Thoughts on Freedom

An anonymous Norweigen, using the alias John Smith, recently asked if the ALS could publicise his request for help. Following the controversy about Danish caricatures of the Islamic prophet Mohammad, “John Smith” wants to up the ante by introducing more caracatures. His request is below:

1001 caricatures of Mohammad

What should the answer of the freedom loving peoples of the west be ageist the fascist forces in Islam who threatens with violence to stop critical opinions and caricatures of Islam?

If you are one of many who share my beliefs that we have to fight this totalitarian ideology, you now have the possibility to participate. I am writing a book called “1001 caricatures of Mohammad as a defense, for the right to ask the critical questions and make caricatures”. As you understand from the books title, I need contributions in the form of 1001 caricature drawings of Mohammad.

I am writing this book under a fictional name because of the dangers combined with expression critical views of Islam. Any contribution will be protected in the same manner as my self.

Make history; defend the freedom too many take for granted. With a pen you can stand up and fight for the right to be free in the battle of liberty for all the peoples of the world.  Send your contribution to: 1001.muhammed@gmail.com.

I’m not so sure about this. I agree with freedom of speech, as one example of the general freedom to do what you like with what you own as long as it’s peaceful and voluntary. I don’t think the government should stop John Smith from publishing his book.

However, I’m not sure about the morality of publishing a book that intends to offend, simply to make the point that it should be legal to offend.

Likewise, I don’t think the government should prevent art works like “piss christ” (a picture of Jesus covered in piss)… but I’m not sure that it is in good taste. According to my moral radar, it’s inappropriate to offend people, unless you’re making another necessary point. The only point of piss christ and mohammad caracatures is “ha ha… I am allowed to offend you”. It would be like calling somebody an asshole simply to prove that you’re allowed to call them an asshole. Legal? Sure. Friendly? No.

On the other hand, there have been death threats and absurd over-reactions by some people regarding the Mohammad caracatures. It would be a shame if this coercion was successful. Perhaps it is appropriate for somebody to repeat the caracature episode simply to show that threats and intimidation will not be tolerated or respected in a free (well… relatively free) society. This is unfair to peaceful Muslims, but perhaps it is necessary.

I am not publishing John Smith’s request because I want people to participate. Personally, I won’t. Instead, I want to use this debate to spark a debate about when it is morally appropriate to be offensive?

A few people have noted the progression from moderate libertarian Milton Friedman to his anarcho-capitalist son David Friedman and have questioned where the next generation could go from there. The answer is seasteading.

A while ago I stumbled across the online world of Patri Friedman and swapped a few e-mails. Interesting chap. One of his big ideas was to create self-sustainable floating “countries” and he called this idea seasteading. It’s not a new idea, but Patri seems to have taken it further in terms of design and logistics… and now that he has $500,000 worth of sponsorship, the Seasteading Institute is up and running.

This morning I got an e-mail from Patri to tell me about the Institute. Their initial press release is below:

Read more »

The Australian Libertarian Society (ALS) doesn’t have a way for people to officially “join”, so besides the ALS board (Terje, Sukrit, Jon Hoyle & myself) there is no real indicator of how many people are a part of the ALS family. Until now.

The ALS supports free-markets, individual liberty and decreasing the size of government. We want to foster discussion within the libertarian world, and also between libertarian and others to explain the libertarian approach. We use a broad definition of libertarian, including anarchists, minarchists, objectivists, utilitarian libertarians, moderate libertarians, classical liberals and anybody who generally believes that people should control more of their own lives.

If you agree, then please use this opportunity to show your support. I’ve created a support page, which is linked at the top of the website and also on the side column. Show your support by leaving your name, and I’ll regularly update the list.

There has been a lot of talk lately about troubles in the housing market, the liquidity crisis, interest rates, a potential recession in America and the generally uncertain economic future. But what does it all mean?

America is facing some problems. In recent years, lots of money has flowed into American property. Many people were able to take out “sub-prime” mortgages (known as “low-doc” or “no-doc” loans in Australia) that require little or no checks and consequently have a higher risk of default. American retail banks then sold about 70% of these loans (and the associated risk) to other market players, primarily investment banks. While the property market was hot, money kept flowing from investment banks to retail banks and on to people who bought property.

But the property market didn’t stay hot. House prices have stagnated or fallen… and in some places they have plummetted. People started to default on their loans, especially in the sub-prime sector. Banks with exposure to sub-prime mortgage risk have lost billions of dollars, and many people have lost their homes.

Read more »

The every-angry Gerry Jackson has sparked another debate about a carbon tax, disapprovingly citing my monograph on the topic (pdf) and declaring that a carbon tax will “drastically slash living standards”.

It is unclear whether Gerry is aware that electricity and petrol are already taxed.

In the past few days Gerry has written three articles on the topic, and his lap-dogs (including GMB) have also penned thousands of words in his defence. In particular, there is one obsessed nutter who writes here, here, here and here. As I have been travelling I have been limited to a few quick comments. Until now. Be warned… this is a long post.

Read more »

For over a decade I have supporter a voucher system as a way of reforming education, health and other government programs. Vouchers provided a way to increase the role of market discipline while maintaining a level of government subsidy, and are supported by many moderate libertarians as appropriate policy and by many libertarians as a step in the right direction.

The basic idea is to give each person an allowance that must be spent on a certain type of behaviour. For example, give each parent $10,000 that they must spend on any school for their child. Since the subsidy is now going to the consumer and not the producer (ie not the school) there is no need for government control or ownerhip of the school and we can have proper competition between schools, which should drive up the total quality and choice in education.

I still believe this is good reform… but I now think I was wrong about one element.

Read more »

Socialism has been tried a few times before. The Soviet Union & Eastern Europe gave it a go. So did China, Vietnam, Nth Korea, Cambodia and Laos. Many African, Middle-Eastern, South Asian and South American countries have pursued some sort of socialist agenda. Unfortunately for all of these people, these experiments have all failed — and resulted in poverty and the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of millions of people. Opps!

Some would say that we should abandon socialism. But other people insist that we need to give it another go and just try a little harder. In that spirit, I suggest that we try out socialism in Australia. After all, we’re blessed with an army of leftists with good intentions. Surely that is enough!

Read more »

The recent story about the Ron Paul (RP) newsletters has lead to lots of discussion.

Background: RP is a US congressman who is running for the Republican primary on a platform of ending the US empire (troops in 120 countries), shrinking the size of government, balancing the budget, ending income tax, ending the war on drugs, defending the US constitution and giving political power back to the States. He raised the most money in the last quarter of any Republican ($20 million) and has built a strong following that has significantly raised the profile of libertarian philosophy. 

Read more »

As somebody smarter than me once said — the virtue of capitalism is not that it provides more silk stockings for queens, but that it makes silk stockings affordable to the lower classes. Today’s news gives a good example of this success.

An Indian car manufacturer Tata has just released a new four-door sedan for under A$3000. As the company points out, this means that many Indian families will be able to upgrade from motorbikes, which has significant benefits for all-weather travel, large families and for safety.

Of course, some in the trendy left will see this as a horrible step into the evils of capitalistic materialism which undermines the deep cultural ties that Indians have with their motorbikes. And of course there is the extra co2. But poverty is more important than anthropology-tourism or global-warming… and personally I celebrate this wonderful opportunity for millions of poor people to take another step towards a comfortable life.

I think this is a defining issue that separates people who actually care about the poor from those who like to say they care about the poor. Viva capitalism.

LIBERTY & DEMOCRACY PARTY 

The federal election has now been called and finally there is a political party that Australian libertarians can support — the Liberty & Democracy Party. Please get out there and lend a hand — donate money, stand as a candidate, hand out LDP material, promote the LDP on the net, join our facebook or myspace groups, make an LDP video for youtube, link to the LDP website, contribute to the LDP blog, tell your friends, write letters to the editor, and of course VOTE 1 LDP!

It looks like Howard is going to stick around for the federal election. Dennis Shanahan gives the full sorry story. The short version is that Howard asked Downer to check the opinions of senior Liberals. Many thought that it would be best to shift to Costello. Downer reported this to Howard, but Howard decided not to walk and none of the Liberals wanted to push him. So he stays.

Some conservatives in the media, such as Andrew Bolt and Janet Albrechtsen, have read the situation correctly and want to see Howard step down for Costello. Though it’s not clear that Costello really wants to take the leadership now. Kim Beazley predicted that Costello would be Prime Minister for 2 months.

Read more »

First, thanks to an anonymous donor the ALS blog now has a new & easy to remember web address: alsblog.net

Second, It’s been a while… but finally the ALS poll question has been updated. The new question builds on one of the most persistent debates in the libertarian blogosphere “What is your preferred monetary policy?” This one should get Terje & GMB excited.

Read more »

The Great Global Warming Swindle is a controversial documentary film by British television producer Martin Durkin, which argues against the scientific opinion that human activity is the main cause of global warming.

The show was screened in the UK in March 2007 and has lead to the expected controversy and name-calling. The ABC will show a cut-down one hour version at 8:30pm on 12 July, followed by an interview with Durkin and an “expert panel” discussion. But if you can’t wait until then, youtube has the full version (split into 8 parts) available now. Below is the first segment. For the remaining segments follow this link, or read below for a brief overview.

Read more »

The Syrian socialists of the Baath Party seem to be having an economic change of heart. According to Newsweek (14 May 2007), the Syrian banking system has been opened up to private sector competition and the tax & investment laws have been made more business-friendly. The economy has responded, growing 5.1% in 2006 and 5.6% in 2007.

Read more »

As libertarians, we often hold views that aren’t popular. Privatising universities, legalising drugs, removing industry R&D subsidies, gun law liberalisation, abolishing the minimum wage, lower government health spending and many other policies put us in a minority. But on one issue the libertarian position is very popular: lower taxes. Everybody (well, nearly everybody) hates taxes.

The new question for the ALS poll is which tax is the most objectionable?

I have listed all the main taxes and a few that don’t currently exist – including income, company, GST, cigarette, gambling, alcohol, petrol, carbon, land, death, tariffs, stamp duties, payroll, capital gains and other. And for the trolls I have included the option of “I love all tax”.

The last poll asked for predictions about global warming over the next 10 years. The most popular answer was the IPCC answer of 0.2 degrees warming (23%), closely followed by the slightly more conservative 0.1 degree warming (21%). A total of 49% agreed with the IPCC estimate +/- 0.1 degree. The other main answers were no change (14%) and a 0.1 degree cooling (12%). Nobody took up the challenge of putting money on the line.

One of the reasons often used to justify the Iraq invasion is that we needed to attack in order to improve the lives of the poor oppressed Iraqi people. This is military foreign aid.

I have no problem with welfare or foreign aid. I think it is admirable and appropriate for people to want to help other people who are in trouble. However I don’t think it is moral or beneficial to force people to contribute to government welfare or foreign aid.

Read more »

In January 2006 the more-militant more-islamist palestinian group Hamas beat the less-militant, less-islamist palestinian group Fatah in the Palestinian parliamentary elections, which has lead to foreign sanctions and 18 months of instability in the Palestinian territories.

Mahmoud Abbas is the leader of Fatah, President of the Palestinians and is respected by Israel and America. He (and Fatah) recognise Israel’s right to exist and agrees with a two-state solution. He is the good guy. Unfortunately he doesn’t control the parliament and after today he doesn’t control the Gaza strip.

Read more »

Global warming are the new public policy buzz words. Apparently, we’re all doomed and so every politicians and well-meaning statist wants to save us.

Debate goes on as to what exactly happened in the past, what is going to happen in the future & what the government can and should do about it. Estimates for future warming vary considerably, with some people predicting dire consequences in the next 5 or 10 years while others suggesting that we have little to fear. The IPCC has a range of estimates from 1.1 to 6.4 degrees in this century.

Read more »

It is easier to control people if they are scared. Towards that end, the global-warming fear-mongers have been upping their campaign, and may soon rival Dubya and the warnicks in terms of encouraging irrational fear for the purpose of selling bad (and expensive) government action.

In the SMH last week we were warned that “climate change may have passed a key tipping point” and reported a warning that “global warming was contributing to increased conflict over dwindling resources”. The example was Dafur.

Read more »

Well, the results are now in for the 2007 best libertarian solo-blogger. Among allegations of electoral fraud, rapid fluctations of fortune, selling sex (pommy) and drawing on our racist fears (fleeced), we have received an unprecidented 1191 votes.

And the winner is… Andrew Norton. Both Andrew and Pommygranate received 13%, but Andrew had a handful more votes. Fleeced finished in 3rd with 12% and Jennifer Marohasy came in 4th with 11%. All very worthy contenders.

And for the next poll we will look at the voting intentions of the libertarian blogosphere. There is a federal election expected around October/November this year and most current polls are predicting a victory to the social democratic Labor Party. But five months is a long time in politics and Howard’s conservative Liberal party has come from behind to win before.

Despite their slow-motion decline, the rural conservative Nationals will expect to remain the 3rd party in Australia. Australia’s most left-wing serious party, the Greens, have a chance of taking Senate control at this election, while the centre-left Democrats are fighting to stay alive.

This will be the first federal election where the moderate-libertarian Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will be standing candidates, competing for a final Senate spot. The Christian conservative Family First Party also will be trying to repeat their 2004 success. Finally One Nation (and/or Pauline’s new United Australia Party*) will be trying to bring the nationalist-conservative fringe of Australian politics back to life. I’ve also given the option of “other” and for people who don’t vote.

* If you want to vote for Pauline’s United Australia party, please tick the “One Nation” box.

UPDATE 02/06/07: When I declared the voting outcome I forgot to turn off the poll… and in the past few days we have had another 350 mystery votes. I have now turned off voting. Andrew is still coming first and Pommy second, with Fleeced and Jennifer Marohasy tied for third.