Archive for the ‘Libertarian’ Category

Libertarians Looking for a Win Somewhere May Have Found Their … – The New York Sun

BUENOS AIRES American libertarians who have long fantasized about actually trying out some of their more outlandish policies somewhere may soon get their wish if self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei manages to get elected president of Argentina in October.

Whether they will like what they see is another matter entirely.

A devotee of the Austrian school of economics, Mr. Milei, who casts himself as a libertarian savior of his country, wants to shutter Argentinas central bank, adopt the U.S. dollar as the countrys currency, and slash government spending. A critic of the countrys political caste, he says the state is the enemy, and politicians are parasites motivated only by their own greed.

If elected, Mr. Milei said he will take a chainsaw to public spending. In a video introduction to his initiative, Mr. Milei calls politicians criminals and thieves, and says his plan would deprive them of the opportunity to steal and will have to work like honest people.

With inflation hovering at about 108 percent annually, Mr. Mileis disruptive economic measures are sending shockwaves through the country and galvanizing young voters. A video depicting the candidate smacking a piata shaped like the Central Bank, which was posted on national TV on Mr. Mileis 48th birthday in 2018, went viral.

The stunt underlines his intention to shut down an institution that he says is the primary cause of Argentinas inflation the countrys central bank. If Mr. Milei, an economist, achieves his career-long dream of closing the central bank, he says he next wants to dump the Argentinian peso in favor of the U.S. dollar.

Without a doubt, Mr. Milei is putting topics on the Argentinian agenda that werent there before he announced his candidacy in late April, a political analyst, Juan Courel, tells the Sun. The candidates initiatives are part of a growing anarcho-capitalist movement that favors disruptive solutions to the countrys problems, Mr. Courel adds.

Among a public feeling increasingly unrepresented by the two top political parties, Mr. Mileis brash proposals are hitting a nerve enough of one, perhaps, to win him the election, Mr. Courel says.

Mr. Milei represents a change of era, 35-year-old Argentinian Jorge Cordoba, who lives in Entre Rios, tells the Sun. For decades, Argentinians have been listening to politicians who promise growth and change but never achieve it, he says. In addition, he adds, while other politicians offer vague promises, Mr. Milei brings clear proposals to the public that he explains step by step.

I believe in Javier Milei, in his speech and in his team, and that is why I am very eager for him, Mr. Cordoba says. I dream of the day in which we can get out of this hole that traditional politics have buried us in and become a global power.

One of Mr. Mileis wildest initiatives includes a proposal to privatize the market for organ donors. We can think of it as a market, Mr. Milei says. Why does the state need to regulate everything?

He wants to overturn the recently approved abortion law in Argentina, which allows women to receive abortions only until week 14 of their pregnancies. Mr. Milei also favors open-carry gun laws. Under Argentinas current law, civilians must apply for a permit to own a gun, and open-carry permits for licensed handguns are difficult to obtain.

With the peso rapidly losing its value, Mr. Mileis dollarization initiative is one of the most hotly debated topics in Argentina. In order to achieve it, Mr. Milei says he will need about $30 billion.

A professor of Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University, Steve Hanke, tells the Sun that Mr. Mileis proposal might be the only choice for the country. Given Argentinas institutions, theres only one way forward: dollarization, Mr. Hanke says.

Its time to mothball the Central Bank of Argentina and the peso. Put them in a museum and replace them with the U.S. dollar, Mr. Hanke, a former advisor to an Argentine president in the 1990s, Carlos Menem, adds. Menem first proposed the dollarization initiative during his tenure.

Mr. Mileis rise in the polls is partially a consequence of Argentinas economic crisis, but it also signals a shift in Argentine society toward pro-market ideas, an Argentinian political analyst, Sergio Berensztein, tells the Sun. Mr. Milei is gaining support among many young people, which is a first, he adds.

Mr. Milei is achieving a rebellion guided by pro-market ideas, Mr. Berensztein says, bucking the historical trend in Argentina of rebellions being channeled by the left.

Traditional Buenos Aires politicians say that Mr. Mileis wrong solutions are ill-fitted to Argentina. Milei says dollarizing the economy will solve our problems but there are no dollars to achieve this, a senator, Martin Lousteau, toldTV channel La Nacin Ms. Its unfeasible, he said.

Mr. Mileis political party, Liberty Moves Forward, is running third in the polls, with about 22 percent of the votes. Two traditional parties, the right-wingJuntos por el Cambio, which commands 32 percent of the votes, and left-wing Frente de Todos, with 26 percent, are slightly ahead. Primary elections are scheduled for August, and the general election is in October.

Even if Mr. Milei loses, he is already setting up a public agenda, Mr. Courel says, in many of the same ways as other disruptive figures with whom he is compared, Presidents Trump and Bolsonaro among them. They are still influencing their respective countrys political debate despite losing elections.

I think [people like Mr. Milei] are not short-term figures, and they have proven to be able to politically succeed despite electoral defeats, Mr. Courel says. We should not underestimate them.

Read more:
Libertarians Looking for a Win Somewhere May Have Found Their ... - The New York Sun

Ross Douthat Is Wrong in Thinking Pot Legalization Is a ‘Big Mistake’ – Reason

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat thinks "legalizing marijuana is a big mistake." His argument, which draws heavily on a longer Substack essay by the Manhattan Institute's Charles Fain Lehman, is unabashedly consequentialist, purporting to weigh the collective benefits of repealing prohibition against the costs. It therefore will not persuade anyone who believes, as a matter of principle, that people should be free to decide for themselves what goes into their bodies.

Douthat recognizes that his case against legalization "will not convince readers who come in with stringently libertarian presuppositions." Lehman, a self-described "teenage libertarian" who has thought better of that position now that he is in his 20s, likewise makes no attempt to argue that the government is morally justified in arresting and punishing people for peaceful conduct that violates no one's rights. They nevertheless make some valid points about the challenges of legalization while demonstrating the pitfalls of a utilitarian analysis that ignores the value of individual freedom and the injustice of restricting it to protect people from themselves.

Douthat and Lehman are right that legalization advocates, who at this point include roughly two-thirds of American adults, sometimes exaggerate its impact on criminal justice. All drug offenders combined "account for just 16.7 percent" of people in state and federal prisons, Lehman notes, and perhaps one-tenth of those drug war prisoners (based on an estimate by Fordham law professor John Pfaff) were convicted of marijuana offenses. People arrested for violating pot prohibition usually are not charged with production or distribution and typically do not spend much, if any, time behind bars.

Still, those arrests are not without consequences. In addition to the indignity, embarrassment, inconvenience, legal costs, and penalties they impose, the long-term consequences of a misdemeanor record include barriers to employment, housing, and education. Those burdens are bigger and more extensive than Douthat and Lehman are willing to acknowledge.

Since the 1970s, police in the United States have made hundreds of thousands of marijuana arrests every year, the vast majority for simple possession. The number of arrests peaked at nearly 873,000 in 2007 and had fallen to about 350,000 by 2020. The cumulative total since the early 1990s exceeds 20 million.

That is not a small problem, although Douthat and Lehman glide over its significance. Yes, Lehman concedes, "arrests for marijuana-related offensespossession and salesplummet" after legalization. But based on a "rough and dirty" analysis, he finds that "marijuana legalization has no statistically significant effect on total arrests."

Is that the relevant question? If police stop arresting people for conduct that never should have been treated as a crime, that seems like an unalloyed good, regardless of what happens with total arrests.

Lehman thinks the results of his analysis make sense. "Marijuana possession (and the smell of pot) is a pretext for cops to stop and search people they think may have committed other crimes, and marijuana possession similarly [is] a pretext to arrest someone," he writes. "If marijuana arrests are mostly about pretext, then it would make sense that cops simply substitute to other kinds of arrest in their absence, netting no real change in the arrest rate."

Again, unless you trust the police enough to think they are always protecting public safety when they search or arrest people based on "a pretext," eliminating a common excuse for hassling individuals whom cops view as suspicious looks like an improvement. Lehman seems to be suggesting that most people arrested for pot possession are predatory criminals, so it's a good thing that police have a pretext to bust them. But when millions of people are charged with nothing but marijuana possession, that assumption seems highly dubious.

Douthat and Lehman's main concern about legalization is that it encourages heavy use. The result, Douthat says, is "a form of personal degradation, of lost attention and performance and motivation, that isn't mortally dangerous" but "can damage or derail an awful lot of human lives." Citing the 2021 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), he says "around 16 million Americans, out of more than 50 million users" are "now suffering from what is termed marijuana use disorder."

That estimate should be viewed with caution for a couple of reasons. First, the term cannabis use disorder encompasses a wide range of problems, only some of which resemble the life-derailing "personal degradation" that Douthat describes. Second, while the American Psychiatric Association's definition requires "a problematic pattern of cannabis use leading to clinically significant impairment or distress," the NSDUH numbers are based on a questionnaire that asks about specific indicators but does not measure clinical significance.

In addition to that requirement, the official definition lists 11 criteria. Any two of them, combined with "clinically significant impairment or distress," are enough for a diagnosis.

If you experience "a strong urge to use marijuana" and "spend a great deal of your time" doing so or find that "the same amount of marijuana" has "much less effect on you than it used to," for example, you qualify for the diagnosis, provided you are experiencing "clinically significant impairment or distress"which, again, the NSDUH questionnaire is not designed to measure. The upshot is that people with mild or transitory marijuana problems, or even people who smoke a lot of pot but do not necessarily suffer as a result, get lumped in with cannabis consumers who flunk school, lose their jobs, neglect their spouses and children, or engage in physically hazardous activities.

Taken at face value, the NSDUH numbers indicate that 31 percent of Americans who used marijuana in 2021 experienced a "cannabis use disorder" at some point during that year. By comparison, about 17 percent of drinkers experienced an "alcohol use disorder," according to the same survey. The criteria for the latter are similar to the criteria for the former, and in both cases problems range from mild to severe.

Does that mean marijuana is nearly twice as addictive as alcohol? Other estimates tell a different story. A 1994 study based on the National Comorbidity Survey put the lifetime risk of "dependence" at 15.4 percent for drinkers and 9.1 percent for cannabis consumers. A 2010 assessment in The Lancet gave alcohol and marijuana similar scores for "dependence" risk.

Even previous iterations of the NSDUH indicate much lower rates of cannabis use disorder than the 2021 numbers suggest. In 2019, for example, 17.5 percent of respondents reported marijuana use, while 1.8 percent were identified as experiencing a cannabis use disorder. That 10 percent rate is one-third as high as the rate reported for 2021.

The measured increase in the rate of cannabis use disorder among users might seem consistent with the story that Douthat and Lehman are telling, in which legalization made potent pot readily available, leading to more marijuana-related problems. But it is unlikely that such an effect would suddenly show up in the two years between the 2019 and 2021 surveys. Another reason to doubt that hypothesis: The rate of alcohol use disorders among drinkers also jumped, from about 8 percent to about 17 percent, during the same period. Both increases seem to reflect the rise in substance abuse associated with the pandemic.

Another consideration in comparing marijuana with alcohol is the consequences of heavy use, which are far more serious in the latter case. The Lancetanalysis rated alcohol substantially higher than cannabis for "harm to users" and "harm to others" and as the most dangerous drug overall by a large margin. Alcohol's score was 72, compared to 20 for cannabis.

Even among heavy users, in other words, alcohol is apt to cause more serious problems than marijuana. Yet neither Douthat nor Lehman discusses the potential benefits of substituting marijuana for alcohol. In fact, they do not mention alcohol at all, perhaps because that would raise the question of whether it is sensible to ban marijuana while tolerating a drug that is more hazardous by several measures, including acute toxicity, long-term health problems, and road safety.

While Douthat and Lehman blame legalization for fostering marijuana abuse, they contradictorily note that cannabis consumed in several states that allow recreational use still comes mainly from the black market. Both cite economists Robin Goldstein and Daniel Sumner, who estimate in their bookCan Legal Weed Win? that unlicensed dealers account for three-quarters of the marijuana supply in California, where voters approved legalization in 2016. The difficulty that states like California have faced in displacing the black market, Goldstein and Sumner argue, shows the perils of high taxes and heavy regulation, which make it hard for licensed marijuana merchants to compete.

Douthat and Lehman draw a different lesson. Given the hazards of marijuana abuse, they think, high taxes and heavy regulation are appropriate to deter excessive consumption. Yet those policies, they say, help preserve a black market that could be suppressed only by harsh measures that are not feasible in the current political environment. Since "we have spent the past several decades contending that marijuana enforcement is racist, evil, and pointless," Lehman says, "there is little appetite for doing more of it."

That situation creates a dilemma for technocrats who think they can fine-tune the marijuana market to minimize the harm it causes. "On the one hand, a harm-minimizing marijuana market entails high taxation and strict regulation," Lehman writes. "On the other, it also needs to be cheap enough to outcompete the illicit producers who will otherwise swoop in to provide where the licit market does notthereby producing the same harms the licit market is meant to obviate. In optimizing between these two extremes, we get the worst of both worlds: a thriving illicit market, and also weed widely available enough to harm millions of heavy users."

The only logical solution, Lehman thinks, is returning to the "big, dumb policy" of prohibition. Douthat seems inclined to agree. "Eventually," he says, "the culture will recognize that under the banner of personal choice, we're running ageneral experiment in exploitationaddicting our more vulnerable neighbors to myriad pleasant-seeming vices, handing our children over to the social media dopamine machine and spreading degradation wherever casinos spring up and weed shops flourish."

Respect for individual autonomy, of course, has always entailed the risk that people will make bad choices. That is true of everything that people enjoy, whether it's alcohol, marijuana, social media, video games, gambling, shopping, sex, eating, or exercise. Even when most people manage to enjoy these things without ruining their lives, a minority inevitably will take them to excess. The question is whether that risk justifies coercive intervention, which is also dangerous and costly.

Answering that question requires more than weighing measurable costs and benefits. It requires value judgments that Douthat and Lehman make without acknowledging them. When you start with the assumption that government policy should be based on a collectivist calculus that assigns little or no weight to "personal choice," which Douthat dismisses as a mere "banner," you can rationalize nearly any paternalistic scheme, no matter how oppressive or unjust.

See original here:
Ross Douthat Is Wrong in Thinking Pot Legalization Is a 'Big Mistake' - Reason

Carson Jerema: Marvel’s animal-torturing villain a metaphor for the progressive left – National Post

Light spoilers ahead for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

But even though the onscreen torture of Rocket and other human-animal hybrids is at times manipulative and unsettling, the politics never actually seem heavy handed. They are effective at emotionally bonding the audience to Rocket, while also making it absolutely clear that the villain, known as the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), deserves a violent end.

The scenes where Rocket and others are experimented on could certainly be viewed as a statement on animal rights, but audiences could just as easily choose to ignore the politics, and it would still be an effective set up for an action-adventure story.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

However, the politics that are a much more important, even essential, element of the Guardians films and the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole are the politics of personal liberty and freedom. There is a strain of libertarianism humming in the background of most of these (32 and counting) films that is no less radical for being popcorn-friendly.

In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the High Evolutionary mutates Rocket from a raccoon into a highly intelligent being as part of a project to create the perfect creatures to populate the perfect society. When a society doesnt live up to his standards, the High Evolutionary burns it down and starts anew.

He is, in effect, a stand in for every progressive politician who wants to engineer society in order to satisfy a personal vision of what is right. These motivations are not all that different from a previous Marvel villain, the lunatic degrowth environmentalist Thanos, who tried to murder half the beings in the universe.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

The Guardians of the Galaxy, on the other hand, are a gang of criminals turned do-gooding mercenaries. They are self-employed contractors who are always presented as more competent and more honest than the various government authorities that either hire them or fight them.

The best Marvel films are successful because they embrace their inherent libertarianism. More importantly, the politics remain in the background as context for the story being told, or as shorthand to set up the action. The message rarely takes over.

After the past few years of bland, confusing dreck from Marvel Studios, the third Guardians instalment might have signalled a return to form, but given that director James Gunn is leaving, the film serves as a reminder of what has been lost.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Recent Marvel entries have either been too plot heavy, or overly committed to progressive ideas, namely diversity for diversitys sake, causing the films to collapse under their own weight.

The presence of progressive politics, though, is not inherently detrimental to the series, so long as it is properly executed. For example, with its African-centric story, and nearly all-Black cast, 2018s Black Panther clearly had diversity politics on its mind. It also inverted the Marvel structure somewhat, with the villain embodying individualism, and with more emphasis given to the importance of community.

But that story was expertly told and it remains one of the best superhero films ever produced.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

In one of the Iron Man movies, a cocky and charismatic Tony Stark (played by the cocky and charismatic Robert Downey Jr.) declares, Ive successfully privatized world peace. The audience is never meant to be anywhere but on Starks side. That he is essentially replacing the United States military is never presented as something to fear, but as a solution to inept governance.

In my personal favourite, the hilarious Thor: Ragnorak, the climax involves a Spartacus-style slave rebellion followed by Thor (Chris Hemsworth) literally smashing the state when he destroyed his home planet to escape his tyrannical ruler of a sister.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

The most significant pro-liberty plots in Marvel come from the Captain America films. In The Winter Soldier, the government agency the heroes have been working for is revealed to have been controlled by a deep state cabal of Nazis, and it is up to Captain America (Chris Evans) to take it down, something he is only able to do, not because of his superhuman strength, but because of his inherent goodness and incorruptibility, which is contrasted against the rot of the state.

In Captain America: Civil War, the American government wants to regulate the heroes and bring them under state control; an analogy is made comparing them to nuclear bombs, for instance. Cap, as his friends call him, refuses and goes to war against his former teammates, fighting for the ideal that individuals should not be controlled, no matter how powerful they may be. It is essentially Ayn Rand with action sequences. Civil War is the most heavy-handed in its libertarian messaging, but it is effective because audiences never want to see their heroes tied down.

Personal responsibility, allegiance to those we choose, as opposed to some flag, and the will of a determined man or woman are the elements of nearly every successful Marvel story, and action films in general. As soon as Marvel started forgetting that, people began tuning out.

National Post

Read the original here:
Carson Jerema: Marvel's animal-torturing villain a metaphor for the progressive left - National Post

The taxman might soon be your tax preparer – Morning Brew

The Internal Revenue Service said this week it plans to pilot its own tax prep software next year.

If the plan becomes a reality, it could spell major danger for TurboTax, H&R Block, and the rest of the tax prep industry, which is worth $14.3 billion, according to market research firm IBISWorld. But in the meantime, the project is getting pushback from critics who arent keen on seeing the IRS take on new functions.

The case for making the IRS your accountant

Direct-file advocates like Sen. Elizabeth Warren have long argued that preparing returns through a .gov site would make the process simpler and cheaper for Americans. The IRS estimates it could cost the government just $10 per taxpayer, a steep discount from TurboTaxs cheapest paid option: $69.

With $80 billion in new funding over the next decade courtesy of the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS commissioned the think tank New America to complete a feasibility study on whether the government should provide the service. The groups research, released this week, found that building a direct-file tool is something the IRS can handle. And the group determined that 72% of Americans might use it.

Not everyone is into the new take on tax day

Least thrilled about the direct-file tool are the folks whose bread and butter is your tax return. H&R Block and TurboTax-parent Intuit (both offer a free basic version of their services) spent a combined $35.2 million on lobbying lawmakers about direct file and other issues since 2006, according to the Associated Press.

Intuit spokesperson Tania Mercado told us the IRSs plan is a solution in search of a problem that would unnecessarily cost taxpayers billions of dollars. She also said the governments cost estimate is laughable.

Meanwhile, some Republican lawmakers (who generally oppose any expansion of the IRS) see the government playing the dual role of tax collector and preparer as a conflict of interest.

Get the daily email that makes reading the news actually enjoyable. Stay informed and entertained, for free.

Others worry it might not be worth the investment: Low uptake would be the main risk of the program, according to Alex Muresianu, a policy analyst at the Libertarian think tank the Tax Foundation. He points out that only 3% of eligible taxpayers use an existing free tax filing program for low-income people. New Americas report itself referenced a survey showing that, while taxpayers were into the idea in general, there was much less interest in an IRS tool that didnt include state tax returns in addition to federal ones.

Looking ahead though the pilot is in the works, it would be years before the direct-file tool became the tax season companion for millions of Americansif it ever did. Nonetheless, some hope the IRS might one day go even further, with direct filing paving the way for automatic tax deductions with no return required, a reality in places like the UK, Japan, and Germany.SK

See original here:
The taxman might soon be your tax preparer - Morning Brew

Breaking: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to accept campaign donations in Bitcoin – Cointelegraph

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be the first presidential candidate in United States history to accept campaign donations in Bitcoin, he announced during his first appearance as a presidential candidate at the Bitcoin 2023 conference. He praised the cryptocurrency as a symbol of democracy and freedom during the event.

The candidate who is challenging President Joe Biden has been sharing his libertarian views about cryptocurrencies on Twitter. In a post on May 3, RFK Jr. stated that crypto technologies are a major innovation engine," adding that the U.S. is hobbling the industry and driving innovation elsewhere."

Kennedy Jr. is the nephew of 35th President of the U.S. John F. Kennedy.

By attending the Bitcoin event, RFK Jr. is not only targeting voters but also a potential source of millions of dollars in donations. During last years midterm elections, Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO of now-bankrupted crypto exchange FTX, donated $40 million in support of candidates.Crypto exchange Coinbase has also been actively lobbying for legislation regulating the crypto space in the country.

RFK Jr.s increased commitment to cryptocurrencies coincides with a tight regulatory environment in the U.S.,spreading uncertainty among players and harming an already battered industry.

The candidate believes the U.S. economy could be more resilient if it has a diverse ecosystem of currencies:

Excerpt from:
Breaking: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to accept campaign donations in Bitcoin - Cointelegraph