The abuses over copyright will be the death of this brief blip of freedom we like to call the internet. In the name of “property rights” real property rights (the right to control your own physical property and use it as you see fit) will be further eroded. The internet is not going to be regulated in the name of “socialism” or by a government takeover, it will be through private entities using copyright and intellectual property law to sue their competitors out of existence.
The Daily Paul, The Free Republic and Alex Jones have all been sued in a recent scam looking to use copyright to make a quick buck off of bloggers.
The only permanent solution is to end copyright and patent law as it currently exists.
At times, it’s slightly corny, but it delivers a rather poetic and reasoned response to the notion that libertarianism would be a shift which might require the dramatic restructuring of society. In short: yes it will, and this is a good thing.
I have some severe reservations about some of the coalition government’s policies and plans, but I have to admit that I have had more to applaud from this government than any I have lived under – including in the US.
Case in point, the government is now shutting off funds for speed cameras in many UK counties, many of them near my location.
The government could have done the wrong thing here and allowed local councils to keep the revenue from the cameras, which would have made local councils into legitimised groups of traffic thugs. Instead, it has simply shut off the funding and allowed councils to figure out the best ways to react – a solution which encourages more local control.
I have not been huge on Rand Paul in the past few months. He really, really went far more to the social/neo-conservative side during his primary campaign and to a degree, it broke my heart.
However, Paul has finally, finally issued a platform which gets back to the issues which got him where he is:
I will never, ever vote for a taxpayer bailout of a private industry. Whether it’s big banks, automakers, or any other industry — you succeed or fail on your own.
I will not vote for an unbalanced budget. I will not vote for a tax increase. Ever.
I will fight for new rules like a Balanced Budget Amendment and Term Limits.
I will not take ANYTHING off the table in the fight to balance the budget. Anyone who says something like they will “freeze non-defense discretionary spending” is blowing smoke at you and hoping you won’t notice. That would balance the budget — MAYBE — in about 80 years.
We have to keep our promises to seniors and keep our country strong, but every area has things that can be cut. Every agency has things that are duplicative or that could be done better or cheaper.
I will propose and force a vote on an Enumerated Powers Act, to force Congress to point to the part of the Constitution that justifies their bills.
I will fight for the Bill of Rights. Democrats often love the 4th amendment. Republicans the 2nd. I will fight for them all, which means fighting for your free speech, gun rights, and civil liberties. Laws that infringe on ANY of these make the federal government more powerful, and we cannot continue to allow that.
I will not allow our troops to be the world’s policeman, and I will force a vote on a Declaration of War if any President seeks to commit our military to battle.
I can agree with every single one of these points. It is not going to be easy uniting conservatives, libertarians, the tea-party and libertarian democrats – but Rand Paul is finally making steps to do just that. And if he is successful, it could have large ramifications for future candidates.
I was speaking with a home-schooling mom in our church about economic resources for her children. Her husband is also a physics professor at the university where I am doing my research. These are people who have lived in several different countries, having children in Australia, the US and the UK. Basically, they have much more experience than I do!
This woman has a sick child who needed to go to the hospital recently. This is our exchange:
Mom: [Our two year old son] had his tonsils and adenoids out July 17 and for the first few days we thought he was recovering well but he then deteriorated and became quite ill, ending up back in hospital. This was our first real experience of the NHS other than having babies and it was surreal.
Met the surgeon who was to operate on [our son] half an hour before the procedure. No pre-operative medical AT ALL, just asked to sign on the dotted line to give consent.
[our son] had an allergic reaction to one of the drugs used during surgery and when I queried the very apparent rash around his eyes after surgery, the nurse told us it was due to tape put over his eyes during surgery. NO WAY. I may not be a doctor but that was not a band-aid rash. I demanded that he be seen by a doctor, waited several hours, then an ENT consultant walked in, looked at [our son]‘s eyes and declared that he was displaying classic signs of an allergic reaction to a drug commonly used in general anaesthesia and that he should never have it again.
The standard of care was worse than my memories of taking pets to the vet as a kid. We are still pretty shell-shocked by the ordeal.
I wasn’t surprised at all. After my experiences (1) (2), it wouldn’t strike me as odd that children’s surgery was also at a poor standard. I responded:
Colin: So sorry about your NHS experience. It is indeed the worst standard of healthcare in the industrial world I have ever seen. Sadie and I have basically stopped going to the doctor, the advice is that useless. And to get anything accomplished, one has to make monumental efforts for what would be considered standard treatments and practices other places. When she last went in, she sat with the doctor for five minutes while the doctor simply googled her symptoms and then read back to her what was on the internet. I can give you plenty of other stories, as I’m sure other expatriates can (just talk to [other woman in our church who was misdiagnosed, then had a screwed up surgery and was in pain for a month whilst on a waiting list] about her experience!). We will pray for your family today, both for these circumstances and for your faith and trust in God as you endure this trial.
This was her response. Remember, this is a normal, well-educated mother of five children who has experienced the healthcare systems of several different countries:
Mom: Well, I was pretty shocked 15 or so months ago when I took [our son] to the doctor with chicken pox only to have the doctor tell me he couldn’t diagnose it as he had never actually seen a case of chicken pox, but this hospital experience was beyond quackery and downright dangerous.
All of the children having surgery the same day as [our son] did not even wear a hospital gown to go to O.R.- they just walked into O.R. wearing their street clothes and had a bib placed around their neck!!!
Thank you for praying for us. It will only be by the grace of God that we will get over this barbaric, archaic butchery that we experienced.
The US already has a socialised system which is about to get much worse in the coming years. Enjoy it folks.
You have likely noticed that the site looks a little bit different. I assure you, the update is more than cosmetic!
Zeal For Truth has gone through a much needed update. The forums and blog are better integrated. There are new and better features for comments and blog posts. There are also new features for categorisation, organisation and access to enable users to get as much as possible out of the content of this site.
Christopher Roussel, has gone through and done this work for the site and has continued to keep the site afloat for many years.
Feel free to report any bugs here or any gripes you have, but also to thank Chris for the hard work that he’s done.
In case you haven’t seen it yet, Tomas Woods (author of Nullification and Meltdown) is interviewed by a Zombie. The video is a hyperbolic look at how Tomas Woods (and others such as Thomas DiLorenzo, Robert Murphy, etc…) has generally been treated by the media and when speaking about issues like Federal Reserve abolishment, Nullification, State’s Rights, and so on.
My wife sends me articles and blogs from time to time and I thought I’d share one. This from a womens blog hits a great point on the differences between using “Christian language” and then actually being a gospel-centred Christian. Some food for thought:
…I now understand that a pastor can say gospel, grace, and Jesus in sermons as much as he wants, but that doesn’t make him gospel centered. That doesn’t mean he understands grace. That doesn’t show an awareness of the fullness of whom Jesus is and what He came to live out before us.
The gospel isn’t a word. It’s a paradigm-shifting lens through which we view everything else. It isn’t something we do to change ourselves. It’s something done for us, in which we dwell daily. The gospel changes everything. The gospel INFORMS everything. The gospel is the pair of glasses that sits on our nose as we leave Sunday service changing how we view ourselves, our marriage problems, our marriage successes, our disobedient children, our obedient children, the people we don’t want to be like, and the people we do want to be like.
The gospel enlightens us (I did not save myself). The gospel teaches us (Neither can they). The gospel inspires us (Love them unconditionally the way Christ loved me). The gospel gives us hope (They aren’t past repair). The gospel gives us power. (The same force that raised Christ from the dead is at work in me and them). The gospel changes everything.
The gospel keeps us from thinking too highly of ourselves. It keeps us from thinking too highly of others. It protects us from self-condemnation when we fail. It equips us to catch others when they do. It gives us hope that transcends car accidents and relationship failures. It gives perspective to painful hindsight of mistakes with our husband or children, coworker or roommate. It just simply changes EVERYTHING. But it won’t change everything until you learn to look at everything through the lens it provides. And that means more than throwing the words around, even in proper context.
I can definitely agree with this author. I sometimes think the difference between the Christian I was five years ago and the Christian I am today is reformed theology. But really, its just the gospel informing and changing more of my life. I wrote about this a year and a half ago and I am still amazed at how great and powerful the gospel is.
Personally, I wouldn’t have a problem handing out work visas at the border to any healthy, non-criminal, adult with ER insurance willing to come here and work. Migrant labor massively lowers the cost of fruits and vegetables grown in the US, by reducing the cost of picking. They reduce the cost of fast food. They improve the quality of life of every American. If someone who was given a free education here in the US and all the other benefits of growing up here really wants that fruit picking job or that fast food job, they can compete with foreign labor for all I care.
That said, our current policy is both abusive to migrants and dangerous to us. We are almost deliberately creating a black market of workers who won’t cooperate with the police, who are re-infecting the US with diseases which were previously eradicated, and who create a pipeline for other illegal trafficking. Employers can abuse their migrant workers who have little recourse, as can other criminal traffickers.
The answer is to grease the legal channels for migrant workers, since we obviously have a demand for them and they increase our own standard of living. Require them to provide a thumb print and basic health inspection at the border, then report to the government when they find a job. Anyone breaking the migrant worker laws gets kicked out and is not allowed back in. Anyone committing a crime on a work visa gets kicked out. If emergency health care is needed, it is covered by a highly focused plan so hospitals aren’t shafted.
This plan would be better for the migrant workers, better for the American people, and better for law enforcement. The one group it would NOT be better for are the corporations that treat migrants little better than slaves because they know the migrant has few legal resources to call upon. We shouldn’t reward illegal behavior (like sneaking into our country), but the laws have been designed to be broken. Unfortunately, the elite have managed to turn this into an irrational brawl where people accuse migrants of stealing jobs. Personally, I like my $1 fast food cheeseburger. If that means allowing migrants to “steal” fast food jobs, so be it!
I came across an interesting take on merging environmentalism with libertarianism. The suggestion is to recognize the natural property rights of plants and animals!
Asking the Right Questions
…environmentalists often confuse symptoms with problems. But this doesn’t mean that the problems aren’t real. There may be considerable debate about global warming, the toxicity of dioxin, or the threats to species like spotted owls or grizzly bear. Rather than dismiss these problems, libertarians who want to work with environmentalists should treat them as genuine symptoms of a serious underlying problem. This means focusing on environmental problems not as technical issues but as big government and property rights issues:
“Will dams make the salmon go extinct?” is the wrong question. The right question is, “Why is the government subsidizing dams?”
“Will timber cutting make the spotted owl go extinct?” is the wrong question. The right question is, “Why are there no property rights for owls and salmon, and how could property rights help protect these species from extinction?”
“Is burning of hydrocarbons changing world climate?” is the wrong question. The right question is, “Why are people allowed to emit pollutants into the air that trespass onto my property?”
“Do pulp mills damage rivers with dioxin pollution?” is the wrong question. The right question is “Why are there no property rights to the rivers and how could property rights protect them from pollution?”
Nearly all environmental problems are rooted in society’s failure to adequately define property rights for some resource. An ecosystem doesn’t solve such problems by passing a prescriptive law or creating a regulatory agency; it relies on individual self-interest to produce a balance. The important thing is to show environmentalists how thinking of the economy as an ecosystem leads to decentralized free-market solutions to environmental problems.
So the big question then is: “Do other species have natural rights to property?” And if they do, who has the authority to enforce those rights? In general, can’t anyone choose to protect a natural right of a weak party from being violated?
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