrate what they were writing on economics with the Bible.

By the time he was 18, North was personally committed to this project. He decided he would do what others hadnt and show how the whole counsel of God supported free market capitalism.

The most significant moment in Norths development came in 1962, when he met R. J. Rushdoony, a Presbyterian pastor who developed a theology he called Christian Reconstructionism. Rushdoony said that everyoneand in fact everything and every intellectual discipline that started from objective, observable factswas in rebellion against God and needed to be brought under Gods authority. He argued a truly Christian society would be a theonomy, under divine law.

North embraced Christian Reconstructionism to the point that he would, over the years, make the argument that a truly Christian country would reinstitute the practice of public stoning.

That modern Christians never consider the possibility of the re-introduction of stoning for capital crimes indicates how thoroughly humanistic concepts of punishment have influenced the thinking of Christians, he would write. Christians have voluntarily transferred their allegiance from the infallible Old Testament to contemporary God-hating and God-denying criminologists and economists.

North spent one summer working with Rushdoony at a libertarian think tank and kept in touch.

After he graduated with a PhD in history from the University of California, Riverside, he went to work for FEE, directing seminars at the Irvington, New York, think tank, and writing articles for The Freeman. He wrote about gold, inflation, financial depressions, and the theology at work in economic theories (Men have a tendency to get their religious presuppositions confused with economic analysis, he said).

In 1972, North married Sharon Rushdoony, R. J.s daughter. The next year he quit FEE, partly in a dispute over rights to his writing and public lectures, and went to work for his new father-in-law. He edited the new journal of Christian Reconstructionism, the Chalcedon Report, assisted with the research for Rushdoonys Institutes of Biblical Law, and published his first book, a collection of articles titled An Introduction to Christian Economics.

Is there such a thing as a distinctively Christian economics? North asked in the introduction. His answer was Yes. The first chapter looked Old Testament prophets condemnations of dross and drew out implications for monetary policy.

In 1976, North took a brief break from the world of think tanks to go work for Ron Paul in Washington, DC. The Texas obstetrician named won a special election and went to the capital promising to fight the Federal Reserve and return the US to the gold standard. He needed staff, and hired North to write twice-monthly newsletters to his constituents.

The job only lasted until Paul lost reelection in November. North was considered for a position in Congressman Dan Quayles office but didnt get it, and decided he wanted nothing more to do with government work.

Seldom in the history of man have so many incompetents, cronies, idiots, goof-offs, hangers-on, and nincompoops been assembled in one geographical area, he wrote. These people are yo-yos. You would not believe how second-rate these people are. I am speaking about the conservative staffers.

Leaving Congress, North moved to Durham, North Carolina, where he could access an academic library. He started working in earnest on his economics Bible commentary.

To fund the work, he founded the Institute for Christian Economics. He sold self-published books by direct mail for $10 and then got book-buyers to subscribe to his newsletter, Remnant Report, for $45 per year. He grew the subscriber base from 2,000 to more than 22,000, grossing $1.2 million in 1979. What North didnt use for his Bible commentary he poured into building up Christian Reconstructionism.

In the early 1980s, North moved to Tyler, Texas, be closer to other Christian Reconstructionists. At the same time, North had a bitter falling out with Rushdoony. The disagreement started with an article about the lambs blood on the doorposts in the Passover story in Exodus.

The esoteric debate quickly escalated. North told his father-in-law he was going to be replaced by younger, more vigorous men. Rushdoony replied, Your letter is written with your usual grace and courtesy.

The Texas Reconstructionists were also increasingly fixated on impending catastrophes, becoming preppers and survivalists. North wrote that the AIDS epidemic would lead to civilizational collapse, predicted numerous recessions and depressions caused by inflation or government debt, and frequently urged people to buy gold and silver before it was too late.

The peak of his apocalyptic fervor came in the late 1990s. North became convinced that a computer programing shortcut would end modern life as we know it, resulting in a nightmare for every area of life, in every region of the industrialized world.

To North, it was clear this was divine punishment for a world that had strayed from God. He called it a good, old-fashioned Deuteronomy kind of thing and launched a website with advice on postapocalyptic bartering, gardening, food storage, generators, where to move to best avoid murderous hoards, and of course, why you should buy gold.

When the predicted day of doom came and went, North noted that he had been incorrect, but said Y2Ks effects, so far, have taken all of the specialists by surprise. He believed, regardless, that gold was a good investment and people were better off, prepared for disaster in out-of-the-way parts of the world.

North moved on from predicting disasters and turned to more mainstream commentary in the next decade, when he became a regular columnist for the libertarian and anarcho-capitalist website LewRockwell.com.

He advocated for the Tea Party movement and the gold standard while attacking social security, fiat money, leftist evangelical Jim Wallis, and Franklin Roosevelt. He occasionally defended conspiracy theories, speculated about a conspiracy behind the terrorist attacks of 2001, and when his old boss Ron Paul started gaining momentum, he wrote about Paul.

As the libertarian candidates quest for the Republican nomination fizzled, North finally finished the 8,511-page book he had first dreamed of in 1960 and had started writing in 1973: An Economic Commentary on the Bible.

No one has ever attempted a Bible commentary like this: what the Bible has to say about the details of an academic discipline, North wrote. The culmination of my lifes work is here.

North posted the final, revised, and typeset PDF of the commentary online on January 29, 2021. He died one month later.

He was predeceased by his son Caleb and survived by his wife, Sharon, and their children Darcy North, Scott North, and Lori McDurmon.

Read the original:
Died: Gary North, Who Saw Austrian Economics in the Bible and Disaster on the Horizon... | News & Reporting - ChristianityToday.com

The Statue of Liberty.

A draft version of new article on "Immigration and the Economic Freedom of Natives" (forthcoming in a symposium in Public Affairs Quarterly) is now available on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Much of the debate over the justice of immigration restrictions properly focuses on their impact on would-be migrants. For their part, restrictionists often focus on the potentially harmful effects of immigration on residents of receiving countries. This article cuts across this longstanding debate by focusing on ways in which immigration restrictions inflict harm on natives, specifically by undermining their economic liberty. The idea that such effects exist is far from a new one. But this article examines them in greater detail, and illustrates their truly massive scale. It covers both the libertarian "negative" view of economic freedom, and the more "positive" version advanced by left-liberal political theorists.

Part I focuses on libertarian approaches to economic freedom. It shows that migration restrictions severely restrict the negative economic liberty of natives, probably more than any other government policy enacted by liberal democracies. That is true both on libertarian views that value such freedom for its own sake, and those that assign value to it for more instrumental reasons, such as promoting human autonomy and enabling individuals to realize their personal goals and projects.

In Part II, I take up left-liberal "positive" theories of economic freedom, which primarily focus on enhancing individuals' access to important goods and services, and enabling them to have the resources necessary to live an autonomous life. Some also focus on expanding human capacities generally, or give special emphasis to enhancing the economic prospects of the poor. Here too, migration restrictions impose severe costs on natives. To the extent migration can sometimes harm the economic prospects of natives, the issue is better dealt with by "keyhole solutions" that address specific problems by means other than restricting migration.

Finally, Part III describes how to address situations where potentially harmful side effects of migration might undermine either negative or positive economic liberty of natives, without actually restricting migration. I have addressed such issues in greater detail in previous work, and here provide only a short summary of my approach and its relevance for economic liberty issues.

I am looking for some alternative to "natives" as a concise, non-clunky way to refer to "current citizens of destination countries." I welcome any suggestions readers might come up with. E-mail me if you have one!

Read more:
My New Article on "Immigration and the Economic Freedom of Natives" - Reason