Not So Crazy Libertarian Ideals – Page 34

The Best Argument For Encryption Yet

I’ve made a lot of good arguments favoring effective encryption. Effective encryption protects at risk people from oppressors by concealing their identities and communications, ensures data integrity by preventing third parties from altering data unknowingly, provides a way to verify authenticity and the identity of content creators, etc. Ironically though Jeb Bush made have inadvertently made the best argument for effective encryption:

“If you create encryption, it makes it harder for the American government to do its job—while protecting civil liberties—to make sure that evildoers aren’t in our midst,” Bush said in South Carolina at an event sponsored by Americans for Peace, Prosperity, and Security, according to The Intercept.

Effective encryption makes the American government’s job harder?

Assault, murder, theft, extortion, and kidnapping should be hard and anything that makes those criminal activities harder is a good thing.

Advances In Technology Creates New Markets Which Creates New Jobs Which Creates New Wealth

One of the most idiotic claims I hear, usually from members of the labor movement, is that automation is taking American jobs. They get made when I use self-checkout kiosks at the grocery store because they think that mindless machine is eliminating a human worker permanently. Ironically they rant at me as they’re demanding the minimum wage be increased. If anything encourages a business owner to seek a way to automate labor it’s forcing them to pay a laborer more than they make for the company. Another irony is they often post their rants online using a machine that has done more to wipe out manual labor than anything else.

Here’s the thing, when automation obsoletes human labor the people who are displaced aren’t eliminated from the workforce forever. Us humans are adaptable. In fact we wouldn’t be the dominant species on this planet if we weren’t. When our set of skills is obsoleted by automation we can learn new skills. In fact the replacement of human labor by automation has lead to the increase in the number of skills needed and therefore the number of laborers needed. That’s right, technology has actually created more jobs than it has destroyed:

In the 1800s it was the Luddites smashing weaving machines. These days retail staff worry about automatic checkouts. Sooner or later taxi drivers will be fretting over self-driving cars.

The battle between man and machines goes back centuries. Are they taking our jobs? Or are they merely easing our workload?

A study by economists at the consultancy Deloitte seeks to shed new light on the relationship between jobs and the rise of technology by trawling through census data for England and Wales going back to 1871.

Their conclusion is unremittingly cheerful: rather than destroying jobs, technology has been a “great job-creating machine”. Findings by Deloitte such as a fourfold rise in bar staff since the 1950s or a surge in the number of hairdressers this century suggest to the authors that technology has increased spending power, therefore creating new demand and new jobs.

Their study, shortlisted for the Society of Business Economists’ Rybczynski prize, argues that the debate has been skewed towards the job-destroying effects of technological change, which are more easily observed than than its creative aspects.

Computers may have eliminated the need for most secretarial labor but it created the need for hardware developers, programmers, technical support specialists, network engineers, and a ton of other jobs that exist only because computers are now pervasive throughout our society.

Automation is a wonderful thing. It creates more wealth that can be invested in more ventures that employs more people. Librarians well-versed in the Dewey Decimal Classification system may not be in high demand anymore but Google, Microsoft, and DuckDuckGo have employed a lot of people to build, improve, and maintain their search engines. In addition to creating those jobs automation also lead to entirely new markets. Data mining, for example, wouldn’t exist if massive amounts of searchable data didn’t.

3D printing is an emerging technology that stands to replace a lot of human labor in manufacturing. But it also stands to open up markets for improving 3D printer technology, material engineering for 3D printers, engineering goods so they can be more easily manufactured with 3D printers, designing 3D models to print, etc.

Advances in technology creates new markets which creates new jobs which creates new wealth which leads to advances in technology. It’s a beautiful cycle of creation. The people who claim automation eliminates jobs are bloody idiots. Automation creates new jobs.

Public-Private Partnerships

When I first tell people I’m a libertarian their reaction is often to accuse me of being a corporate shill. Many people believe there is some separate between corporations and governments. Depending on what side of the political spectrum they fall on corporations are entirely good and governments are entirely evil or vice versa. In reality corporations and governments depend on one another, which is why governments created the idea of limited legal liability, what we call incorporation, in the first place.

Today corporations and governments work hand in hand. I like to refer to this relationship as a private-public partnership. They’re extremely common and almost always bad for you and me. Case in point, the private-public partnership that has greatly expanded the surveillance state:

The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T.

While it has been long known that U.S. telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed NSA documents show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as “highly collaborative,” while another lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.”

AT&T’s cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, according to the documents, which date from 2003 to 2013. AT&T has given the NSA access, through several methods covered under different legal rules, to trillions of e-mails as they have flowed across its domestic networks. It provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the United Nations headquarters.

Establishing a massive surveillance state from scratch is expensive so the National Security Agency (NSA) tries to partner with companies that already have access to data. Back in 2006 we learned that AT&T was operating an interception facility for the NSA so it shouldn’t surprise anybody to see that partnership has expanded. The NSA doesn’t want to foot the expense of intercepting traffic and AT&T is more than happy to sell data that crosses its lines to the NSA.

A big issue here is that the government, with its monopoly on justice, can create separate rules for itself and private entities. This is a legal reality few people spend enough time considering. While the state may pass a law that prevents it from collecting data on domestic individuals to make the commoners feel good it won’t write a rule preventing private entities from doing the same. Through these separate rule systems the state can still access data through private corporations and be honest when claiming it isn’t collecting the data. And since the state pays well these corporations are more than happy to collect and sell the data.

Cat And Mouse Game

Since they want to revolutionize the world you would think libertarians would be hard to beat down. But so many of them, at least in my experience, are willing to roll over if the alternative requires too much work. Computer security is one of those things that tend to require too much work for the average libertarian.

Libertarianism is about wrestling power away from the state. One way of doing this is exploiting economics. The more resources you can make the state misallocate the less it will available for maintaining and expanding its power. That being the case cryptography should be every libertairans best friend. Cryptography, even when it’s not entirely effective, still forces the state to allocate more resources into its surveillance apparatus. Even data secured with weak cryptography requires more effort to snoop than plaintext data. When you start using effective cryptography the amount of resources you force the state to invest increased greatly.

Learning how to use cryptographic tools requires quite a bit of initial effort. Instead of investing their time into learning these tools a lot of libertarians invest their time in creating excuses to justify not learning these tools. One of the excuses I hear frequently is that current cryptographic tools will be broken in a few years anyways.

It’s certainly possible but that’s not an excuse. Cryptography is a cat and mouse game. As cryptographic tools improve the tools used to break them need to improve and as those tools improve cryptographic tools need to improve again. In keeping with the theme I established above the key to this cycle is that the tools to break cryptography need to improve as cryptography improves. In other words adopting better cryptography forces the state to allocate more of its resources into improving its tools to break cryptography. Using effective cryptography today forces the state to invest resources today. If you don’t use it the state doesn’t have to invest resources to break it and therefore has more resources to solidify its power further.

Libertarians have to accept the fact that they’re in a big cat and mouse game anyways. As libertarians work to seize power from the state the state develops new ways to maintain its power. Surveillance is one way it maintains its power and effective cryptography turns it into a cat and mouse game instead of a mouse and mousetrap game. So stop making excuses and start learning about these tools.

An Expedient Alternative To The Election Cycle

I’m not in the market for a master but a lot of my fellow countrymen apparently are. Millions of them spent an evening watching a debate to decide what master they would most like to submit to. One potential master has been enjoying record turnouts to his appearances. Soon many of these people will be investing hundreds of hours door knocking, working call centers, and annoying co-workers to evangelize for their preferred master. And that’s not even the tip of the iceberg. Most of these people will also be giving their hard earned money to their preferred master and even take time out of their day to vote for them!

It doesn’t have to be this way. They don’t have to invest hundreds of hours and dollars to submit to a master! There are people who will actually lord over them for cash alone! That’s right, they can just buy a dom who will beat them mercilessly to their heart’s content and it won’t require a year of political bullshit to realize!

If you know somebody who is searching for a master do them, and everybody else (so we don’t have to listen to them), a favor and let them know about FetLife. It’s a website to help people interested in bondage, discipline, sadomasochism, and masochism (BSDM) connect with one another. Submissives can connect with masters without suffering a year of fruitless politicking first and the rest of us can enjoy a little peace and quiet.

There Is No Free Web

Ad blockers are wonderful plugins that save bandwidth (and therefore money for people paying by usage) and protect computers against malware. But a lot of people, namely website operators that rely on advertisements for revenue, hate them:

This is an exciting and chaotic time in digital news. Innovators like BuzzFeed and Vox are rising, old stalwarts like The New York Times and The Washington Post are finding massive new audiences online, and global online ad revenue continues to rise, reaching nearly $180 billion last year. But analysts say the rise of ad blocking threatens the entire industry—the free sites that rely exclusively on ads, as well as the paywalled outlets that rely on ads to compensate for the vast majority of internet users who refuse to pay for news.

[…]

Sean Blanchfield certainly doesn’t share Carthy’s views. He worries that ad blocking will decimate the free Web.

As the war between advertisers and ad blockers wages there’s something we need to address: the use of the phrase “free web.” There is no “free web.” There has never been a “free web.” Websites have always required servers, network connectivity, developers, content producers, and other costs. This war isn’t between a “free web” and a pay web; it’s between a revenue model where viewers are the product and a revenue model where the content is the product.

If you’re using a service and not paying for it the content isn’t the product, you are. The content exists only to get you to access the website to either increase the number of page clicks and therefore give the owners a good argument for why advertisers should advertise on their sites or hand over your personal information so it can be sold to advertisers. In exchange for being the product other costs are also pushed onto you such as bandwidth and the risk of malware infection.

Ad blockers can’t decimate the “free web” because it doesn’t exist. What they will likely do is force website operators to find alternate means of generating revenue. Several content providers have started experimenting with new revenue models. The Wall Street Journal, for example, puts a lot of article behind a paywall and the New York Times gives readers access to a certain number of articles per month for free but expects payment after that. Other content providers like Netflix charge a monthly subscription for access to any content. There are a lot of ways to make money off of content without relying on viewers as a product.

As this war continues always remember TANSTAAFL (there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch) otherwise you might get suckered into believing there is a “free web” and let that color your perception.

Don’t Return To The Caves

Robert Anton Wilson popularized the words neophiles and neophobes to describe people who enjoy and can adapt to rapid changes and those who fear and oppose change respectively. Whenever neophiles create and adopt a technological advancement neophobes step in to try and retard it. Strong cryptography allows individuals to securely communicate between one another. Neophobes, who are fearful by nature, cannot accept the idea of people having conversations that cannot be spied on. Advancements in automation require less human labor to produce more goods and services. Neophobes fear automation because they cannot conceive of a world where laborers don’t have to work as much or can find meaningful employment after being displaced by machines. Genetically modified crops can dramatically increase our species food production and feed more people with less resource expenditure. Neophobes want to halt production of genetically modified crops because they fear tampering with nature will have frightening and currently unrealized consequences.

The biggest difference between neophiles and neophobes is the former understands risks are inherent in change and accepts those risks while the latter fears change because it involves unknown risks.

Would you enjoy living a much shorter and hard life as a hunter gatherer in a cave? Because that’s what we’d all being doing if everybody listened to the neophobes. Advancement is scary because we don’t know how they will change the world. But advancement is far less scary than stagnation. This is why I don’t give any weight to arguments against technological advancement.

Are there risks in widespread availability to strong cryptography? Yes. Are there risks in allowing machines to do more and more of our labor? Yes. Are there risks in creating and cultivating genetically modified crops? Again, yes. However there are risks in enabling widespread surveillance, relying on manual labor, and refusing to advance agriculture. Those risks are powerful police states, injuries and deaths on jobs, and starvation.

Since the industrial revolution we’ve enjoyed a world where neophilia has surpassed neophobia. Even though we’re enjoying a standard of living unheard of only a generation ago the neophobes are still pounding their drums and trying to scare people into returning to the caves. Do you want to live in a world where we’re relegated to subsistence agriculture or one where robots produce more food than our species can possibly consume? If you, like me, desire the latter then you should work to ensure technological advancement isn’t hindered by neophobes. That means not supporting any efforts to stop the advancement of technology. Don’t support attempts to control the exportation of strong cryptography. Don’t support attempts to stop the adoption of automation. Don’t support prohibitions against genetically modified crops. Try to help technological advancements to flourish so more people can enjoy their benefits. Refute the neophobic fear mongering by pointing out how not adopting new technologies is also risky and how the fears of neophobia have seldom, if ever, been realized. Don’t help those who would return us to the caves.

Why Demonizing Your Opposition Hurts You

I haven’t mentioned the upcoming presidential election too much because it’s inconsequential. No matter who wins we’ll lose. But Bernie Sanders has offered me a stepping stone into a topic that’s actually useful. Namely history, or more specifically why demonizing opposition prevents us from learning from history.

Sanders’ big selling point, according to many of his proponents, is he’s a socialist. Unlike most of the pathetic politicians running for office in this country, Sanders has no problem openly admitting he is a socialist. To his proponents this means he’s going to give everybody free everything. Healthcare? Free! Education? Free! Food? Free!

Of course many countries have tried the socialism thing before. The Soviet Union, Nazi Germany (and don’t scream “Godwin’s Law,” because this is an accurate historical reference that’s especially applicable here since Bernie is a national socialist), Maoist China, North Korea, Khmer Rouge, and many other nations have tried socialism. All of these nations devolved into massive pits of death. And with the exception of China, which is only an exception because it eventually woke up enough to separate itself from Maoism, they have ended in complete economic collapse. Today we’re seeing one of the few remaining socialist states, Venezuela, relive the final days of the Soviet Union. With so much historical evidence demonstrating the futility of socialism why are so many people in this country supportive of it? Usually a dirty libertarian like myself would blame it on idiocy but I don’t think it’s so simple.

The above mentioned states have something else in common: they’ve all been demonized by the United States government. I don’t think this point gets discussed enough. During the Cold War the United States government was creating anti-socialist propaganda like it was going out of style. The problem with propaganda is it doesn’t refute ideas with reason. Propaganda relies entirely on demonizing the opposition and declaring yourself an angel. Bad guys are bad because they’re not us! Americans are better and can do anything! Their leaders rule by terror but ours lead by the will of the people! Those are examples of propaganda. No idea are refuted. The only reason the other side is bad is because they’re not us.

When you believe your team is the paragon of all that is righteous and everybody else is the epitome of evil you’ve set yourself up to fail. For most of Sanders’ supporters socialism didn’t fail because it’s unworkable, it failed because evil people were doing it. In their eyes the United States isn’t evil and therefore can therefore succeed at socialism.

Demonizing your opposition hurts in the long run because it convinces you that you can succeed where your opposition failed. Not falling into the demonizing trap is difficult but the consequences of failing to avoid it are so severe that you’re likely to destroy yourself.

Without Government Who Would Pollute The Rivers

I’ve been told the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the lone barrier that stands between us and the entire country being turned into an uninhabitable wasteland by greedy corporations that want to fill our lakes and rivers with industrial waste. But I’ve also been told that socialism can work so I don’t put a lot of weight into what others have told me. The EPA, as with most government agencies, doesn’t really do what its name implies. It doesn’t protect the environment so much as licenses pollution. When somebody is dumping waste into a body of water the EPA steps in and demands a little piece of the action in exchange for looking the other way. And if nobody is polluting a body of water the EPA steps in and does it:

DURANGO — A spill that sent 1 million gallons of wastewater from an abandoned mine into the Animas River, turning the river orange, set off warnings Thursday that contaminants threaten water quality for those downstream.

The Environmental Protection Agency confirmed it triggered the spill while using heavy machinery to investigate pollutants at the Gold King Mine, north of Silverton.

I know somebody reading this will feel the need to point out that the EPA didn’t do this on purpose, which I’m sure is true. That’s not the point. The point is the lack of recourse. When an individual or corporation dumps waste into a body of water people usually sic the EPA on them. But what happens in this case? Who watches the watchmen? Does the EPA sue itself and transfer some of its money to itself? Will another agency, maybe an oversight committee, step in to find the EPA and therefore transfer some of the state’s wealth from itself to itself?

Herein lies the problem. Then government, which is the biggest polluter, is held entirely unaccountable because it has declared a monopoly on environmental protection. As it has declared this monopoly for itself there is no way to hold it accountable because it’s in its best interest to not enforce its own laws against itself. And if anybody else tries to hold it accountable it attacks them for breaking the law.

The biggest failure of environmentalism is its reliance on the state. A state has no interest in protecting the environment, its interests lie in polluting it without consequence and getting a piece of any polluting action.

The Dangers Of Centralization

Markets tend to have redundancies. We generally refer to this characteristic as “competition.” When there is demand for a good or service everybody wants a piece of the action so monopolies are almost nonexistent in free markets. Statism, on the other hand, tends towards centralization. Where markets have competitors trying to provide you with the best good or service possible states actively try to push out any competition and establish monopolies.

The problem with centralization is that when a system fails any dependent system necessarily fails along with it. The State Department, which has a monopoly on issuing visas, recently experienced, what it referred to as, a computer glitch that effectively stopped the issuance of any visas:

The State Department says it is working around the clock on a computer problem that’s having widespread impact on travel into the U.S. The glitch has practically shut down the visa application process.

Of the 50,000 visa applications received every day, only a handful of emergency visas are getting issued.

I’m sure this news made the neocons and neoliberals giddy because it meant foreign workers couldn’t enter the country. But this news should give everybody cause for concern because it gives us another glimpse into how fragile statism is. In a free market this kind of failure would be a minor annoyance as another provider would need to be sought out.

Centralization is the antithesis of robustness, which is one reason statism is so dangerous. Under statism a single failure can really hurt millions of people whereas failures in a free market environment tend to be limited in scope and only insomuch as forcing customers to seek alternate providers.