Thoughts on Freedom

In June last year the ALS hosted the first competition for best blogger. At the time it was “best solo libertarian blogger”, after after much vote-rigging it was eventually won by the self-described “classical liberal” Andrew Norton.

This year we’ve decided to broaden the category to “best libertarian blog” (to give catallaxy & thoughts on freedom a chance), and limited the options so that people are just choosing between 10 blogs.

The options include some of the big names of the Australian plogospohere (political blogosphere) — such as Catallaxy Files, Andrew Norton, Jennifer Marohasy and Thoughts on Freedom. It also includes a few blogs that deserve to be more popular with libertarians — Austrolabe and Liberty Whinge.

One important new option includes Helen Dale (aka skepticlawyer), who has broken away from Catallaxy & Thoughts and started her own blog at Skeptic Lawyer.

For the pro-war, pro-Republican libertarians there is Melbourne objectivist PRODOS, and McCain-apologist Jim Fryar at Real World Libertarian. And rounding out the options for this year is Double Think, by the mysterious Jono.

There are plenty of libertarian blogs that I didn’t include. Sorry to those authors, but I needed to keep the options managable. I tried to pick the most well-known and active to choose from. For the curious, some other libertarian blogs can be found at Fleeced, Wackingday, The Western Lines, Chris Berg, Australian Gun Owner & more if you follow the links.

==================

The last ALS poll question was “who are you”. Well, apparently you are an Australian libertarian male under 40. Of 127 responses, 88% were male, 81% were Australian, 80% were self-declared libertarian and 74% were under 40 (with 41% being in my age bracket of 20-29). Welcome.

Week by week since the start of the year our blog here at the Australian Libertarian Society has had a steady increase in the number of visitors.

Obviously some people comment a lot at this blog but no doubt some people just come to read the articles and see what others have to say. I thought it would be fun to see what our audience profile looks like. So I’ve prepared a simple short poll that lets you tell us a little about yourself. Feel free to be more expansive in the comments section if you wish. In particular it would be nice to get a quick hello from any regular readers that usually don’t comment.

The poll questions are on the following page: http://poll.pollcode.com/xX0X

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 »

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.

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 »

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.

The new ALS poll question asks you who is the best Australian libertarian solo-blogger?

This is a good opportunity for you to check out some Australian libertarian blogs that you might not have checked out before. If you haven’t visited Fleeced, Pommygranate, Double Think or Real World Libertarian before, then go have a look.

The more famous bloggers on the list include Andrew Norton (who claims in vain not to be a libertarian) and Jennifer Marohasy, and I’ve also included a few of the “old hands” of Australian libertarian blogging who have been quiet lately (The Raving Wingnut, A Yobbo’s View, Bovination). Other blogs on the list include James Waterton’s The Daily Constitutional, Melbourne activist PRODOS, the econoblog Institutional Economics and thinker & artist Chris Berg.

I tried to include every libertarian solo political blogger, but if I have forgotten somebody then please tell me so that we can update the ALS links.

The highly scientific results to the last question are now available. In response to the question “if the government must act on climate change, which should it do“, 60% of people supported a carbon tax offset with other tax cuts while 22% refused to answer the question. Other options, such as nationalising the energy industry, introducing carbon trading or picking winners, got a handful of votes each.

UPDATE 24/05: Terje pointed out that I didn’t include Graeme Bird’s blog and I also realised (to my embarassment) that I hadn’t included long-time Australian libertarian blogger Tex & his whackingday blog. Both have now been added, but that means the voting had to be re-set. Apologies.