SedanChair posted:

No, there will always be profit in providing services that exclude minorities.

wateroverfire posted:

Where did you have in mind? Situations where tariffs are waived are pretty common but not so much other things.

Pope Fabulous XXIV posted:

*I cannot tell if the Kochs are cynical or not.

Sunday Book Review posted:

They have sincere political views that go beyond being just a cover for their companies’ interest in lower taxes and fewer regulations, and many of their political activities have been right out in the open, rather than lurking in the shadows. He seems to be almost in awe of Charles, the most mysterious of the brothers, who runs Koch Industries by a system he devised called Market-Based Management. Summarizing, but not dissenting from, the views of Charles’s employees, Schulman calls him “a near-mythic figure, a man of preternatural intellect and economic prowess,” adding: “He is unquestionably powerful, but unfailingly humble; elusive, but uncomplicated; cosmopolitan, yet thoroughly Kansan.”

Captain_Maclaine posted:

Anyway, at the end of the NPR piece one of Carter's friend from the bad old days insisted that the point of The Education of Little Tree is actually a quasi-libertarian (or neo-Confederate, if you please) one where the villains are all Meddlesome Government Men and the heroes all Independent Free Men on the Land Individuals Seeking Only to Live in Peace.

Captain_Maclaine posted:

Strike me as you just seeing what you always see, in everything, at all times.

Captain_Maclaine posted:

I have to wonder about how "Forrest" apparently shed, or at least deeply concealed, most/all of his revolting and overt racism and anti-Semitism from when he was still Asa

Article posted:

“In both law and politics, I think the essential battle is the meta-battle of framing the narrative,” Cruz told me. “As Sun Tzu said, Every battle is won before it’s fought. It’s won by choosing the terrain on which it will be fought. So in litigation I tried to ask, What’s this case about? When the judge goes home and speaks to his or her grandchild, who’s in kindergarten, and the child says, ‘Paw-Paw, what did you do today?’ And if you own those two sentences that come out of the judge’s mouth, you win the case.

“So let’s take Medellín as an example of that,” Cruz went on. “The other side’s narrative in Medellín was very simple and easy to understand. ‘Can the state of Texas flout U.S. treaty obligations, international law, the President of the United States, and the world? And, by the way, you know how those Texans are about the death penalty anyway!’ That’s their narrative. That’s what the case is about. When Justice Kennedy comes home and he tells his grandson, ‘This case is about whether a state can ignore U.S. treaty obligations,’ we lose.

“So I spent a lot of time thinking about, What’s a different narrative to explain this case? Because, as you know, just about every observer in the media and in the academy thought we didn’t have a prayer. This is a hopeless case.”

LogisticEarth posted:

Is this really unique to libertarian movements though? Every time I hear someone say "Libertarianism is a religion", and then point to a figure like Cruz or Rothbard, it doesn't really contribute to anything. The use of myth and narrative as populist motivators is widespread across pretty much every political or ideological movement, including the status quo.

Gantolandon posted:

Not exactly, no. Communism mostly used another powerful narrative - corrupt elites vs noble commoners. There is no deity that punishes the wicked and rewards the virtuous, only a pile of goodies and those bastards that prevent everyone else from taking their share. Because of its roots, it always had the aspirations to be as scientific as possible, so religious elements were always pretty weak.

LogisticEarth posted:

Going back to Ted Cruz, he may be using religious methodology to tap into populist libertarian sentiment, but you can't paint the whole movement with that brush.

"" posted:

Don't forget all these steps:

FIRST, the natural thought, which is in every religion.

SECOND, the methodological development of doctrines.

THIRD, the acceptance of some doctrines as protective doctrines against distortions.

FOURTH, the legalization of these doctrines as parts of the canonic law.

FIFTH, the acceptance of these doctrines as the foundation not only of the Church but also of the state, because the state has no other content than the content the Church gives it., so that he who is supposed to undermine this content not only undermines the Church but also the state. He is not only a heretic who must be excommunicated; he is also a criminal who must be delivered into the hands of the civil authorities to punish him as a criminal. Now this was the state of the dogma, against which the Enlightenment was fighting – not so much the Reformation, which was still in the same line, but certainly the Enlightenment; and ever since, all liberal thinking has been characterized by trying to avoid dogma, and this also was supported by the development of science and the necessity to leave science and philosophy complete freedom in order to give them the possibility of their creative growth.

LogisticEarth posted:

you can't paint the whole movement with that brush.

Beliefs, Facts and Money, Paul Krugman posted:

On Sunday The Times published an article by the political scientist Brendan Nyhan about a troubling aspect of the current American scene — the stark partisan divide over issues that should be simply factual, like whether the planet is warming or evolution happened. It’s common to attribute such divisions to ignorance, but as Mr. Nyhan points out, the divide is actually worse among those who are seemingly better informed about the issues.

The problem, in other words, isn’t ignorance; it’s wishful thinking. Confronted with a conflict between evidence and what they want to believe for political and/or religious reasons, many people reject the evidence. And knowing more about the issues widens the divide, because the well informed have a clearer view of which evidence they need to reject to sustain their belief system.

As you might guess, after reading Mr. Nyhan I found myself thinking about the similar state of affairs when it comes to economics, monetary economics in particular.

Some background: On the eve of the Great Recession, many conservative pundits and commentators — and quite a few economists — had a worldview that combined faith in free markets with disdain for government. Such people were briefly rocked back on their heels by the revelation that the “bubbleheads” who warned about housing were right, and the further revelation that unregulated financial markets are dangerously unstable. But they quickly rallied, declaring that the financial crisis was somehow the fault of liberals — and that the great danger now facing the economy came not from the crisis but from the efforts of policy makers to limit the damage.

Above all, there were many dire warnings about the evils of “printing money.” For example, in May 2009 an editorial in The Wall Street Journal warned that both interest rates and inflation were set to surge “now that Congress and the Federal Reserve have flooded the world with dollars.” In 2010 a virtual Who’s Who of conservative economists and pundits sent an open letter to Ben Bernanke warning that his policies risked “currency debasement and inflation.” Prominent politicians like Representative Paul Ryan joined the chorus.

Reality, however, declined to cooperate. Although the Fed continued on its expansionary course — its balance sheet has grown to more than $4 trillion, up fivefold since the start of the crisis — inflation stayed low. For the most part, the funds the Fed injected into the economy simply piled up either in bank reserves or in cash holdings by individuals — which was exactly what economists on the other side of the divide had predicted would happen.

Needless to say, it’s not the first time a politically appealing economic doctrine has been proved wrong by events. So those who got it wrong went back to the drawing board, right? Hahahahaha.

In fact, hardly any of the people who predicted runaway inflation have acknowledged that they were wrong, and that the error suggests something amiss with their approach. Some have offered lame excuses; some, following in the footsteps of climate-change deniers, have gone down the conspiracy-theory rabbit hole, claiming that we really do have soaring inflation, but the government is lying about the numbers (and by the way, we’re not talking about random bloggers or something; we’re talking about famous Harvard professors). Mainly, though, the currency-debasement crowd just keeps repeating the same lines, ignoring its utter failure in prognostication.

You might wonder why monetary theory gets treated like evolution or climate change. Isn’t the question of how to manage the money supply a technical issue, not a matter of theological doctrine?

Well, it turns out that money is indeed a kind of theological issue. Many on the right are hostile to any kind of government activism, seeing it as the thin edge of the wedge — if you concede that the Fed can sometimes help the economy by creating “fiat money,” the next thing you know liberals will confiscate your wealth and give it to the 47 percent. Also, let’s not forget that quite a few influential conservatives, including Mr. Ryan, draw their inspiration from Ayn Rand novels in which the gold standard takes on essentially sacred status.

And if you look at the internal dynamics of the Republican Party, it’s obvious that the currency-debasement, return-to-gold faction has been gaining strength even as its predictions keep failing.

Can anything reverse this descent into dogma? A few conservative intellectuals have been trying to persuade their movement to embrace monetary activism, but they’re ever more marginalized. And that’s just what Mr. Nyhan’s article would lead us to expect. When faith — including faith-based economics — meets evidence, evidence doesn’t stand a chance.

LogisticEarth posted:

Unless I'm missing something here, this has already been the boilerplate anti-libertarian message for years if not decades. I don't think this is the silver bullet you're looking for.

LogisticEarth posted:

An important thing to remember was that praxeology was never intended to be a complete theory if the universe, even though Rothbard and others often throw it about as such. It was something that was meant to be used in concert with scientific data and historical inquiry.

article posted:

The emails show that Charles Koch had a hands-on role in the design of the high school curriculum, directly reviewing the work of those responsible for setting up the course. The goal, the group said flatly, was to turn young people into "liberty-advancing agents" before they went to college, where they might learn "harmful" liberal ideas.

article posted:

They aimed to "inoculate" students against liberal ideas by assigning them to read passages from socialist and Marxist writers, whom they called "bad guys." These readings would then be compared to works by the "good guys" -- free-market economists like Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises.

article posted:

"That’s right, the more involved you are, the more money you'll earn to put toward your business or higher education!"

article posted:

"Everybody that's interested in liberty-minded higher education and beyond is really excited about Youth Entrepreneurs," Jon Bachura told HuffPost, adding, "It's all playing in the sandbox to see what things, what activities answer that question: What creates the liberty mindset?"

Pththya-lyi posted:

(Honestly, I think that "rights from God" is more plausible than "rights from reason.")

Pththya-lyi posted:

I don't see how: one relies on the existence of a supernatural being and the other does not. How can you argue that x comes from y if you don't believe in the existence of y?

"" posted:

Silicon Valley vanities demand a focus on the future. But the entrepreneurs and code writers attending San Francisco’s Reboot 2014 this week would be wise to note the past of the conference’s Libertarian sponsors as they and other right-wing Republicans are seeking to rebrand the GOP—in California and nationally.

“Reboot is the first conference of its kind to create a community of like-minded individuals determined to bring the cutting edge to campaigns and causes that promote liberty,” its webpage announces, followed by a video featuring ex-Florida Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, who touts the freedom to succeed or fail, as long as government regulation doesn’t get in the way.

Bush, the 2016 presidential prospect seen as the party’s candidate of moderation, is wallpaper compared to the actual conference roster of speakers. There’s Libertarian Rand Paul, the U.S. senator from Kentucky, who is a Republican in name only. There’s Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House Republican Conference, who as Pando.com’s Mark Ames noted, is a crusading Christian fundamentalist with a long history of sponsoring homophobic bills and opposing reproductive rights and equal pay for women. Also in a top slot is Nick Gillespie, longtime editor of Reason.com, the Libertarian outlet.

“At first glance it makes no sense to front a rabidly anti-gay candidate like McMorris Rodgers to sell the Kochs’ and the Paul family’s scrubland libertarianism to a Bay Area audience full of hip disruptors and ‘anarchist’ practitioners of bohemia grooming fads,” Ames writes. “But that’s because what Silicon Valley folks think of when they hear the word ‘libertarianism’ actually has very little connection to what the libertarian movement actually stands for, and has stood for since the 1970s.”
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Ames, whose lengthy article on tech-centric Pando.com fills in those white supremacist blanks, was not given a press pass to the conference, a very un-Libertarian gesture from a political cadre that claims to be for free thought, free expression and free markets. Oh well, some things just don’t change, especially when an attempt at political rebranding depends on de-emphasizing the past that Ames recounts.

“So now we have the ‘Reboot Lab’ conference taking place in the heart of San Francisco’s SOMA tech district,” he writes. “But if the purpose of the Reboot Lab conference is to merge Koch-brand libertarianism with Silicon Valley ‘libertarianism,’ then the first thing you have to ask is: Why the hell did they invite a mean homophobic hick like Cathy McMorris Rodgers to the show?”

The rest of the speaker roster answers that question. The Republican Party in California, as it does nationally, has long had two factions that can barely speak to each other. On one side are social conservatives, which is a genteel way of describing born-again Christians who want government to impose their biblical values on everyone. On the other side are free-market conservatives, who, like the conference’s underwriters, the Koch brothers, want to stifle any government regulation that might impede profits. Reboot 2014 is trying to bridge this longtime gap with speakers from both provinces, although the Libertarians dominate.

Rand Paul is there because, like every other presidential candidate, he comes to California to raise money that’s spent elsewhere. There’s a contingent from the California Republican Party, which is hoping an anti-regulatory mantra might help it lose the disastrous legacy it created under former Gov. Pete Wilson, which tried to deny social welfare benefits to undocumented immigrants in the country’s most racially diverse state. And then there’s the national GOP, which is seeking talent, including bankrolling a voter data mining operation based in San Mateo called Data Trust. (The Kochs have underwritten a competing outfit to generate its own voter files for its Tea Party affiliates.)

If you are only looking to the future—such as the 2014 federal elections and 2016 presidential race—it’s easy to ignore where a lot of the leading right-wingers at Reboot 2014 are coming from. Pando.com’s apparent big sin, spiking its press pass access, was resurrecting this legacy. Here’s what Ames says about McMorris Rodgers, who, he writes, will be “sharing the stage with LeanIn.org’s Andrea Saul, whom [Facebook chief operating officer] Sheryl Sandberg hired last year to ‘help reach women—and men—so that we can all work together toward a more equal world.”

“Rep. McMorris Rodgers was homeschooled by her father, and got her higher education degree at an unaccredited Christian fundamentalist institution, Pensacola Christian College (PCC), which bans homosexuality, open Internet (PCC until recentlybanned all Internet access), and mixed-gender stairwells (male and female students are required to use separate stairs and doors).

“Pensacola Christian College is the publisher of A Beka textbooks for K-12 pupils, which teach kids that Islam is a ‘false religion,’ Hindus are ‘incapable of writing history,’ Catholicism is ‘a monstrous distortion of Christianity,’ African religions preach ‘false religious beliefs,’ liberals and Democrats are crypto-Marxists, and the United Nations is a ‘collectivist juggernaut that would crush individual freedom and force the will of an elite few on all of humanity.’

“In the mid-late ’90s, McMorris Rodgers took office in the Washington state legislature and co-authored a bill banning same-sex marriages, then later earned notoriety for blocking a bill that had already passed unanimously in Washington state’s upper house to replace the pejorative ‘Orientals’ with ‘Asians’ in official state documents. As reported in the press at the time, legislators were dumbfounded as to why McMorris Rodgers would do something as gratuitously mean-spirited as blocking a bill undoing racism against Asians; a few, including the bill’s Korean-American author, literally broke down in tears.

“McMorris Rodgers’ excuse, as reported in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: ‘I’m very reluctant to continue to focus on setting up different definitions in statute related to the various minority groups. I’d really like to see us get beyond that.’”

This last example expresses the same worldview U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts cited when gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act—that America has evolved past the point of racial divisiveness and therefore no affirmative actions in law are needed anymore. Ames points out that the same view—which buttresses the power and influence of institutions dominated by white men—has been a longtime feature of Reason’s coverage. “Throughout the 1970s, Reason’s pages dripped with racist justifications for [South Africa’s] apartheid, on the racial economic theory that whites stood for free market libertarianism and individual liberty, while blacks were genetically predisposed toward socialism and looting.”

One might say, that was then and this is now. But, like too much classic rock-and-roll that never seems to go away, political ideas forged in the crucible of the 1960s and ’70s culture wars have a way of sticking around. Ames and other writers on AlterNet have noted that Rand Paul has surrounded himself with top political aides who have espoused the American version of apartheid’s storyline: “neo-Confederates, white supremacists, and conspiracy loons.” And, of course, his father, former Republican Congressman Ron Paul, has long been associated with racist, isolationist publications and stances.

Fast forward to Reboot 2014 and Ames persuasively argues that the conference’s Republican organizers bring a lot of these strains of right-wing belief with them. Moreover, the conference’s “big tent” philosophy seems to be the political equivalent of a startup blender: throw it all in and see what sticks. Ames notes that many of these political ingredients have very different political underpinnings.

Start with the “two libertarianisms, the hick fascism version owned by the Koch brothers, essentially rebranding Joe McCarthy with a pot leaf and a ponytail; and Silicon Valley’s emerging brand of optimistic, half-understood libertarianism, part hippie cybernetics, part hot-tub-Hayek,” he writes, referring to Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian economist worshipped by Libertarians. But there’s more.

“Lincoln Labs, the organizers of the Reboot conference, is run by a young Republican Party activist from Texas named Aaron Ginn, and Ginn has acknowledged that he’s essentially running a talent scouting agency for the talent-starved GOP, which recently set up offices in Silicon Valley.

“Running the GOP operations in Silicon Valley is a former senior Facebook engineering manager named Andrew Barkett, who now works as CTO of the Republican National Committee and partners in a privately held GOP data-mining firm based in San Mateo called Data Trust. Barkett explained [in the New York Times Magazine] how Lincoln Labs helps recruit new GOP foot soldiers: ‘We don’t need thousands of people; we need dozens,’ Mr. Barkett said. ‘We could do a lot of damage with 30 people. A lot. But they’ve got to be real engineers.’

Will the GOP’s organizers and recruiters find their next big thing at Reboot 2014? In the political world, one learns never to say never. But GOP prospecting in Silicon Valley is not exactly new. Sure, Rand Paul may walk away with money for TV ads in Iowa and New Hampshire. The California and House GOP may find new donors too, just as Reason.com may end up with new subscribers and underwriters. But will 30 code writers upend American politics as Barkett bragged to the Times? I don’t think so.

The anti-regulatory prescriptions no doubt appeal to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who want it all, want it now, and don’t want government in their way. But most of America doesn’t live in Libertarian utopias—like San Francisco’s fancy salons. They are like the rest of California, which is racially diverse, economically struggling, and more ripe for a different populist message, one more geared to working people.

There’s a reason why Republicans have floundered in California. People don’t like to be told by the religious right what to believe and how to live morally, just as they don’t like to be told by millionaires that they have to work harder to reach a new rung on the economic ladder. Libertarians may be making inroads into wealthy Silicon Valley, but they’re still a single-digit Republican Party faction in the rest of America.

Even Reason magazine’s latest national poll found that millennials—said to be the most Libertarian young generation in decades—overwhelmingly plan to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Steinlight posted:

“And we all know, if there ever was a president that deserved to be impeached, it’s this guy. Alright? And I wouldn’t stop. I would think being hung, drawn, and quartered is probably too good for him. But you know, this man who wants to rule by the use of a pen, a telephone, let us not forget his teleprompter … the fact is that it would backfire very badly and we’ve got to be grownups and accept that we can’t have everything we want, you know, [like] his head on a skewer.”

danieljmitchell, five things about me posted:

1) I’m a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, Washington’s premier free-market think tank.

2) A left-wing newspaper in the U.K. wrote that I’m “a high priest of light tax, small state libertarianism.” I assume they meant it as an insult, but it’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me.

3) My hobbies are softball (decent player), basketball (hopeless), and skiing.

4) I’m a passionate Georgia Bulldog, so much so that I would have trouble choosing between a low-rate flat tax for America and a national title for the Dawgs. I’m not kidding.

5) Check out my YouTube channel. Thanks to a former intern, I even have a wikipedia page. And I’ve even sunk to the level of being on twitter, where I’m @danieljmitchell.

Charles Koch posted:

For years, Washington politicians have said that our economy is turning the corner. They said it in 2011, in 2013 and again last week — every time they report a quarter with 4% economic growth. But each time, the economy has turned sluggish again.

Like most Americans, I am deeply concerned about our weak economic recovery and its effects on millions of families. Opportunity, especially for the young and disadvantaged, is declining. High underemployment has become our new norm.

The effects of underemployment are not just economic, they are also social and psychological. Real work is an important part of how we define ourselves. Meaningful work benefits both us and others. Those who lack real jobs often end up depressed, addicted or aggressive.

Today, opportunities for such work are not what they should be. We need a different approach, focused less on politics and more on basic principles.

Principled business

First, we need to encourage principled entrepreneurship. Companies should earn profits by creating value for customers and acting with integrity, the opposite of today's rampant cronyism.

Too many businesses focus on getting subsidies and mandates from government rather than creating value for customers. According to George Mason University's Mercatus Center, such favors cost us more than $11,000 per person in lost GDP every year, a $3.6 trillion economic hit.

Compounding the problem are destructive regulations affecting whether and how business invests and employees work. Federal rules cost America an estimated $1.86 trillion per year, calculated the Competitive Enterprise Institute. At Koch Industries, we've seen how punitive permitting for large projects creates years of delay, increasing uncertainty and cost. Sometimes projects are canceled and jobs with them. Meanwhile, 30% of U.S. employees need government licenses to work. We need a system that rewards those who create real value, not impedes them.

Second, we should eliminate the artificial cost of hiring. Government policies such as Obamacare have given businesses a powerful incentive to hire two part-time people to do one full-time job. This trend was reflected in June's employment data, which included the loss of half a million full-time jobs. In 2007, 4.4 million Americans worked part-time jobs because they could not find full-time work. That number now stands at 7.5 million, up 275,000 in June. "The existence of such a large pool of 'partly unemployed' workers," Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said, "is a sign that labor conditions are worse than indicated by the unemployment rate."

Skills AND values

Third, we need to guide many more people into developing skills and values that will enable them to reach their potential. Everyone knows education increases a person's ability to create value. But the willingness to work, an essential for success, often has to be taught, too.

When I was growing up, my father had me spend my free time working at unpleasant jobs. Most Americans understand that taking a job and sticking with it, no matter how unpleasant or low-paying, is a vital step toward the American dream. We are in for more trouble if young people don't find that all-important first job, which is critical to beginning their climb up the ladder.

Finally, we need greater incentives to work. Costly programs, such as paying able-bodied people not to work, are addictive disincentives. By undermining people's will to work, our government has created a culture of dependency and hopelessness. This is most unfair to vulnerable citizens who suffer even as we say they are receiving "benefits."

I agree with Dr. Martin Luther King. There are no dead-end jobs. Every job deserves our best. "If a man is called to be a street sweeper," King said, "he should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.'"

Our government's decades-long, top-down approach to job creation has failed. Its policies have made our problems worse, leaving tens of millions chronically un- or underemployed, millions of whom have given up ever finding meaningful work. In doing so, our government has not only thwarted real job creation, it also has reduced the supply and quality of goods and services that make people's lives better and undermined the culture required to sustain a free society.

When it comes to creating opportunities for all, we can do much better. It's time to let people seek opportunities that best suit their talents, for businesses to forsake cronyism and for government to get out of the way.

Charles Koch, chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, is a donor to libertarian causes.

SedanChair posted:

That's a pithy quote from MLK, I wonder if he came up with that before or after he went to communist training camp.

article posted:

Charles Koch was not simply a rank and file member of the John Birch Society in name only who paid nominal dues. He purchased and held a "lifetime membership" until he resigned in 1968. He also lent his name and his wealth to the operations of the John Birch Society in Wichita, aiding its "American Opinion" bookstore -- which was stocked with attacks on the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, and Earl Warren as elements of the communist conspiracy. He funded the John Birch Society's promotional campaigns, bought advertising in its magazine, and supported its distribution of right-wing radio shows."

The Mutato posted:

I would love to hear why it isn't.

Damiya posted:

twodot posted:

Everyone gets to decide for themselves what property is legitimately owned