Given the circumstances, the question anyone should be asking is, what is next? What direction should the country go? There are appear to be five main options: civil war, peaceful secession, decentralization, cultural and political homogeneity, or forced conformity. 

Civil War

This would presumably be the worst of all the options. The idea of war between the states and between the American people is unimaginable. However, there is a legitimate chance this could occur. In fact, 46% of Americans think a civil war is inevitable. None should dismiss this possibility, but if the path the United States takes is to be peaceful, there must be a serious awakening of the American people.

Peaceful Secession

As opposed to a violent civil war, peaceful secession proposes that certain parts of the country leave the jurisdiction of the United States without war and establish their own countries. The idea is gaining support, and there are movements like this on a smaller scale in Colorado and Oregon. Although this option seems unlikely, it is preferable to a violent civil war that also breaks the country apart.

Decentralization

Similar to the option of peaceful secession, decentralization is the process of distributing political power among the states and local jurisdictions rather than leaving power centralized with the federal government in Washington. In this case, decentralization is not even going outside the realm of what has been done in the United States before. 

Simply, San Francisco governs San Francisco and Knoxville governs Knoxville. In a way, decentralization is a watered down version of self-determination. Each locality or state can govern themselves while also having some accountability and responsibility on the national level. This option, while keeping the country intact, gives groups of people the ability to make their own decisions while minimizing the effect it could have on other groups. By far, this is a more satisfying and safe option.

Cultural and Political Homogeneity

Unlike decentralization, this option leaves power centralized and unifies the majority of the American people—an establishment of a new normal so to speak. In short, one of our political “sides” wins and that is the standard moving forward. An instance similar to the Reagan era where the political left had to respond with a more conservative candidate or the acceptance of the New Deal as a mainstay in American political life could serve as examples.

This new normal would at the very least end the current polarization and create a sense that the country is unified enough to continue standing. With this option however, one side would have to lose and lose gracefully at that. Under current conditions, this seems unlikely, but there is always the chance that some event or leader is capable of bringing the nation closer together, even if unwillingly. Do not be surprised if this is the chosen path of the United States in the future.

Forced Conformity

Like the option of homogeneity, forced conformity centralizes power and establishes a new normal. However, this new normal is established by whoever uses the power of the state first to put people in line. This is the creation of a totalitarian society via the means of the government gun. No longer will there be unnecessary squabbling over politics. There will be order and unity regardless if it is desired or not.

The political right likes to compare certain policies to that of George Orwell’s 1984, often incorrectly and entirely overused, but it is a legitimate possibility. With any state that has grown as large as the United States federal government, there is a real threat of it just asserting its own dominance to enforce order and control. Americans would like to think that they are immune to this totalitarian concept, but in the end humans have the aptitude to take such action. This option, along with that of civil war, should be seen as the most dangerous.

What Direction Should the United States Choose?

The scenarios above are general, and each has their own issues. However, for any average American, the prospect of violence between the people or coercion in the political sphere should be off the table. They are easily the worst options to anyone that seeks peace. 

As for the other options, it depends almost entirely on the issue of polarization. If the country is so divided that there is no chance at reconciliation, peaceful secession is the best path. If the ideological gap is serious, but not so bad that the American people cannot remain neighbors with their political opposites, decentralization seems optimal to increase everyone’s satisfaction. Should the polarization cease and a new normal is secured, the option of homogeneity is preferable. 

Regardless, the United States cannot stand as it is currently. The priority for the American people now needs to be focused on solving this crisis of country and truly becoming that shining city on a hill again.

The post Is the Future Really Dark? appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

At a blistering 2021 speed, the screen shifts from archaic interfaces to modern emojis without giving as much as a second to focus before clearing the display for text reading “It’s been 25 years since comprehensive internet regulations were passed. It’s time for an update.” It is part of Facebook’s pro-regulatory advertisement push entitled, “Born in ’96” part of the larger “It’s Time” campaign.

As advertisements go, this one is remarkably effective, if a little overbearing. Would you expect anything less from the king of every corner in the advertising market?

The ecosystem created for the internet in ‘96 by the Communications Decency Act (CDA) has clearly not impeded Facebook’s success. After being created in 2004, Facebook was established in a post-CDA world and has played a leading role in establishing that world’s bounds. Nevertheless, the company’s anxiety over ambiguities in the ancient digital legislation is understandable.

Rather than letting Facebook’s executives design the social media market of the future, what if there were free competition? Not the kind of competition that Twitter and even Parler provide Facebook, rather, a type of decentralized competition that challenges the structure that the Silicon Valley giants are built on. In other words, how about a polycentric organization of competition that makes the CDA obsolete and breaks up vertical monopolies on user-generated content and use data? Thanks to an unexpected source, that competition may not be far away.

To Moderate or Not to Moderate is NOT the Question

Chances are, if you are made uneasy by a social media giant lobbying to change the rules that govern it and its competitors, that dubious feeling may come from a general distrust of Facebook itself. Facebook may or may not have lost your trust after Russia used the platform to target Americans with divisive advertisements during the 2016 election, or after CEO Mark Zuckerberg was summoned to Congress to testify in 2018 about the site’s alleged internal content moderation bias against conservatives. Even without negative associations, however, new regulations on established markets create barriers to entry and disincentivize competition. In this case, new regulations would mandate that social media companies practice internal content moderation—otherwise simply known as moderation—something that has strained Facebook’s abilities up until recently.

At the root of Facebook’s legal issues is the CDA. Although originally intended to determine what content was suitable for television, the CDA became one of the most foundational regulations for the burgeoning internet. Insofar as the internet is concerned, the CDA mandates that a site may not publish certain indecent, and often independently criminal, content. It also delegates the enforcement of these rules to a regulatory agency, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), instead of leaving the justice system to sort out victims and perpetrators. Notably, the CDA also creates a distinction between “publishers,” standard websites that curate or create content, and “platforms” like social media sites that allow anyone to post and merely aggregate and serve content to consumers.

Distorting the justice system by inserting executive agencies between victim and perpetrator creates a topsy-turvy system. As it stands, proving the facilitatory guilt on the part of a social media company is far easier than proving that any crime outside of the scope of the CDA had been committed in the first place.

Under the CDA, there are two systems of online content production. Publishers are obligated to internally moderate content such that it remains within the bounds of what the law considers acceptable speech. On the other hand, platforms are not held to this standard and are, by the nature of the distinction, barred from behaving as publishers. Although this clause, better known simply as “section 230,” has been touted by many as the saving grace of the CDA from the perspective of free speech, it is also the wedge that causes Facebook to take flack from both the left and right.

Facebook has been scrutinized for not moderating content strictly enough in 2016 and for being too politically restrictive ever since. New regulations would certainly clear up Facebook’s role, especially if Facebook’s on-staff legal team would have a say in the verbiage of any proposed bill, which it likely would. Either way, moderation of user-generated media, and therefore free speech online, will either be centralized under a federal agency or only distributed between a few massive companies which themselves have nothing to do with content production.

The free market provided several alternatives to Facebook and Twitter but few gained traction in the face of such established competitors and steep regulatory obligations. One of these start-ups, Parler, managed to gain a healthy following when President Donald Trump was controversially removed from almost every other online platform following the storming of the Capitol on Jan 6. After gaining millions of users overnight, Parler’s web-hosting service, a subsidiary of Amazon, decided to sever ties with the company over its moderation policy. This effectively moderated the entire website off of the internet by refusing to do business with them.

Many were attracted to Parler’s moderation policies, or lack thereof, and, had it not been shut down, the site would have posed a competitive threat for a portion of Facebook’s disaffected user base. Although providing a place for truly unfettered conversation, Parler segmented conversation and would never be a comfortable place for the majority of social media users who prefer some community standards beyond the legal bare minimum to be enforced.

Besides, having a second, slightly edgier public square just outside the first is not a substitution for effective public discourse. The French third estate’s self-separation from the estates general did not, after all, create a more healthy political dialogue for the French people during the beginning of the French Revolution.

Parler was shuttered for two months while the site’s founders procured alternative web hosting services. Although currently functional, Parler’s existence is not a long-term competitive solution to the problem of legally obligatory moderation because it frames moderation, in and of itself, as a bad thing. The same could be said for President Donald Trump’s new media outlet if it is ever opened up to public contribution.

Moderation, when done offline, is a daily practice for most. Whether by choosing the members of your inner circle or choosing to only have two slices of pizza, people self-moderate their lives all the time. Centrally planned moderation, however, is called prohibition and often causes more harm than good.

Enter the Decentralized Social Media (DSM) model, a polycentric model of online interaction recently proposed on Medium by Ross Ulbricht, the currently imprisoned founder of Silk Road, an infamous illicit online marketplace that jump-started the popularity of Bitcoin in the early 2000s.

The Innovation of Decentralized Social Media

Moderation of something as big as social media is incredibly difficult and would take a massive amount of manpower if done entirely manually. Some of Facebook’s most closely guarded secrets determine the algorithms the company has developed for use in ad targeting and to facilitate moderation. The CDA both disallows this moderation and requires it, depending on which side of Section 230 a site falls on.

To oversimplify, Ulbricht’s DSM model would remove those automatic and manual moderation tools from under the hood of a social media’s servers and place those same processes in the device of the social media user under the control of separate companies that stand to profit from providing moderation and aggregation services at the discretion of the device owner. Users could access any or all of the web’s available social media content feeds at once and only be fed content within their own acceptable parameters while retaining ownership of their user data. All of this would be done through the operant function of Bitcoin, the encrypted blockchain.

In practice, the seemingly small distinction between where these algorithms are processed and who owns those functions resolves several of the questions raised and created by the CDA without having to create or pass any new laws.

Where the CDA consolidates and centralizes the responsibility for moderation under the content aggregator’s purview, start-up companies following Ulbricht’s model would compete to moderate and aggregate both user content and advertisements from social media platforms, thereby creating a market where there previously was only mandate.

Users would simply open an app wherein social media content is centralized. Users could pick and choose moderation and aggregation providers to reward with a portion of the advertisement revenue that their engagement latently generates and freely switch between providers.

Rather than having aggregation and moderation be centralized by legal obligation to a few social media companies, levels of moderation, advertisement service, and content prioritization would all be separate overlapping markets which independently compete to provide superior service and control for negative externalities.

Algorithmic moderation is a powerful tool that, along with manual moderation, can create comfortable digital environments. If moderation and aggregation were divorced from the social media platform and made a competitive marketplace, users would be free to use whatever network or combination of networks that they preferred and have the content they are served moderated however they see fit. If users could be in control of the moderation they facilitate and are subject to, the arrangement would be considerably more consensual. Social media companies under a decentralized model would not be held responsible for users misusing their digital infrastructure as content regulation would be the responsibility of the client-side moderation algorithm and the companies that compete to provide those services most effectively. If a user was ever dissatisfied with the moderation they were provided those would have market remedies.

Should someone use social media as a means to harass or threaten another, there would be no intermediate party at fault, freeing the judicial system to bring justice to guilty and affected parties alike.

Side-effects may include

Besides sidestepping the CDA’s ineffectual regulations, a DSM would protect the privacy of users by encrypting the user generated data used by moderation algorithms and keeping a function of that unique data as the user’s encryption key or proof of identity.

The value of the advertising market and the size of Facebook’s share of it are both due to the incredible amount of data that Google, Facebook, and other companies collect on every person who uses their services. This information is the company’s to sell, use to target ads, or train algorithms with. Under a DSM model, that information would be yours to sell and distribute among service providers.

The value of this information is worth much more than the emotional value of privacy. Companies like Facebook make much of their money in one way or another from the accuracy and scope of their user data collection. If that information were to become yours by using a DSM, so too would the money it generates.

As it stands, Facebook and Google data-mine users in exchange for a service. Were they to have to adapt to a DSM model, companies like this would need to shift to more traditional models where payment is offered directly for a service rendered. Ulbricht’s model would allow businesses to accommodate liquid payment between service providers like web-hosts or advertisers and the users so that the app constantly allows users to be in control of how much of their data they would like to share and how much usability they want to pay for by receiving ads.

Innovation always trumps regulation

Rather than offering prescription for what ails the social media marketplace, Ulbricht’s paper is a prediction from a prison cell. The unstoppable march of innovation is sure to further segment the digital marketplace for social programs into intricately specialized niches. The distributed social media model is merely a description of how those businesses and technologies would need to operate.

Because Ulbricht was not granted the clemency from the Trump administration that he so hoped for, the infamous programmer will not be the one to found the moderation or content aggregation start-ups that he describes. Public figures such as Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, and Tim Pool have all claimed to be creating platforms that in some way aggregate social media, beginning the process of decentralizing—or polycentrizing—the social media market. It remains to be seen if these or any start-ups will truly realize Ulbricht’s ideas, but if the CDA is not soon updated, it will likely be circumvented.

Just as 3D printers have shown several gun laws to be archaic, if not entirely obsolete, the best way to counter a bad set of laws or regulations is to create a technology or idea that renders it pointless. Ulbricht may not be the one to lead the charge, but his simple Medium post certainly opened a door.

Gavin Hanson (born in ’96) is the Editor-in-Chief of Catalyst

Published with permission from Catalyst. Read the original article here.

The post Regulation, Moderation, and Social Media Decentralization appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

But I also know governments’ response to the crisis has life and death implications. And we need to be forceful in opposing decisions that would result in even greater harm. Though the fight over the country’s future isn’t front-and-center in many Americans’ minds, libertarians need to be prepared to articulate why a freer society is crucial to recovery and the best way to prepare for another pandemic.

Let’s start with economic freedom. It’s an idea that has lifted billions out of poverty and created enormous sums of wealth, enabling us to fight back against the deadly coronavirus. Expanding economic freedom has never been more important. It’s what will accelerate a recovery, but it requires tearing down barriers—high taxes, wasteful spending, burdensome regulations, etc.—that have suppressed wealth creation and denied so many a chance at a better life.

The lesson from the Depression of 1920-21 is instructive. If you’ve never heard of it, that’s probably because it ended so quickly. In response to a sharp economic downturn during the early 20s, the federal government slashed spending and allowed the free market to work. The economy quickly recovered and paved the way for the “Roaring Twenties.” This example demonstrating the power of markets stands in stark contrast to the Great Depression, which was prolonged by government intervention and only ended after the market was allowed to recover from WWII.

Hopefully officials learn from lessons past because governments all across the country are dealing with their own economic and fiscal crises. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the federal budget deficit is projected to be $3.8 trillion this fiscal year. And it’s likely to rise even higher after Congress passes another spending package to aid businesses and states dealing with the coronavirus. For context, the entire federal budget in 2015 was $3.7 trillion.

Had governments done a better job of controlling spending, both the public and private sectors would be in a better position to respond to the pandemic. Instead, the federal government is running historic deficits; the Federal Reserve has engaged in an unprecedented expansion of lending; and, state and local officials are begging for bailouts.

This crisis should not be used to prop up irresponsible governments and lock in entrenched bureaucracies. Governments and other independent agencies should respond to these challenges by reducing spending and restructuring operations so they are leaner and in a better position to weather future crises.

Federal officials should consider redirecting current spending to offset the cost of a fourth coronavirus relief package likely to be approved by Congress within the next few weeks. A great place to start looking for spending offsets is the list of recommendations put together by Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute. The federal government should also attach strings to any federal aid, ensuring state and local governments and agencies use the money as a bridge to recovery, not a temporary crutch that enables profligacy.

Finally, we need radical decentralization. The response to health emergencies should not be tied to federal agencies like the Food and Drug Administration or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Top down systems squash innovation, which can lead to deadly repercussions. Permanently relaxing or eliminating restrictions on things like testing and vaccines must be a top priority after the crisis passes.

Another factor hindering a response to the virus is the dependency of states and businesses on the federal government. It’s the product of our collective failure to stop the growth of the leviathan. Washington D.C. has grown its power at the expense of all of us, along with state and local governments. New York is, unfortunately, a good example.

D.C. consistently takes more money from New Yorkers in taxes then it sends back to the state in federal aid. This is problematic for a number of reasons, including limiting what states like New York can do in response to a pandemic. Decentralization mitigates this problem by allowing more resources and power to stay with people in the states rather than concentrating it in D.C. where it is often misused or abused.

Decentralization should also take the form of repealing laws and regulations that artificially restrict the supply of medical services and personnel, leaving decisions about allocating resources to the marketplace instead of government bureaucrats or special interests looking to protect themselves from competition. Empowering the private sector is the best way to save lives.

The road ahead will be difficult. Libertarians are going to have to fight harder than ever to ensure long existing and newly adopted government policies are not part of our new normal.

Our lives and liberty depend on it.

The post What Should a Post-Pandemic America Look Like? appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

One of Many

However, Denver was not alone in drug reform developments. Certain counties in Texas are now implementing laxer enforcement of drug laws.

The day before the Denver referendum, Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales publicly declared his office will not arrest people who possess small amounts of hard drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamines.

Specifically, possession of .25 grams or less would not merit the use of law enforcement resources. Gonzalez also stated his office will cease prosecuting individuals possessing less than an ounce of marijuana.

Bexar County was not alone in Texas. Dallas County DA John Creuzot revealed in April his office will no longer prosecute first-time marijuana possession cases or any individuals found with trace amounts of hard drugs under .01 grams. Similarly, Travis County established a hands-off policy to the possession of hard drugs less than .01 grams.

Since Colorado voters made history by legalizing marijuana in 2012, 10 states and the District of Columbia have now legalized marijuana. It appears the War on Drugs is slowly on its way out of the Overton Window and the acceptability of marijuana legalization is gradually shifting towards a pro-liberty direction.

Now, it’s not so outrageous to suggest marijuana legalization. As mentioned before, blood-red states like Texas are rethinking their marijuana enforcement policies. It will only be a matter of time before more conservative states start legalizing, or at the very least, decriminalizing the drug.

Reforming Drug Policy for Harder Drugs Will Be Tough

However, the next phase of ending the War on Drugs will arguably be more challenging.

Ryan McMaken pointed out that Denver voters did not show up to the polls for the psilocybin mushroom vote like previous marijuana-related initiatives. A previous Denver ballot initiative in 2007, which put cannabis as law enforcement’s lowest priority, was supported by 57 percent of voters. Unlike marijuana, the number of psilocybin mushroom cases were very few as McMaken highlighted in his article:

The city’s DA noted “only 11 of more than 9,000 drug cases referred for possible prosecution between 2016 and 2018 involved psilocybin.”

In a similar vein, familiarity with drugs plays a substantial role in changing public opinion on the Drug War. Jacob Sullum of Reason raises a valid point about people’s familiarity with drugs and how it shapes their views on potential legislation:

The main factor propelling public support for decriminalization and legalization of marijuana was rising familiarity with the drug. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 45 percent of Americans 12 or older have tried marijuana.

The recent push for marijuana legalization seems to coincide with its general cultural acceptance and people’s experience with the drug. It’s a different story with harder, more “exotic” drugs such as psilocybin mushrooms, which Sullum shows are not as popular as marijuana:

By comparison, NSDUH data indicate that 9 percent of Americans 12 and older have ever tried psilocybin, one-fifth the estimate for marijuana. The gap is even bigger when you look at use in the past year: 2 percent for “hallucinogens” (including LSD, MDMA, PCP, and a bunch of other psychedelics as well as psilocybin) vs. 15 percent for marijuana. Psychedelics are still relatively exotic and therefore scarier.

Drugs that seem more exotic appear less likely to win local efforts at legalization.

Why Ending the War on Drugs Matters

Indeed, the road to ending the entire War on Drugs will be filled with plenty of obstacles, but it has to start somewhere. It was only a few decades ago that legalizing marijuana was still considered fringe. Now, marijuana legalization is a commonly accepted policy proposition. In one way or another, drug legalization activists will be playing the long game in this battle.

It bears repeating what kind of damage the War on Drugs has done to America. Not only has it been a fiscal sinkhole for the U.S. government, with estimates pointing to a $1 trillion being spent to carry out this campaign since it started in the 1970s, but it has also led to police departments overstretching their powers, and has helped create an unprecedented mass incarceration industry in America.

The good news is that numerous criminal justice reforms passed across the nation have lessened the penalties for non-violent drug offenders. Traditionally, red states like Georgia and Texas have led this charge. These moves are solid first steps and show that the traditional drug enforcement model is starting to lose its appeal, even among conservative legislatures.

Decentralization and Localism Are the Best Ways to End the Drug War

Like the issue of gun rights, the most optimal approaches to drug reform consist of both state and local level activism. Texas has the right idea by focusing on DA offices in major urban centers like Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio. Eventually, this momentum will carry over to the state level.

This shows yet again, why the states, cities, and townships are key to promoting liberty and decentralization. Conventional politics has conditioned people into thinking that the federal government is the only agent for political change in America. Frankly, neither the right elected officials in Congress nor the Courts will always be there to rescue us from federal overreach.

Decentralization is not a clean process, but it has to be done. It’s what made Western civilization great, and by extension, has been a pillar of the American political experiment. The past century has seen America deviate from this unheralded facet of Western politics. The good news, however, is that the drug issue has brought back nullification and other decentralization strategies into public discourse.

Decentralization is not a bug, but rather a feature of the American system. The more we acknowledge this, the easier it will be to settle future political disputes and restore freedoms that the federal government has gradually usurped.

This article was republished with permission from the Mises Institute.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

The post Why Decentralization Is the Key to Ending the War on Drugs appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Despite constant political activism from liberty-minded people since the ratification of the Constitution, we still have to deal with unending wars, millions of nonviolent people in prison, ever-increasing debt, money that’s almost worthless, government involvement in nearly every area of our lives, no privacy from federal agencies, a chunk of each of our paychecks taken out and sent to Washington whether we want it to happen or not, and more. While there have been changes over time with regard to taxation, spending, and regulations, many of these changes have been for the worse rather than for the better, and the mechanisms that enable these activities still exist and therefore can still be abused by politicians. Further, as older generations who remember having freedoms that no longer exist die off and younger generations grow up never having experienced those freedoms, the tendency for the current trajectory to continue mostly unhampered is likely to remain. This indicates that political action at the national level is largely ineffective at reducing government and advancing liberty.

People who support political campaigns as a way to change the federal government make several assumptions about what their actions will accomplish. They assume that their candidate will get the nomination they’re seeking, win the election, succeed in getting their ideas passed, garner enough popular support so that their ideas will be accepted once they’re passed, and that those ideas would work in reality as they were expected to work on paper. Political activists take a big gamble by working on or donating to political campaigns, a gamble which they lose far more often than they win.

Even if all of that happens, the political process is painstakingly slow. Any given piece of legislation can take years to become a law, and a law typically takes at least a year to go into effect once it’s passed. Add to this the time involved in the campaign from the moment it starts to the moment the candidate gets elected and this becomes an incredibly inefficient way to get anything accomplished.

Though no less time-consuming, local political action has generally proven to be more effective at advancing liberty than national political action. This is partly due to the sheer amount of political power available to federal officeholders; because of this, those who are the most desperate to control others head for the highest offices in the country, meaning that there are more opportunities for less corrupt people to run for state and local positions. Additionally, there is often greater attention given to the federal government as whoever can get the president or Congress to pass their agenda can affect change across the entire country. This tends to be more appealing to activists than changing a state or local policy, which would affect far fewer people.

The case for forgoing political action in an effort to change the federal government is further strengthened by the fact that there are some freedoms which are respected by lower levels of government despite being rejected at the federal level. Marijuana is legal for recreational or medical purposes in a handful of states and for purely medical purposes in over a dozen states. Several states have passed measures to protect their inhabitants against federal gun control laws. Gay marriage was allowed by the majority of states before the federal government allowed it. These examples demonstrate that if one wishes to engage in political action, their best chance for success is at the local level.

Decentralization offers opportunities for greater freedom. Suppose country A has more restrictions on freedom than country B, and someone in A wishes to move to B. It would be extremely difficult, costly, and time-consuming to accomplish that move. Now suppose that there is a region within A that has fewer restrictions. The difficulty, time, and expense of moving to that region within the same country would be far less, and thus more people could take advantage of voting with their feet and have an easier time doing so. This was originally how the US was arranged under the Constitution. There was to be a federal government in place to provide a handful of functions, and everything else was left either to state governments or the people in the states. If someone dissatisfied with their state government couldn’t garner enough support to make the change they wanted to see, they could as a last resort move to another state with policies they preferred. Over time, this ability has been significantly reduced due to the increasing centralization of power in Washington, DC, and the accompanying policies that bind people in every state under the same national laws. This has resulted in less competition between governments in the US and fewer places for liberty-minded people to go.

While decentralization should be brought back, it shouldn’t be limited to only the state level. Just as it’s much easier to move between states than it is to move between countries, it’s even easier to move between cities than it is to move between states. The same applies for moving between counties, neighborhoods, and so on. The greater the level of decentralization and the more competition among governments, the more opportunities there will be for freedom.

Can political action accomplish this? It might be useful at lower levels of government, but, as discussed above, it’s been shown to be ineffective on the federal level. A big problem with trying to use political action to reduce the size of the federal government is the fact that so many people are dependent on federal money. This includes politicians, government bureaucrats, road workers, businesses that get subsidies or bailouts, and welfare recipients. How many of these people would willingly vote themselves out of a job or a paycheck? Most of those people think they’re currently getting a tangible benefit, and asking them to give that up while offering them something better in return without having a real-world example to show them right now has repeatedly failed to get them on board with reducing the size and power of government. Instead, why not directly show them how liberty would benefit them? The remainder of this article will focus on some possible ways to do this.

The first step should be to take care of those who need help and are willing to receive it. This will be easier than one might initially think, as Americans already give hundreds of billions of dollars in charitable donations every year. St. Jude, which provides healthcare to children at no cost, is an excellent example of an organization that has proven itself to be worthy of receiving support. Pointing people toward direct primary care, in which healthcare providers bypass insurance and can therefore charge much lower prices, is also important. Directly helping people and contributing to charitable organizations are both extremely important, but there is another option as well. Mutual-aid societies were how people took care of one another prior to the welfare state. These can be brought back through getting to know one’s neighbors and creating neighborhood communities; it would then be a simple matter for the people in those communities to support each other during hard times. Websites such as Gofundme and apps such as Square Cash can be used to create virtual communities so that one’s location won’t be an obstacle to obtaining needed aid.

The goal should be to create such a strong system of private aid and mutual-aid societies, both of which are effective at getting people out of poverty and keeping them out, that demand for government welfare programs shrinks to the point that it’s practically non-existent. Libertarians can lead the way in all of this by taking the time and money they would normally spend on political campaigns and using those resources to buy food, tuition and supplies for those in school, clothes, housing, etc. for people who need it. They can also lead the way in bringing back mutual-aid societies by starting local and virtual communities. This way everyone will see what private aid looks like rather than just hearing about how it might work.

One important but often overlooked example of private aid is providing support to people accused of violating laws which do not involve violations of contract or trespass against the life, limb, or property of anybody else. Even if a person charged with violating such a law is ultimately found guilty, they would still have faced enormous expenses on the way to getting that verdict. Some of those expenses include bail, lawyers, money they lost due to being away from work, and sustaining any family they have who depends on them. There should be efforts through crowdfunding or charitable organizations to provide quality legal representation, support for dependents, and securing a job (in the event of a not-guilty verdict) for those charged with violating a law criminalizing behavior which is nonviolent and creates no victim.

In conjunction with the last paragraph, let’s now look at a way to reduce the number of guilty verdicts for violations of unjust laws. This can be done by spreading awareness of jury nullification. While most people typically think the role of jurors is simply to judge whether or not the defendant broke a law, jurors can also judge the law itself. A historical example of jury nullification can be found in resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act, which required those who came across runaway slaves to return them to their “owners”. Some who refused to comply with the law were found not guilty by jurors who believed the law to be unjust. Thus, jury nullification is a legal, effective way for civilians to challenge and even reject laws. This may be why those who share information about jury nullification outside of courthouses can be arrested and charged with a crime. Because of the potential to prevent peaceful people who haven’t hurt anyone else from going to prison, information about jury nullification should be spread as far and wide as possible through every available medium.

Something that would make a huge difference in society in the long run is peaceful parenting. In short, peaceful parenting involves refraining from spanking or yelling at children and instead makes use of negotiations, persuasion, and other peaceful strategies. Though many people get defensive about matters related to parenting and some claim that spanking was “necessary” for them or their children, decades of research into the subject have instead revealed it to cause a number of negative effects. Some of these effects include increased aggressive behavior, anti-social behavior, and mental health problems.

In addition to these issues, parents who raise their children in a violent fashion are teaching them that violence is an acceptable tool to get what they want. As such, and because children are more influenced by the behavior of their others rather than their words, children raised in such a fashion are more likely grow up believing that violence and intimidation are normal and acceptable in human relationships. If raising children violently causes these problems, then raising them peacefully would reduce the prevalence of them, diminish the likelihood of people using violence to get their way, and ultimately lead to a more peaceful society.

On the subject of children and parents, homeschooling can provide a lot of great benefits for everyone in the family. Children can learn useful skills that are no longer taught in conventional schools, parents can customize the curriculum so that values they approve of are taught rather than the values of a school board, lesson plans (such as those found in the Ron Paul Curriculum) can be based on the needs of each student instead of resorting to a one-size-fits-all plan, and the additional time together would strengthen family bonds and lead to more trust of one another. And since children who are homeschooled don’t spend their formative years sitting in a government school classroom, they will be more inclined criticize government programs where they fall short rather than blindly trusting them.

The advantages of competition between different levels of government were discussed earlier in this article, and this section will discuss the benefits of competition between governments and private activities. One of the greatest examples of this is Lysander Spooner’s American Letter Mail Company, which competed against the Post Office from 1844 to 1851. In addition to delivering mail in both a more efficient and less costly fashion than the Post Office, Spooner was able to get the Post Office to lower its own rates which, even after his company was forcibly shut down by the government, remained lower than they were before he started his company. As a result, everyone benefited from the existence and operation of Spooner’s company whether they used his services or the Post Office. Over a century later, Patricia Brennan started her own mail delivery company. Her customers appreciated being able to get same-day delivery, which they couldn’t get through the Post Office. However, just like Spooner, Brennan’s mail company was shut down by the government in the late 1970’s. Though their enterprises didn’t last, they showed that private enterprise can provide a useful service than a government monopoly. Further, they helped pave the way for competition in the delivery of packages through such services as UPS and Fed Ex. Private competition should be started for as many government services as possible to give people more options and to force governments to improve. At the same lines, private donations could be solicited to replace federal funding wherever it’s used. This would greatly reduce the federal government’s control over state and local governments, which would then make it easier for freedom to flourish at those levels.

On average, the time it takes the police to arrive when called is ten minutes. That is more than enough time for anyone intent on hurting someone to do so before the police appear. As a faster alternative, militias, neighborhood watch organizations, and private security guards should be the first line of defense against violent criminals. This way, if the police don’t get there in time to stop a crime in progress, they’ll be less likely to find an injured or dead victim when they arrive. If this results in fewer violent criminals in society, then everyone will become even less dependent on the police to keep them safe or recover their stolen property. Those who wish to avoid government courts as much as possible can instead make use of private arbitration to settle their disputes.

Most people are probably familiar with the Occupy Wall Street movement. This next idea is similar but focused on a different area. A way to stifle government overreach could be through peaceful occupation of government offices, which would make it much harder for politicians and bureaucrats to do their jobs. The main focus should be on those who tend to accomplish a lot while they’re working. If there are government workers who do little to nothing, they can be ignored as they already limit themselves. Creating obstacles for local politicians and bureaucrats will reduce the strain they put on the lives of nearby inhabitants and make it easier to create alternatives to government programs.

Much of this could be accomplished more easily by focusing on small towns with populations which are already inclined to support freedom. Libertarians could move to such places and gradually turn them into communities based on the freedom to live as one desires as long as one doesn’t prohibit others from doing the same. At that point, federal and state orders would be almost impossible to enforce in those communities since any local government mechanisms for enforcing such orders would instead be devoted to protecting the people in them. Individuals looking for even more freedom could raise money to buy undeveloped land from state or local governments and build freedom communities from the ground up. This could act as a final check on government by offering a place for those who are fed up with the system or don’t think it’s changing quickly enough.

What if one or more levels of government try to put a stop to all of this by seizing the bank accounts of those involved? A simple way around that is to withdraw all money from those accounts and then close them afterward. This will also weaken the fractional reserve banking system and accelerate the movement toward alternative currencies. Investing in precious metals, cryptocurrencies, and valuable commodities will offer competition against government money, show the advantages of hard money and the disadvantages of fiat currency, and provide millions of people with access to valuable money they can use when the dollar loses what remains of its value. For those concerned with how to get money if banks no longer have enough to loan out, Kickstarter can be used to fund entrepreneurs, homeowners looking to improve their property, and others who need additional money right away.

If a fraction of dedicated libertarians did one or more of these activities, the world would look vastly different than it does now. Instead of being thought of as lunatics who live in some fantasy world, indifferent to anyone’s suffering other than their own, and supportive of ideas which aren’t in practice anywhere, libertarians would be seen as supporters of the needy and defenders of everyone from tyranny. They’d be able to point to actual real-world examples of communities and societies which haven’t existed for hundreds of years (if they ever existed at all). Because of the diverse nature of the activities described above, the failure of any one activity wouldn’t automatically bring failure to all the rest. Those who are more inclined to pursue one type of activity could do so without feeling pressured to do anything that made them uncomfortable, and the positive benefits that would come from the success of even just a couple of activities would be immense. Could it happen? Absolutely, and if it did, everyone would be much freer and better off because of it.

The post A Non-Political Strategy for Freedom appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

“She was fiercely against monetary and economic union and the euro — and very opposed to political union. She felt Britain would be better off if it kept a distance from all of this,” Thatcher biographer Charles Moore said in a recent Brexit interview.

“During my lifetime most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one fashion or other, from mainland Europe, and the solutions from outside it,” the former prime minister once said.

Britain’s only female prime minister became famous for her rousing floor speeches, throttling her opponents with a sense of intellectual superiority and wit. In October of 1990, Thatcher gave such a speech to her fellow members of the House of Commons regarding the potential for increasing political ties to the rest of Europe.

“It is our purpose to the power and influence of this house and not to denude them to many of the powers,” she said.

“Of course the chairman of the commission said that he wanted the European Parliament to be the democratic body of the community, he wanted the commission to be the executive, and he wanted the council to be the ministers of the senate. No! No! No!”

“The fact is they have no competence on money, no competence on the economy, so yes, the right honorable gentleman would be glad to hand it all over,” she quipped at one of her Labour colleagues.  “And what is the point in trying to get elected to parliament, only to hand over your sterling and to hand over the powers of this house to Europe?”

Watch below:

Today, Lady Thatcher would be quite proud.

The post Watch: Flashback Video Shows Exactly What Maggie Thatcher Thought About the EU appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.