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When approaching a problem of government excess, the conservative approach is straightforward: trim the fat, eliminate government restrictions and let the free market work. Moreover, both parties share that approach after all, Presidents Kennedy and Reagan both slashed income taxes, and President Carter deregulated the airlines.

In contrast, what is the conservative solution when approaching a problem of corporate excess? Unfortunately, that is the problem conservatives now confront with Big Tech, the enormous corporations that control what Americans can do and see online with almost no government oversight.

To the libertarian, the answer is easy: Do nothing. Laissez-faire economics is effectively a religion requiring strict adherence. As Calvinists believe that sinners are in the hands of an angry God, libertarians believe that consumers are at the divine mercy of the invisible hand. They are the chosen few who dedicate their lives to the strict view that government and only government is a threat to the free market.

So it is no surprise that libertarians have been up in arms to combat bipartisan bills to rein in Big Tech, such as the Open App Markets Act and the EARN IT Act. But conservatives such as Sens. Marsha BlackburnMarsha BlackburnThe damnable religious inklings of the Big Tech libertarian Trump holds GOP candidate forum at Mar-a-Lago Lawmakers condemn Putin, call for crippling sanctions on Russia amid military operation MORE (R-Tenn.) and Lindsey GrahamLindsey Olin GrahamSenate GOP shrugs off latest Trump revelation Biden signs bill banning forced arbitration in sexual misconduct cases Pelosi says Boebert and Greene 'should just shut up' MORE (R-S.C.) recognize that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. A hands-off approach to Big Tech may work for libertarian purists, but it fails to confront the real problems Americans are facing.

Take, for example, todays app stores. Apple and Google control more than 95 percent of the mobile app store market. For years, theyve had free rein to charge app developers up to a 30 percent tax for the privilege of competing in the mobile space most small developers are paying these tech giants more than they contribute to the federal fisc.

To lock in that tax, Apple has prohibited apps from offering their own payment methods, infamously locking out Epics Fortnite when it dared to provide players with an alternative. Making it worse, Apple has agreed to the Chinese Communist Partys request to censor free-speech apps that would allow repressed Uyghurs, persecuted Christians and pro-democracy advocates to communicate.

The libertarian response? A shrug.

But when Blackburn joined Sens. Amy KlobucharAmy KlobucharDemocrats press top pharmaceutical representative on price increases The damnable religious inklings of the Big Tech libertarian Five things to know about Ukraine's President Zelensky MORE (D-Minn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) to introduce the Open App Markets Act? Outrage.

The claims are absurd, bordering on parody. Although the Act expressly lets consumers choose to sideload apps not available on an app store, libertarians claim it will reduce consumer choice by making Apples app store slightly less distinct from Googles. Although the Act lets alternative app stores compete for a consumers business, libertarians argue that allowing more app stores might somehow lead to higher consumer costs. And the libertarian response to more free-speech apps? That the senators might not like everything said on those apps.

Or consider the online market for child sexual exploitation. The International Labour Organization estimates that women and girls comprise99 percent of victims of forced sexual exploitation. Worse, 25 percent of the victims are children. Significantly, online predators continually use social media sites to recruit and sell young girls for sex 59 percent of recruitments (65 percent of which involve children)happened on Facebook alone. Yet, tech companies frequently use Section 230 as a sword to provide them with immunity from liability, even if accused of participating in child sex trafficking.

The libertarian response? Meh.

But when Graham introduced the EARN IT Act to crack down on Big Techs facilitation of child sexual exploitation? You guessed it, more outrage.

Again, libertarians engage in hyperbole, arguing that the EARN IT Act will somehow erode encryption, leaving us as exposed as Lady Godiva riding through Coventry. In reality, the EARN IT Act makes modest amendments to platforms Section 230 liability when they take a blind eye to users they know to be engaging in sex trafficking on their platforms.

Its perfectly conservative to have a knee-jerk reaction to new government rules. But its indulging in a foolish consistency to stop there. When the fate of entrepreneurs, civil discourse and children are on the line, conservatives must face the facts and rethink their priors. When Big Tech respects the commands of a foreign censor more than the free voices of the American people, laissez-faire cannot be the answer.

Instead, conservative sentiments support reining in the power of Big Tech. And we are lucky that conservatives in the Senate are willing to reach across the aisle to forge sensible, bipartisan solutions. No matter how much the little statesmen protest, the philosophers scream and the divines rage.

Joel Thayer is the president of the Digital Progress Institute, a nonprofit seeking to bridge the policy divide between telecom and tech through bipartisan consensus.

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The damnable religious inklings of the Big Tech libertarian | TheHill - The Hill

Should the United States do more to support Ukraine in its fight against Russian invaders? Will financial sanctions against Russia work and are they moral? What does a libertarian foreign policy predicated on "realism and restraint" look like?

Today's guest on The Reason Interview is Will Ruger, the newly appointed president of the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), who holds a Ph.D. in politics specializing in foreign policy. He's a veteran of the war in Afghanistan and was a prominent voice in calling for U.S. withdrawal. Ruger was nominated to be ambassador to that country late in the Trump administration (his confirmation was never brought to a vote).

He's a proponent of what he calls "libertarian realism" when it comes to foreign policy, meaning that America's interventions abroad should be focused on defending a narrowly defined national interest and that the use of military force should be strictly subjugated to diplomacy. Ruger is skeptical that the United States can or should play a leading role in defending Ukraine and he doesn't think sanctions are likely to accomplish anything, especially in the short run.

We talk about all that, how NATO, the European Union, and China figure into current events, and what he plans to do as the head of AIER, one of the oldest free market think tanks in the country.

Read this article:
Will Ruger: How Libertarians Should Think About Ukraine Invasion - Reason

Scott County has turned a little more red over the past year with an increase in the number of Republican voters, according to voter statistics released by the Scott County Clerk and provided by the Secretary of State.

Although the state has been actively purging voter rolls of inactive, deceased or voters who may have moved out of state, the number of registered voters in Scott County has increased over the past 12 months to 45,269, according to February 2022 numbers. That number is up from 44,992 about a year ago, for an increase of 277 voters.

The Republican Party has been the biggest beneficiary, gaining 318 registered voters or 22,237 compared to 21,919 a year ago. Democrats lost 119 to drop to 18,777 voters from 18,896 in February 2021. Voters registering as other increased by 38 to 2,212, independents gained 31 voters to 1,758 and Libertarians gained nine to 245.

Woman voters increased by 167 to 23,500, while male voters increased by 108 to 21,769.

As expected, most voting precincts leaned Republican, although the Fifth Magistrate District which includes the Peninsula subdivision, Ed Davis, Georgetown College and the Stables subdivision leaned heavily Democrat with 2,288 registered Democrat voters, compared to 1,617 GOP voters. The Ed Davis area more than double the number of Democrat voters with 554, compared to 228 registered as Republicans. That district has 4,393 registered voters.

The Fourth Magistrate District is the greatest Republican area with 4,703 registered voters, compared to 3,358 registered as Democrat. The Cherry Blossom area is the countys most heavy Republican area with 1,581 voters registered as Republican, but because of its size that area also includes the countys greatest number of voters registered as Democrat with 915. That district also includes the greatest number of voters registered as Other with 427, Independent with 347 and Libertarian with 48.

The voter breakdown for each voter district is as follows, but does not include all designations, such as Green, Reform and Socialist because in many districts the numbers are small or nonexistent:

First Magistrate District, which includes Porter, Sadieville, Stonehedge, Mallard Point, Moonlake, Eagle Creek, Falls Creek and Pavilion: 2431, Democrats; 3650, Republicans: 318, Other; 241, Independent; and 33, Libertarian.

Second Magistrate District, which includes Colony, West Stamping Ground, East Stamping Ground, Cardinal Drive, North Stamping Ground and Derby Estates: Democrats, 2526; Republicans, 2798; Other, 290; Independent, 188; Libertarian, 24.

Third Magistrate District, which includes Galloway, Ironworks, Lancelot, West Cane Run, Fishers Mill and East Cane Run: Democrats, 2751; Republicans, 3645; Other, 330; Independent, 313; Libertarian, 44.

Fourth Magistrate District, which includes Oxford, Cherry Blossom, Newtown, Rocky Creek, Leesburg and Elkhorn Green; Democrats, 2258; Republicans, 4703; Other, 427; Independent, 347 and Libertarian, 48.

Fifth Magistrate District, which includes Peninsula, Courthouse, Ed Davis, Georgetown College, Old Mill and the Stables; Democrats, 2288; Republicans, 1617; Other, 258; Independent, 194 and Libertarian, 31.

Sixth Magistrate District, which includes Royal Spring, Rucker, Indian Hills, Bradshaw, McClelland Springs, Copperfield, Indian Acres: Democrats, 3,164; Republicans, 3435; Other, 319; Independent, 268 and Libertarian, 38.

Seventh Magistrate District, which includes Suffoletta, Southpoint, Marketplace, Lemons Mill, Hambrick Place, Old Depot: Democrats, 2320; Republicans, 2389; Other, 270; Independent, 208 and Libertarian, 27.

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Voter roll increases, GOP benefits | News | news-graphic.com - News- Graphic

It is difficult to discuss the American libertarian movement without considering the late economist Murray Rothbard. On this date, which would have been his 96th birthday, we present and discuss the radical ideas of Rothbard.

Born in the Bronx in 1926 to Jewish immigrant parents from Poland and Russia, Rothbard grew up as a self-described right-winger, influenced greatly by his father who, in Rothbards own words, believed in devotion to the Basic American way: minimal government, belief in and respect for free enterprise and private property, and a determination to rise by ones own merits and not via government privilege or handout.

In the 1940s and on, Rothbard became exposed to the libertarian ideas of economists like Ludwig von Mises as he pursued and received degrees in mathematics and economics, including a doctorate in the latter.

Beginning in the 1950s, he began working on a book aimed at explaining Mises work that resulted in Rothbards signature economic treatise Man, Economy and State, which was published in 1962. Like Mises work, Rothbards economic approach was predicated on the idea that economics could be explained from first principles, which center on human action.

In Rothbards view, individuals ought to be free to make their own choices and associate with each other voluntarily as they see fit.

Radically, Rothbard believed that there were no functions currently undertaken by governments that couldnt be done by the private sector. He viewed governments and those advocating expansive government skeptically, as institutions and individuals incenticized to leverage the force of government on increasing spheres of life for the sake of power. This radicalism led him to view the direction of the United States critically.

In rhetoric, America is the land of the free and the generous, enjoying the. .. blessings of a free market, he wrote in 1967. In actual practice, the free economy is virtually gone, replaced by an imperial corporate state Leviathan that organizes, commands, exploits the rest of society and, indeed, the rest of the world, for its own power and pelf.

One can only imagine what hed say about matters today.

In 1969, Rothbard explained to Young Americans for Freedom that, as a libertarian, he no longer considered himself a part of the American right and cautioned libertarians against going along with conservative-libertarian fusionism, which came to dominate the Republican Party over the next few decades.

I got out of the right wing not because I ceased believing in liberty, but because being a libertarian above all, I came to see that the right wing specialized in cloaking its authoritarian and neo-fascist policies in the honeyed words of libertarian rhetoric, he wrote.

Though Rothbard would, toward the end of his life, himself veer off into being politically allied with right-wing populists, his 1969 warning to those who value liberty is instructive. It highlights why theres been an ongoing struggle between libertarians and conservatives, who, despite having much in common, fundamentally disagree on key matters, like the value of liberty versus state-enforced commitment to tradition.

Rothbard certainly wasnt perfect, holding and promoting self-evidently ridiculous views that persist in some factions of the libertarian movement particularly a preoccupation with engaging in apologia for the Confederacy. But, his overall body of work and life was focused on promoting individual liberty, free markets and peace. For that, we remember him.

The rest is here:
Remembering the ideas of Murray Rothbard - The Whittier Daily News

The Statue of Liberty.

A draft version of new article on "Immigration and the Economic Freedom of Natives" (forthcoming in a symposium in Public Affairs Quarterly) is now available on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Much of the debate over the justice of immigration restrictions properly focuses on their impact on would-be migrants. For their part, restrictionists often focus on the potentially harmful effects of immigration on residents of receiving countries. This article cuts across this longstanding debate by focusing on ways in which immigration restrictions inflict harm on natives, specifically by undermining their economic liberty. The idea that such effects exist is far from a new one. But this article examines them in greater detail, and illustrates their truly massive scale. It covers both the libertarian "negative" view of economic freedom, and the more "positive" version advanced by left-liberal political theorists.

Part I focuses on libertarian approaches to economic freedom. It shows that migration restrictions severely restrict the negative economic liberty of natives, probably more than any other government policy enacted by liberal democracies. That is true both on libertarian views that value such freedom for its own sake, and those that assign value to it for more instrumental reasons, such as promoting human autonomy and enabling individuals to realize their personal goals and projects.

In Part II, I take up left-liberal "positive" theories of economic freedom, which primarily focus on enhancing individuals' access to important goods and services, and enabling them to have the resources necessary to live an autonomous life. Some also focus on expanding human capacities generally, or give special emphasis to enhancing the economic prospects of the poor. Here too, migration restrictions impose severe costs on natives. To the extent migration can sometimes harm the economic prospects of natives, the issue is better dealt with by "keyhole solutions" that address specific problems by means other than restricting migration.

Finally, Part III describes how to address situations where potentially harmful side effects of migration might undermine either negative or positive economic liberty of natives, without actually restricting migration. I have addressed such issues in greater detail in previous work, and here provide only a short summary of my approach and its relevance for economic liberty issues.

I am looking for some alternative to "natives" as a concise, non-clunky way to refer to "current citizens of destination countries." I welcome any suggestions readers might come up with. E-mail me if you have one!

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My New Article on "Immigration and the Economic Freedom of Natives" - Reason