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Late last year, El Salvadors president Nayib Bukele announced plans to build Bitcoin City a tax-free territory in the countrys east.

The city will use the cryptocurrency and be powered by the nearby Conchuagua volcano. According to Bukele, there will be:

Residential areas, commercial areas, services, museums, entertainment, bars, restaurants, airport, port, rail [..] [but] no income tax, zero property tax, no contract tax, zero city tax and zero CO2 emissions.

Whether or not Bitcoin City eventuates, it joins a long and bizarre history of libertarian-inspired attempts to start independent cities and countries.

The generous financial incentives in Bitcoin City are aimed at encouraging foreign investment.

However, the plan has quickly been derided by finance commentators as something worthy of a Bond villain. There are doubts construction will ever begin.

As the Australian Financial Review observes, Bitcoin City is likely nothing more than a splashy distraction from Bukeles economic woes.

But Bukele is not the only one to be tempted to set up a new territory, with new (or no) rules.

In a 2009 TED Talk, American economist Paul Romer argued developing nations should partner with foreign countries or corporations to create autonomous model cities.

Under his plan, host states would lease large tracts of undeveloped land to developed states, who would administer the territory according to their own legal system. The citys residents would largely come from the developing state, but the administrators of the city would be appointed by (and accountable to) the developed state. Residents could vote with their feet by either migrating to or from the model city.

Read more: How El Salvador and Nigeria are taking different approaches to digital currencies plus, are we living in a simulation? The Conversation Weekly podcast transcript

Romer argues such cities would attract significant international investment because their legal architecture would insulate them from any political turmoil present in their host state. Notwithstanding the strong neo-colonial or neo-imperial overtones, several states have considered adopting Romers proposition.

In 2011, the Honduran Congress amended its constitution to facilitate the development of Romers idea. Cities built within special development regions would not be subject to Honduran law or taxation. Instead, they would be self-governing under a unique legal framework.

After legal disputes about whether this breached Honduran national sovereignty, the plan was revived in 2015. Under the new plan, an investor that builds infrastructure in a site designated as a zone for employment and economic development (ZEDE) will be granted quasi-sovereign authority. The investor will be permitted to impose and collect income and property taxes, and establish its own education, health, civil service, and social security systems.

Under the ZEDE law, the president appoints a committee to oversee all of the model cities as well as setting the baseline rules and standards investors must follow. Reflecting the ideological backing of the idea, the first committee, announced in 2014, was heavily comprised of libertarians and former advisers to United States President Ronald Reagan. In 2020, the first site was launched, but development does not appear to have commenced.

The Honduran plan involves a country leasing (temporarily or perhaps permanently) sovereign rights over its territory. Other projects have sought to build a new country on the sea.

Since 2008, attention has focused on the California-based Sea Steading Institute.

Founded by American libertarian Patri Friedman (grandson of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman) and initially financed by billionaire Peter Thiel, the institute sought to build habitable structures on the high seas outside the jurisdiction (and taxation) of any state.

Read more: Why is Australia 'micronation central'? And do you still have to pay tax if you secede?

Although their website suggests sea steading could offer significant benefits to humanity globally, making money free of regulatory burden is the primary motivation. Backers are interested in sea steadings potential to peacefully test new ideas for governance so the most successful can then inspire change in governments around the world.

No city has yet been built. In 2017 negotiations with French Polynesia for the development of floating cities within their territorial waters stalled when community pressure forced the government to withdraw. Many wondered whether facilitating the tax evasion of the worlds greatest fortunes would actually be beneficial for the islands.

Other proposals have not bothered to ask anyone whether they can get started. In the 1960s, several American businessmen sought to establish independent states upon coral reefs off the coasts of California and Florida. Both fell apart under pressure from the US government.

In the early 1970s, US libertarian Michael Oliver tried to finance the construction of a new country - the Republic of Minerva - on a submerged atoll in the Pacific Ocean between Tonga and Fiji. There would be no tax and no social welfare in his laissez-faire paradise.

Over the second half of 1971, Olivers team ferried sand on barges from Fiji to raise the atoll above sea level and commenced basic construction. Oliver envisioned creating 2,500 acres of habitable land elevated around two and a half to three metres above high tide. Floating cities and an ocean resort would also be built.

Progress proved hard going. Only 15 acres of land had been reclaimed by the time Olivers funds were exhausted. Nearby countries were also watching with alarm. In June 1972, King Tupou IV declared Tongan sovereignty over the atoll and ejected Olivers team.

Oliver abandoned Minerva, but in 1982, another group of American libertarians attempted to reassert and restore the republic. After spending three weeks moored in the lagoon, they were expelled by the Tongan military. Today, Minerva has been more or less reclaimed by the sea.

Perhaps they should have invested in Bitcoin.

See the original post:
'Worthy of a Bond villain': the bizarre history of libertarian attempts to create independent cities - The Conversation AU

After giving a paper about free will at a professional philosophy conference, I was surprised by a questioner asking: When you say I love you to your wife, what does that mean to her? Given my Calvinist view of free will according to which God sovereignly determines everything that comes to pass, the questioner felt I couldnt rescue any meaning in human love relationships.

I quipped that as a Frenchman I could find romance in anything, and that with my view, I could tell my wife she was literally my destiny (I should have added, irresistible!). The audience laughed, but its a serious philosophical question with practical ramifications: how does ones view of free will affect how we see human love? Does God make us love him and love one another?

Lexham Academic. 216 pp.

Evil is a problem for all Christians. When responding to objections that both evil and God can exist, many resort to a free will defense, where God is not the creator of evil but of human freedom, by which evil is possible. This response is so pervasive that it is just as often assumed as it is defended. But is this answer biblically and philosophically defensible?

InGod Reforms Hearts, Thaddeus J. Williams offers a friendly challenge to the central claim of the free will defensethat love is possible only with true (or libertarian) free will. Williams argues that much thinking on free will fails to carve out the necessary distinction between an autonomous will and an unforced will. Scripture presents a God who desires relationship and places moral requirements on his often-rebellious creatures, but does absolute free will follow? Moreover, Gods reforming work on the human heart goes further than libertarian free will would allow.

With clarity, precision, and charity, Williams judges the merits and shortcomings of the relational free will defense while offering a philosophically and biblically robust alternative that draws from theologians of the past to point a way forward.

Lexham Academic. 216 pp.

In trying to explain how an all-good, all-powerful God could exist while there is so much evil in the world, many Christian philosophers have suggested human free will is one important answer. Its argued that God has given humans free will and doesnt determine the outcome of their free choices, which unfortunately means that humans will at times misuse that gift, with all kinds of evil resulting from their bad choices.

On that view of the human will, which is called libertarian free will, our choices are not determined by God, and it would be a contradiction in terms for God to make us freely do anything, much less make us freely love him.

Thaddeus Williams disagrees. In his book God Reforms Hearts: Rethinking Free Will and the Problem of Evil, he reexamines the place that libertarian free will has taken in Christian responses to the problem of evil, and more particularly whether authentic human love requires libertarian free will. Williams, an associate professor of systematic theology at Biola University, doesnt merely suggest that libertarian free will is uncalled for, he argues that its outright incompatible with true love and much of the biblical data. In its place, Williams commends the so-called compatibilist view of free will, according to which human free choices are compatible with their being determined by God. In this view, typically affirmed in the Reformed or Calvinist tradition, it truly is God who reforms hearts and thereby makes us freely love him and love our neighbor as ourselves (55).

It truly is God who reforms hearts and thereby makes us freely love him and love our neighbor as ourselves.

The book, organized into three parts, consists of one long and sustained argument against libertarian free will as a good answer to the problem of evil.

Part 1 clarifies the issue by drawing some of the philosophical distinctions necessary to understand the debate on free will and evil, and offers some philosophical problems with libertarian free will as a condition for authentic love. Part 2 presents three important arguments often raised in favor of libertarianism and offers biblical and philosophical responses. Finally, part 3 makes a biblical and philosophical case for the claim that God indeed reforms hearts, thereby determining the outcome of our choices and securing the existence of true human love.

The biblical and philosophical bi-disciplinary approach gives this book an interesting angle: it contains more biblical exegesis than youd expect from a philosopher and more logical argumentation than youd expect from a biblical theologian. Williams goes deep into the biblical text which he handles carefully (complete with reference to the original languages), including a nice study of human ability in the Gospel of John and a mini biblical theology of divine intervention in human hearts. He interacts with libertarian theologians (like Boyd, Geisler, and Marshall) and yet is also conversant with some of the important libertarian Christian philosophers (like Plantinga, van Inwagen, and Hasker).

The main focus of Williamss argument is the place of free will in genuine human love, but it maps closely onto the debates on free will as a condition for moral responsibility. Therefore, many of the arguments that bear on the matter of love are the usual suspects in debates on free will and moral responsibility: we find coercion cases, manipulation cases, the maxim that ought implies can, and discussion of whether indeterminism would make human choices arbitrary or improperly grounded in human desires.

While Williams offers some of the traditional compatibilist arguments and counterarguments, he often offers his own unique wording of the issues. Theres a risk that the reader may at times be put off by non-standard terminology, but, on the upside, Williamss new wording is often clever and colorful, and may invite libertarians to engage with his fresh formulation of the issues.

For example, I enjoyed his description of five increasing degrees of divine intervention in human hearts: heart persuasion, heart cooperation, heart activation, heart reformation, and heart circumvention (138). Williams argued we need to reject the fifth but affirm nothing short of the first four. It will be interesting to see if libertarians agree with his categories, and if so, what exit they take from this highway of divine intervention. And do they accept the problems Williams lays out for those who wish to exit too early (139144)?

I am mostly sympathetic to the books thesis and many of its supporting arguments, so let me just mention two potential shortcomings or elements readers may wish had been included.

The first is a question that many libertarians will no doubt raise and should be addressed. When facing conceptual arguments against libertarian free will like some of those Williams offersclaims that it makes choices arbitrary or meaningless because one needs to transcend ones own self (41), or act against ones desires, or with a liberty of indifference (5059) or with a freedom from ones own heart (3437)libertarians often punt back to God and say: at least God isnt determined, he has libertarian free will, so that shows that theres no conceptual problem with libertarian free will in itself, and its just a debate on whether humans have it too.

This is a fair retort, and applies equally to the question of authentic love: does God love us authentically? But isnt Gods free will libertarian? And if it is, does this invalidate conceptual arguments against human libertarian free will? And if God doesnt have libertarian free will, does this entail the so-called modal collapse where every truth is necessary and there is only one possible world? And would that modal collapse be a problem?

Compatibilists who use the conceptual arguments against libertarianism (arguments which I myself find generally plausible) would do well to provide elements of answers to these questions.

And finally, I may point out that the book doesnt really offer an actual theodicy in response to the problem of evil. Williamss goal was to make progress against the problem of evil (27), but his project is more a pushback on the wrong answer (libertarian free will) than a proposal of the right answer (like a greater good theodicy, soul-making theodicy, evil as Gods megaphone la C. S. Lewis, or other positive theodicies) to respond to the skeptic.

In the final chapter, Williams does offer a practical application of his positive claim that God reforms hearts and secures human love: when humans are facing moral evil in the real world, they are called upon to pray that God would do exactly what Williams says he does: change hearts.

When humans are facing moral evil in the real world, they are called upon to pray that God would change hearts.

God Reforms Hearts is a serious, academic-level treatment of the topic of free will and its role in love relationships, with a focus on divine involvement in human hearts. While not written at the popular level, the careful lay reader will benefit from it, and proponents (and detractors) of libertarianism will be challenged to think deeply about the place of free will in their response to the problem of evil.

Its a nice complement to recent philosophically robust treatments of free will and evil from a Calvinist perspective like Greg Weltys Why Is There Evil in the World (and So Much of It)? (Christian Focus, 2018), and the multi-author volume Calvinism and the Problem of Evil (Pickwick, 2016). As a Calvinist myself, I rejoice to see another philosophically-informed theological determinist, especially one who teaches at Biola University, a traditional fortress of libertarianism!

Let Williamss voice be heard, and the Reformed view of free will embraced to the glory of God who indeed sovereignly reforms our hearts.

View post:
Review: 'God Reforms Hearts' by Thaddeus Williams - The Gospel Coalition

Members of the Libertarian Party of Los Angeles County have gotten permission to gather signatures to attempt to overturn a city ordinance that forces citizens to show proof of vaccination in order to enter many local private commercial venues.

Last October, the Los Angeles City Council voted to implement an ordinance that would require citizens to prove they're vaccinated to dine inside restaurants, hang out in bars, work out at gyms, get haircuts, or otherwise spend time at many indoor venues. The burden of enforcing the mandate actually fell on the businesses, who were obligated to demand citizens cooperate or face fines that would eventually reach $5,000 per violation.

Now, a group of Libertarian Party of Los Angeles County members have organized under the banner of "Medical Freedom LA" and are attempting to overturn the mandate.The Los Angeles City Clerk gave clearance to the group on Thursday to circulate the repeal petition. The group has 120 days to collect signatures of close to 65,000 registered voters in L.A. to force a vote.

"We believe you own your body, and that you have the right to decide what goes into your body," the site promoting the petition states. "We don't believe that government should punish people for exercising their natural rights, or force business owners to exclude people based on their vaccination status. We believe people have a right to medical privacy."

"We just think the vaccination mandate is a gross violation of our constitutional rights and our bodily autonomy," Angela McArdle, chair of the Libertarian Party of Los Angeles County, tells Reason. She says she has heard support for the petition across the political spectrum. Some don't want to be vaccinated or have had bad medical reactions to vaccinations. Others are voluntarily vaccinated but oppose the city forcing mandates and vaccination checks on citizens and businesses.

L.A. residents have been living under heavy COVID restrictions throughout the pandemic. Indoor masking mandates were lifted briefly in the summer of 2021, only to be restored when the delta variant caused infection rates to spike in the fall. They currently remain in place. The county announced Thursday that masking rules might be eased soon if infection numbers continue to drop.

At the time the city instituted the vaccination mandates, nearly 70 percent of L.A.County residents had been fully vaccinated. L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti said when he was supporting the vaccination mandate that the ordinance would encourage more people to get their shots in order to comply.

Four months later, though, the total percentage of people vaccinated in L.A. County is nearly unchanged. Nearly 70 percent of L.A. County residents are fully vaccinated, just as in October. L.A. has done very well with getting high-risk residents vaccinated (90 percent of those over 65 have been fully vaccinated), but the data doesn't show what Garcetti hoped would happen. The mandate has not, in fact, convinced holdouts to get their shots.

But it has forced service employees to demand that people who have gotten their vaccines provide documentation in order to participate in any number of common activities. It has made daily interactions more burdensome without actually achieving the goals used to justify the ordinance.

McArdle says the petition was submitted to the city in November to start the process of getting it to a public vote. Despite the brevity of the petitionit simply repeals the mandate ordinance and replaces it with nothingshe says she had to make five revisions to finally get clearance to go gather signatures. They plan to get started on Monday.

McArdle predicts that it will take five months at least for the process to play out before citizens can vote, assuming they get enough signatures. By the summer, the city might already be thinking about repealing the ordinance. McArdle would be fine with that outcome as well.

"I think filing the petition might push the City Council to save face and set it aside, and I'm fine with that," McArdle tells Reason. "It's not like I need to get a win on this. I just need things to be right."

Read the original:
L.A.'s Vaccination Mandate Has Not Increased Compliance. A New Petition Would Force Its Repeal. - Reason

Cryptocurrency may be coming to a Texas government in 2023. Turns out there has been an upswing in the number of politicians across the country who think it's a good idea to bring it into government and this state has its share of adherents.

Take for instance the 2022 midterm Libertarian candidate for Llano County Treasurer, Joe Burnes, who is really into Bitcoin.

Governments drive adoption? Sure, if you consider runaway printing of fiat which robs value and subesquently [sic] motivates people to buy Bitcoin...then yeah, they drive adoption, he recently said on Twitter in response to a pro-Bitcoin posy by investment YouTuber Anthony Pompliano. Burnes then added, "LOL".

Burnes formerly ran as a Libertarian in 2020 for Texas Congressional District 19, garnering 2.4 percent of the vote. The race was handily won by Republican Jodey Arrington.

Though listed as the candidate for treasurer on the official Libertarian Party of Texas site, Burnes does not seem to be doing much actual campaigning. He spends most of his time promoting cryptocurrency and trolling people who arent doing as well as he is.

Burnes did not respond to multiple requests for comment about him possibly introducing crypto into Llano County government, nor has he expressed specific plans to do so.. Nonetheless, his entry into the race is part of a disturbing trend.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies may be heralded by their adherents as the money of the future, but more and more people are discovering the whole exchange is closer to a giant pyramid scheme. Because of the processing power required for each transaction, Bitcoin is mostly useless for day-to-day buying activity. Though nominally decentralized, the market has increasingly come under the control of several unregulated bank-like entities that essentially do the job of current world currencies, just worse. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies function more as a commodity, and the only possible payout in the end is cashing out for dollars.

The way a good pyramid scheme continues to operate is by bringing in more people at the bottom. Introducing Bitcoin into government is a fine way to accomplish that. The Libertarian Party of Texas seems happy to push that, as their dues can be paid in Bitcoin. In Arizona, Republican State Senator Wendy Rogers has filed legislation to make Bitcoin legal tender there.

Dan Olson is the creator of the incredibly detailed Bitcoin video essay Line Goes Up The Problem With NFTs. He says that while researching for the essay, he noticed a lot more attempts by politicians to get Bitcoin into local and state government.

I think it's just starting to form into something more coherent and organized. Says Olson. Where for most of the last decade it's mostly been Libertarian Party candidates who have crypto as just one bullet point in their platform to, like, do away with drivers licenses, I get the sense that there's a newer more mainstream, more local crop that are more focused on promoting crypto via positions in government (like the proposal in Arizona that will almost certainly be struck down as being extremely unconstitutional). I also know that the industry has ramped up a pretty substantial lobbying wing that's not just three kids in a trench coat.

Long term, its very unlikely that a few random conservative politicians will end up forcing Texans to have a crypto wallet, but we should know that they are currently trying.

Read the original here:
Does Bitcoin Belong in Texas Government? - Houston Press

Its hilarious that some folks are having a fit over President Joe Bidens plan to put a Black woman on the Supreme Court to fill the seat of retiring Justice Stephen Breyer. Youd think it was the most outlandish and horrific presidential proclamation in recent history.

Ive lost track but it seems the whining has reached a crescendo. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas recently called Bidens pledge offensive and an insult to Black women on his podcast. (Query: Whats more amazingthat Cruz speaks for Black women or that theres an audience for his podcast?) He added that Biden was essentially dissing White America, if youre a White guy, tough luck. If youre a White woman, tough luck. You dont qualify.

Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi also chimed in, calling Bidens as yet unnamed nominee, the beneficiary of this sort of quota. And ex-presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard (remember her?) tweeted: Biden chose Harris as his VP because of the color of her skin and sexnot qualification. Shes been a disaster. Now he promises to choose Supreme Court nominee on the samecriteria. Identity politics is destroying our country.

For a woman whos yet to be identified as a contender, shes apparently already a bona fide catastrophe.

The Pied Piper of these rants is arguably libertarian Ilya Shapiro, former vice president of the Cato Institute, who started his attacks with a series of tweets on Jan. 26, right after Biden announced his plan to put a Black woman on the high court. Objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan, tweeted Shapiro, alluding to the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He added that Srinivasan is solid prog & v smart. Even has identity politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American. But alas doesnt fit into latest intersectionality hierarchy, so well get lesser black woman.

Theres a lot to unpack. And because of the outrage sparked by his tweets (since deleted), Shapiro has been put on administrative leave as the new executive director of Georgetown Law Schools Center for the Constitution.

Though hes apologized for what he calls an inartful tweet, I thought his tweets (not just one, as he claimed) were actually quite artful in delivering his message that no Black woman could be up to the job.

Shapiro was adept at using the specter of the unqualified woman of color to stir fears that one of our most sacred institutionsthe U.S. Supreme Courtwould be jeopardized. Simply put, he used a racist tropethe radical affirmative action queento argue that a policy that advances a Black woman is inherently racist.

Unless Shapiro has identified every potential Black woman nominee and can defend their inferiority to Judge Srinivasan, this is the worst sort of casual racism and sexism, says Adrienne Davis, a professor at both the law and business schools of Washington University in St. Louis. Or, as [African American feminist scholar] Moya Bailey would call it, misogynoir.

Ketanji Brown Jackson is sworn in at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Indeed, the list of Black women who might be contenders for the Supreme Court is almost an embarrassment of riches, chock full of Harvard and Yale law school graduates and former Supreme Court clerks. The three top contenders, according to multiple press reports, are: Ketanji Brown Jackson, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and former clerk to Justice Breyer; Leondra Kruger, a judge on the California Supreme Court and former clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens; and J. Michelle Childs, a judge of the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina.

Other names rumored for consideration include: Holly Thomas, a judge on the Ninth Circuit; Eunice Lee, of the Second Circuit and Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. And the list goes on.

So what century are Shapiro and his cohorts living in when they suggest that theres no worthy Black woman to fill Breyers seat?

Also insidious is that Shapiro is stirring resentment between people of color. When he tweeted that Sri Srinivasan was the best pick, he signaled to Asian Americans to watch out because an unqualified Black or Brown Americanin this situation, a Black womanmight snatch away a coveted seat that rightfully belongs to them.

By all accounts, Srinivasan is an outstanding jurist but why is he suddenly being trotted out by foes of Biden? Is diversity suddenly a passion of the right?

Bringing Asian Americans in the picture can be done positively or negatively, says Frank Wu, president of Queens College, City University of New York, and the former chancellor at University of California, Hastings Law School. All too often, Asian Americans are introduced as spoilers, not in the spirit of civil rights and diversity, but instead to try to make Asian Americans an alternative to other people of color.

California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger

Official Photo, California Supreme Court

Gabriel Chin, a law professor at University of California at Davis, adds that this is a familiar play. Critics of race-conscious policies try to pit people of color against each other, intentionally or unintentionally, he says, citing the Harvard admissions litigation in which the plaintiff argued that Asian American applicants are harmed by affirmative action, as an example. Chin says he believes breaking down historical patterns of discrimination benefits all groups. I do not think that if a Black woman wins, the potential Asian or other candidates lose.

Is Shapiro deliberately throwing fire at relations between people of color? I cant read his mind. (Ive attempted to reach out to Shapiro via Georgetown Laws press office, but I havent heard back.) But let me say this: Raising the bogeyman (or bogeywoman) of affirmative action is a distraction from those who truly enjoy the rights and privileges of power. Let me put it this way: Of the 115 justices on the Supreme Court since 1789, 108or 94% of them have been White men, as CNN reports.

All this brings up whats intrigued me for a long time: Why do we dissect the qualifications of minorities, particularly minority women, while White men seem to get an automatic pass?

I guess the answer should be apparent.

Read this article:
The Next SCOTUS Justice Will Be a Black Woman. Deal With It. - Bloomberg Law