Tag: Libertarian

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Media Politics

Day 1379 and Dodge and Weave

A lot is going on and I have little concentration in me today so I’ll keep this to a few tidbits of things I have on my radar.

The artificial intelligence x-risk Doomers are doing absolutely nothing to beat the charges that California SB 1047 was all about their fear of an imagined apocalypse and had absolutely nothing to do with useful policy or regulation.

Frankly I’d expect better from Scott Alexander and I’ll warn the Effective Altruist and Open Philanthropy crowd that if you willing to parlay with socialists don’t be surprised if those who advocate for broad state powers feel fine about using the state monopoly on violence on you when your interests no longer align. Liberals get the boot too.

But nobody listens to a cranky old libertarian like me in this multi-polar world. Though if you are inclined to listen to me please do read my investor report for the quarter. We are raising for our next fund and I’d be delighted to pitch you if you are the sort who has a spare 100K to invest in atomics, databases, decentralized compute and other oddball world changers.

In other bits of frustrating press narratives the New Yorker can soak up 34 minutes of your time with a “Silicon Valley matters in politics now more than ever” piece which is about how politico Chris Lehane is doing his job and representing the interests of an industry that still has enough money to pay his fees.

Perhaps politicians will consider not killing the golden goose that is the information economy and try listening to the folks who still make enough money to be considered good targets for more taxation about how we can keep making them tax money.

But I’m guessing if I ask Detroit how that ask to the government ends I won’t like the answer. I could ask Baltimore but Frank Sobotka and the Key Bridge are no more.

I truly thought one was supposed to get mellower in one’s old age but my politics seem to be rooted deeper than I realized. I just believe in markets and the prosperity that comes from free asssociation.

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Politics

Day 1358 and I Must Subsidize Demand

There is a beloved meme in communities like YIMBYism (a movement advocating for building more housing with the slogan “yes in my neighborhood”) in which the protagonist agonizes over subsidizing demand as the cyclical pattern of rising demand giving rise to rising cost carries on.

“I just need to subsidize demand”

America is a strange place where we espouse a lot of free market policies but we tend to favor subsidies as a solution. Which isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes there are good reasons for providing support for things that aren’t as commercially viable immediately like pure science or education or other public goods.

It is however not the only policy tool available to people. A fun fact about how I have a good time, my participation in civic life was as an appointee on the New York City Community Boards. I was part of a group who approve licenses and permits for things like liquor and parades and the like. I also served on quality of life and transportation boards. I also did monthly meetings for land use.

I was easily the youngest person who volunteered time and I learned a lot about how damn many rules we have at every level from neighborhood to city and state on everything from ventilation and to environmental review. And some of those rules are pretty good things!

But it would be preposterous to say that all rules are good and that every part of the process of starting a business (large or small) is easy. Some problems you can’t through money at and fix. Or if you can it creates a whole unintended set of other problems. Like paying for lawyers and consultants.

Because Twitter is the land of any old idiot getting a say (just like a community board meeting) I’ve got every flavor of opposition and missing the point on this tweet.

We do a lot well in America. It’s relatively much easier to start an LLC and get a license to do business. Complying with everything from the liquor board to FinCEN will take a little more. Anyone who has run a business can tell you about their corner of the universe and the paperwork involved. Just ask my husband who spends most of his time as a businessman keeping up with paperwork.

I think it’s perfectly fine to be skeptical that throwing more money at a problem like how challenging it is as a business owner to contend with government bureaucracy. Demand subsidies can only fix so mich. It’s just a lot more complicated than that. Be smart and don’t let your head spin like our meme gentleman.

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Politics

Day 1326 and So Dumb

Election season in American is just so very dumb. I don’t have the energy to even go on a rant about it though I will try.

We’ve got patently ridiculous economic policies coming from both political parties. Price controls and 60% tariffs are not the stuff of booming dynamism and I don’t care what else you are selling if those are my choices.

There is almost no point in attempting explanations of the absurdity of one party or the other as chances are good someone will scream at you if you decide to engage.

Which is a shame as I don’t think we should be tolerating this level of incompetence from our public servants and we should all be asking a lot more questions of politicians.

Moderates and centrists are just about done engaging in the public sphere at all now. There is little profit in expressing an opinion. If you pick a workable corner of the cozy web maybe you can find peace but the public internet is a mess of inanities and cognitive dissonance. Only idiots like me who don’t mind expressing an opinion are still screaming into the abyss of Twitter.

I’d love to be partisan and go in on a political team sometimes just to tune out screeching filter bubbles but I don’t think I’m ready to sacrifice my dignity for peace of mind or tactical advantage.

I also don’t think either party would have me. I’m too much of a capitalist for the Democrats and too much of a liberal for Republicans. Being against populism doesn’t make you popular. And it is just all so dumb.

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Politics

Day 1308 and Policies For Any Political Party

I don’t know why I let myself do this but I got irritated by the American election cycle. I have been libertarian and skeptical of the government well basically always. It was probably only really left flavored during a an Adbusters, Battle of Seattle, my favorite band is Rage Against the Machine teenager phase.

What can I say millennials did not like the government because the global war on terror went as well as every other war on “ideas” we’ve ever fought. We lost the war on poverty and drugs too.

But I do try to retain a kind of pragmatic libertarianism that is a recognition that my preferred politics isn’t always going to be broad consensus and it’s sensible to work opposing viewpoints as we have shared interests in civilization and America.

I am hugely affected by my proximity to international founders who adopted America because of the opportunities we have here that are unmatched elsewhere. Our market capitalism has given truly exceptional talent from places that suffer varying degrees of oligarchic, authoritarian and socialist systems.

It’s with this in mind that I’d like to ask American politicians but in particular the Democrats to please consider policy that allows us to remain a place where the best and brightest can rise and thrive. It’s good for all of us

My five basic policy asks are as follows

1) Stop taking aggressive, over broad interpretations of both criminal and civil statutes in regard to crypto. The SEC is trying to kill a nascent industry instead of shape and grow it. There are other first world countries taking different approaches. Japan seems to have adopted healthier ways. I’d like Gensler gone personally as I struggle to see this as anything but petty Wall Street protectionism.

2) Focus antitrust efforts on the industries where consolidation is harming Americans in structural ways like PBMs and agribusiness.

3) Retract the Biden EO on artificial intelligence and take an approach to akin to how we settled the encryption wars in the 90s. We don’t want to strangle a new industry as it is emerging just for the benefit of a few large incumbents and the fears of a few radicalism’s.

4) Stop discussing the ludicrous unrealized capital gains tax. It’s unconstitutional & structurally devastating to novel businesses. Only the rich will be able to afford to own a piece of a startup which will further limit social mobility.

5) We have got to find a way for companies to exit and IPO that isn’t this middle stagnant path of Microsoft’s regulatory capture corporate investment playbook. Markets need liquidity to function and the public deserves the chance to be rewarded.

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Internet Culture Politics

Day 1304 and Don’t Scare The Hoes

Twitter had a significant exodus of left wing and moderates as Elon Musk took over the platform. The ugly parts of the internet were allowed free rein on the platform and plenty of users didn’t have time for that.

If you had been raised on a tidy internet of moderation this was upsetting and you went back to moderate places. If you’d been raised on the feral internet you don’t really mind. I was raised on the feral internet. I’m twenty years into sharing space with lunatics.

Some people think the feral internet is is entirely male. And don’t get me wrong, user statistics show 4chan, Reddit, Discord and Twitter are mostly men. But there have always been feminine corners of the internet. And they are influential. Tumblr girls, MySpace, and Livejournal had plenty of the dark feminine before we cleaned things up the consumable Instagram age. Before Ballerina Farm we had much rawer Mormon mommy blogging from Utah. Remember Dooce?

Working in fashion beginning in aughts and teens, I had a front row seat to the dark era of Tumblr. I’d seen horrors arise from femcel message boards. Pro-Ana content was left to fester because no one cared when women kept the harms to themselves. Guess what, those girls aren’t all grown up and now they harm the boys too.

OnlyFans findoms predate lonely nerds and Reddit mistresses trawl /marriedredpill/ looking to get laid by insecure rich men coated in fear optimizing around pick up artist tactics.

Women are not the good guys on the internet any more than men are the bad guys. The dark places online are dark for everyone. Welcome to the equality we’ve fostered. Scammers and grifters for all.

Dopamine rushes and control fantasies run rampant among the fearful and no flavor of childhood trauma goes unanswered thanks to the persistent financialization of every human relationship. We call this a low trust society.

So you might think it unfair of me to request, as a woman, that the men do not scare the hoes as we travel the next 100 days to the American election.

A right thinking person might recognize that there is no advantage to be gained in the gender wars. We are all combatants in a conflict that serves none of us and does much to degrade us all.

But young extremely online women are crashing into young extremely online men and the result is bratty cop memes and couch fucking. Cat ladies fighting dweebs is not a good look. Some might call it deliberately demoralizing

The normies, who let’s be honest are mostly women, are scared shitless of the aggressive edge of online discourse. They don’t like any of this shit.

And I don’t think you will like what happens and who ends up in charge of we’ve got a terrified population. So knock it off. Be a man. That’s a gender neutral statement. Our civilization is for adults.

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Emotional Work Politics

Day 1294 and Like Shit

I mentioned on Twitter yesterday that I’d been breaking down crying at regular intervals since the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

I’m not a Trump supporter. I am and will remain a small government libertarian and I can’t see that changing short of fundamental shifts in material reality. Which is possible but human nature doesn’t change much.

I feel like absolute shit physically and emotionally about where we are at. The rapid changes that are proceeding in the wake of this violence cannot be undone. We are here.

I feel incredibly stupid saying this which is almost always a sign I should say it.
I’ve been breaking down into tears every couple of hours since the assassination attempt on Trump.
My emotional metabolism isn’t up to the acceleration unless I let myself feel it a

We are in a chaotic time and even I do not feel up to the rate of change. I’m afraid of what will happen no matter the outcome of the election.

I don’t think we should underestimate the trauma of political violence. A fellow citizen died for exercising his fundamental rights. He’s not the first and unlikely to be the last.

I want to feel less impacted emotionally but I can’t just stuff these feelings. I wish I could write more and at length about all of this but I’m simply not there. It’s all too painful.

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Politics

Day 1291 and Gabby, Steve, and Donald

I started getting coded as right wing sometime in the last four years. I found this confusing. I have significant public opposition to Republican policies and Donald Trump in particular.

I’ve been small “l” libertarian for most of my adult life. I’ve vote for quite a few Democrats as I opposed neoconservatism. I registered Republican as the Democrats went from embracing business and technological growth to opposing it. I didn’t see free enterprise as a threat but as the engine of our progress.

I vote for Biden as I sincerely thought it was the best choice after a tumultuous four years under the ostensibly Republican Trump where I saw nothing but a bigger government and frayed norms around containing that government’s authority.

I don’t like a large state apparatus in principle and feel America is the nation that most sincerely pursues the liberty of its citizens. The state has been granted the sole monopoly on violence. That monopoly must exist for civilization but necessarily must be constrained by the rights of the citizens who consented to be governed.

I’m proud of the American experiment as a citizen, a Christian (in particular a Protestant) and a capitalist. That may sound conservative to some but in practice tended to get me left coded as I support less government involvement in nearly everything.

Drugs, sex work, reproductive freedom, medical freedom (which ranges from vaccines to sex & gender choice), speech (which includes compute), religion freedom and commerce are liberties best decided upon by responsible adults of good conscience.

We have codified this in our constitution and democracy is the working progress of finding a way to agree to be governed together. Whether it leans left or right is hardly the point. Each generation reacts with the choices it inherited from the one before it.

The political fight is to remain a citizenship that consents to be governed. America isn’t a monolith. We respect the liberties of our fellow citizens who have agreed to respect each others rights. If we disagree we arbitrate that through the government we’ve consented to be governed by. That is only possible insofar as we respect each others fundamental rights.

Violence is not meted out by individuals. The state alone has that monopoly and it ends at our personal rights. No citizen should ever claim the mantle of irreversible violence. Violence against those who we choose to govern us considered the most unacceptable to all citizenry. Political violence is never acceptable.

When we discuss a crisis of democracy and invoke mortal or existential threats we override the bonds that make us Americans. My respect for my fellow citizens must be in equal measure their respect for me. We are responsible for ourselves so that we may be responsible amongst and to other.

When I think of the violence that we’ve seen in the political process of deciding who represents us in our state I am furious. It is unacceptable that any of our representatives have been subject to violence. Since 2011 we’ve had three attempts at deadly political violence against Gabby Giffords, Steve Scalise and Donald Trump. This is terrorism and untenable.

The shock I feel today after witnessing an attempt on Donald Trump’s life last night substantial. I probably should have felt it more intensely for our Congressional representatives. I have taken so much for granted as an American.

The liberty I’ve felt to articulate my own views is unprecedented. We as a nation have tremendous capacity for disagreements. The political is a negotiation and we all accept compromises. All three of those politicians have positions I find to be unacceptable infringements on my liberty. Which is why I speak my case and vote for my positions.

I’ve felt perhaps wrongly that living my own freedom was politics enough And that means I have to speak when I see unacceptable things. We cannot continue to escalate the stakes.

I want America to remain a United States. I recognize I hold positions others disagree with. I may disagree with you. I don’t know how I’ll be coded from here and I don’t care. I am committed to being an American. I remain committed to the protection of my fellow citizens full liberties.

That Americans would die for them has been made more than metaphor too many times. Let us do all we can to prevent that so we can continue to live together in freedom. Let the blood of patriots remain imagery so we can continue to live united.

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Community Media

Day 1281 and Independence Day

On day 915, which was last year’s 4th of July I wrote about the aspirational America as an idea. It involved blowing shit up. It seems like each Independence Day I find a way to praise Roland Emmerich’s fine science fiction film.

I haven’t watched it yet today but hopefully I’ll at least put on a few clips to enjoy fighter pilots, aliens, inspirational Presidential speeches and fireworks.

The backdrop of drama in the media about Joe Biden is in some ways an ideal way to recall the fractious American community. A continent held together not by ethnicity or religion but by entirely abstract ideals is going to constantly tested.

The theory of print capitalism posits that capital sprung from the solidarity of nationalism presented for the first time in mass media. The common cause of one’s countryman makes it easier to levy for taxes for conflict.

We are far beyond print in our media now. It’s almost cheap to call out media climate “totalizing” an it undersells the experience. Social media makes the experience of Americanness so fluid it ranges from aesthetic choice to the anarcho-tyranny of ailing power.

And yet we try to do better as the general temperament of the nations. America is a place where the founding mythos is that anyone from anywhere can become one of us.

The nationalism of belonging in America has nothing to do with meeting a check box of criteria. Though we are trying to make it more so with bureaucracy. The ideal is that free country sets the condition so anyone succeed. Liberty is a hard fought thing. You can celebrate it in a manner that’s pleasing here. Namely fireworks.

Happy 4th of July everyone. I’m as committed to the American project. The frontier is in our souls and we search it out together in freedom.

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Internet Culture Politics

Day 1272 and GWOT

As an elder millennial fascinated by the mass media I have a lot of mixed feelings on the American government and how it waged the “war on terror.”

It is heavy on my mind with the current news of Julien Assange’s agreement with the American government.

I think a lot about media, and in particular the technology that powers media. An informed population can still act in its own best interests but what we get told affects what we perceive as our best interests. And as we become more informed naturally some skepticism of the intentions of power arise.

Media affects how nation states wage wars. As we’ve evolved from print to television to radio to the internet how we sell the costs of war changed. But there are always populations who pay enough attention to be skeptical.

The open internet was born of that skepticism of government even so much of the technology emerged thanks to America’s heavy investment in defense industries.

Scientists used to have a wide range of politics and it’s not a surprise that defending American interests is a popular idea amongst people who work for the government. But maybe you see things and fight for more accountability along the way.

The GWOT unevenly affected millennials. If you were middle class your kid probably didn’t join up unless being in the service was how you got to being middle class. There was no draft.

Being in Colorado I had exposure to folks who worked for defense contractors as a lot of the private sector had settled around the cluster of talent from Boulder’s science labs down to the Air Force Academy in Fort Collins.

But there has been skepticism in all the branches of government as it became harder to control the narratives. And Americans don’t particularly like the idea of having propaganda even though I’d argue we produce and consumer enormous quantities of it as a nation.

I wish I could be more cogent about any of this. I am regularly shocked by how little people seem to remember how we prosecuted these long wars. We quickly forget.

Don’t be too sure human nature had changed. Don’t be too keen to give the government power because you are afraid. We’ve already seen what they do with it.

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Politics

Day 1267 and Civics

I spent my day at a policy organization’s gathering. I feel obligation to become as much a part of the civics process as I can. If we intend to have a working democracy it America it requires citizens who participate in an informed way.

Now cynics might say regular people don’t terribly like being bothered with the hard questions of self government. I’d say that obligates one even more to be a part of a civic polity that treats its participants with the dignity to be capable of self government.

The aspiration may never be fully met but if you cannot find a way to do that within the boundaries of civilization generally you get run out of town. Americans is the product of a lot of people who got run out of town. It shouldn’t surprise us that sometimes raw power rears its ugly head.

So much of my education was dedicated to participating in a Western canon of civilization. The portions of it that privileged anything all novel or even recent barely made a dent in my formal education. It did however spend a lot of time on the civics of Athens, Rome and the Protestant Reformation. And those are all stories of who should govern and on what authority.

Anytime there is a dislocation in the expectations between those who govern and the population it has to be worked out.

The western journey has been one of citizenship. If we cannot self govern in ways others agree to abide by we have lost quite a bit of ground in that quest. And history doesn’t have much positive to say about demagoguery or Vox populi. Anyways good luck out there this election season.