I have written about various issues and ideas, but I don't think that I have done a good job of explaining their origins, and why they changed over time.
Why I first became interested in politics
I think that anyone who knows me well will tell you, I'm a major history buff.
I think that it's fascinating all of the various scenarios, as well as cause and effects that made the world what it is today.
I wasn't that interested in history because of school. Nothing against my teachers, I just think that it's hard to make history interesting just from someone explaining it to you via lecture, whether you want to learn it or not.
I started getting into it when I started watching historical movies, (like The Patriot, Braveheart, Kingdom of Heaven, and more,) and playing history oriented video and computer games. (The Total War series is one of my favorites.)
I think that most reading this will realize that the key to making history (and most other subjects for that matter) interesting, is to present it in a fun, interactive format.
I loved watching these movies and playing these games, and also finding out whether the games corresponded with reality.
How did this lead to an interest in politics?
I think that there were a few things:
- The economy struggling, both in 2000 and 2008.
- 9/11
- My father, and many of his friends getting laid off from IBM after 26 years.
- American jobs being outsourced.
- The widening income gap.
- The rising cost of college tuition.
I knew that something wasn't right in the world, so I decided to investigate it.
I would say that I casually researched things around 2009-2011 or so, then I started getting more and more into it.
As with a lot of things, the more you learn, the more you want to learn.. especially in my case.
Where my views began:
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| A very useful chart, in my view. Notice that Fascism/Nazism are on the far left along with Communism, not the far right as they tell you in school. The reason for this is that those ideologies, place more emphasis on the collective, whereas libertarianism and anarchism place emphasis on the sovereignty of the individual. |
I believed that it was the government's role to provide services for the people.
I actually voted for Obama twice, which surprises many people who talk to me now.
So what changed?
Simple.. I started reading more and more about this stuff, and I realized that the people in power weren't working in the interest of the average citizen, (to put it mildly) and we would be lucky if they didn't make things worse.
This isn't just a recent phenomenon either.. It's true of any political system throughout history.
I fell away from "progressivism" (or modern day liberalism) because I felt (and still feel) that it rests too heavily upon this sort of mentality:
"We just need better people in power that won't sell out, and won't be corrupted by private interests."
This is my typical response to that sort of thinking:
"Where are we going to find these people? And even if we do find them.. what happens when they leave power?"
"Also, look at it from the politician's point of view. What's their number one goal? To get elected, or reelected. How do they do that? Votes and campaign contributions."
"How do they get votes? By doing favors for people with tax dollars. It isn't hard to be 'compassionate' with someone else's money."
"How do they get campaign contributions? By doing favors for major companies, in exchange for kickbacks and contributions. Look at the net worth of a Congressperson or Senator, before and after they leave office. Ask yourself what accounts for the change."
I don't fault my progressive friends for wanting to help the poor and disenfranchised.. rather that they trust the people in power to do it.
Shifting rightward..
I was definitely persuaded that a more limited government would be more effective, and that more and more societal aspects would be better addressed for by local and state concerns.
Conservatism appealed to me, however, I was never thrilled with the current Republican party. I think that it should be explained here that there are different types of conservatives:
Paleoconservative: Believe in limited government, but tend to cling to the more "traditional" aspects of American life . "Paleo" is the Greek word for ancient, or old.
They're generally opposed to mass immigration, are for trade protectionism, and against multiculturalism. Unlike the neoconservatives, they want American troops out of most countries.
Neoconservative: Stronger emphasis on the military and national "defense" which to me, is more offense.
These are the people that want more foreign intervention. They have dominated the Republican party since the Reagan era.
Fiscal conservative: Emphasis on very limited spending and taxes.
Social conservative: Similar to paleoconservatives, but more emphasis on religion and traditional family values.
This tends to be the "Religious Right" crowd.
While I suppose there are indeed aspects of each of these belief systems that I would find appealing, I could never get behind the religious folks (I'm an agnostic, myself.) or the people that think that we should have have troops in all sorts of countries around the world.
I think that modern liberals and modern conservatives both get things wrong, but for separate reasons:
People on the Right tend to act as though social problems, like racism and sexism don't exist. Not only is this immoral, it alienates people who would otherwise support many of their views.
Studies have shown that many African Americans and Latinos, have fundamentally conservative beliefs; pro life, for gun rights, low taxes, and some are deeply religious.
They also tend to fall back on what philosophers call the "appeal to tradition" fallacy.
"Our ideas our better because this is how things have been done."
People on the Left trust the people in power to solve these problems for us.
I always find it funny when I hear things like:
"We need government to do (fill in the blank) because government ended segregation and slavery!"
.... Never mind that the government imposed segregation, and passed laws which enforced slavery.
People in power don't do what's right.. they do what's popular, and whatever allows them to retain and/or expand their power.
I find that people on the Left tend to fall back on what philosophers call the "appeal to novelty" and the "bandwagon" fallacies.
"Our solution is better because it's new, and/or 'other people' are doing it."
" We should be like Europe. They're more 'progressive'."
Yeah, we should be like Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Greece... Oh, wait.
Libertarianism
Here's where I found more of my niche; free markets, and a government that stays out of the bed room and board room.
I'm very attracted to this belief system for its deep philosophical views, and the diversity amongst various followers of it.
The people whom I have cited in my previous blogs have various ideas for solutions to our problems, and have drawn upon different sources themselves.
I'm impressed by their depth, and it's certainly a far cry from:
"This should be a right, and the government should provide it!"
Voluntarism
Although I would much prefer a limited government that actually goes by what the Constitution says over what we have now, I have been heavily influenced by Stefan Molyneux, as well as David Friedman and Murray Rothbard.
They have persuaded me that government itself is nothing more than an agency of legalized coercion. The best society is one based on private property rights, contracts, and mutual, voluntary agreement.
Like the Mafia or any other crime syndicate, the government can take what they want and spend it accordingly, with the threat of force behind them.
No informed person truly believes that they are acting in our interest.
Yes, we (some of us, anyway) do vote for the people, but we don't really have control over what they do.
How many Americans want the Transpacific Partnership, the Federal Reserve, the wars that we've fought, corporate welfare, expensive licensing, and so on?
I would ask these questions again, as I did in my blog about "Anatomy of the State":
"How much of what the government does can be achieved through voluntary, contractual means, rather than coercive means? And how much of what the government does is even necessary?"
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| Isn't this a better way to come to a mutually beneficial arrangement than... |
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| this?! |
These questions are fair ones.. to me, at least.
Government by its very nature, is force.
I have written blogs about how the police force, defense, gun safety, banking, food regulations, and even the law itself can all be separated from the power of the State.
You can refer back to those if you have questions about how those would work.
The Law
Defense
Banking
Firearm safety
Food and safety regulations
On business and corporations:
History has shown that private businesses have an incentive to give you what you want, at a price that you can afford. If they can't, someone else can come along and take that place.
The first cell phone cost around $2,000, and could only pick up and make calls.
The most recent iPhones are on par with computers from about 12-15 years ago, and video game systems that came out around the same time. That, and they sell for about a quarter of the price listed above.
For all of the people that complain about "evil corporations", those same people seem to buy a lot of their products.
I don't see a corporation as being inherently evil.. A corporation is simply an organization that is designed to more effectively accumulate, and deploy capital. This is done by attracting "shareholders" who own stock, or parts of the company.
You can sit there and complain:
"It isn't fair that a car company makes so much money!"
Okay, but what does it take to start said car company? Does the average person have the means to build factories, recruit skilled workers, design the cars, market, etc?
Obviously, that requires immense wealth, as well as the knowledge to figure out how to make all of this possible.
There's this notion that these companies just pay a bunch of good looking people to advertise, they sit back, and the money comes rolling in.
In the case of small businesses, 90+% fail within a year.
And who else benefits here?
The consumer.
It's only because of this advanced organization of the means of production, that we're able to have such a wide array of cars that have gone down in price, improved in quality, and become affordable to the average person.
If you don't like what Starbucks is doing.. stop buying their coffee.
And this notion that profits are "evil" is ridiculous. A profit motive is what compels businesses to produce more of a product, and better quality products.
In the USSR, the television sets would explode, and service in restaurants was horrendously bad.
Why? That's obvious. There was no incentive to produce better service or TVs.
I also constantly hear "greed" invoked, as being the source of our problems.
An economist said of the last crisis in 2008 that "blaming the economic crisis on greed, is like blaming a plane crash on gravity."
Both are constant forces, regardless of place or time period. You mean to tell me that greed has only been a 21st century, American thing?
Can anyone name for me a single area in which the government has controlled cost, and boosted quality?
In the case of quality, the only example I can think of is the military, but the cost is crushing us. We spend roughly $600 billion a year on "defense".
Now, this does not mean that I justify corporations lobbying for special privileges. A wealthy country means a lot of powerful people, who know that they can use government to further enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.
This is perhaps one of the core underlying reasons for a voluntarist society: With competing rights enforcement and defense agencies, there is nobody to dole out special favors.
Regulatory capture
I touched on this in my blog about alternatives to regulations, but I will restate it here.
Regulatory capture is when a former head of an industry is appointed to regulate that industry.
The problem, of course is that once in charge, they dole out favors to that business. That's because they still have ties to their previous employer.
Two examples of this would be Obama appointing the former head of Monsanto to run the FDA, or Bush Jr. appointing the former CEO of Goldman Sachs to run the Treasury Department.
I think that you can read that, and determine why we have problems with Monsanto, and why Goldman Sachs got some of the most bailout money in 2008, while their competitor Lehman Brothers was just left to go out of business.
Say what you want about Ayn Rand, but she predicted that this would happen about 50 years ago.. she ended up being right.
The great libertarian thinker Albert Jay Nock was asked:
"Do you think that these corporations want a free market?"
His response?
"They would rather see this country burn to the ground."
These regulatory agencies (like the FDA) are co-opted by companies, and used to harm competitors.
They would much prefer that, over new competitors spontaneously emerging, that they can't foresee.
Bill Gates himself even said:
"I'm more afraid of the little guy working out of his garage, than a major corporation."
On banking and the Federal Reserve
My blog about the Fed
Since I wrote a full fledged blog about the Fed, I won't go on for too long about it here.. However, I don't think that I can understate how much damage that institution has done to this country.
Many of my friends on the political Left, complain about the widening gap between the rich and the poor.
I just respond like this:
"Who creates the money, and where do you think it ends up? Does it get mailed to people living in poor neighborhoods?"
"The entire notion that there can be an institution that can just arbitrarily create or destroy money, change the value of that money on a whim.. I.e. devaluing it by printing a lot of it.. hence why prices have gone up, and salaries haven't. The first people to get the money spend it, driving up the prices of consumer goods which harm everyone, notably the poor. "
"The Fed decides the rate of interest at which money is loaned out on a whim... This notion that this, as well as my first point won't somehow impact economic stability, is insane."
"As the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, this arrangement benefits the government. They can print money to pay for things, since raising taxes is politically unpopular, and when prices go up, they can blame it on 'greedy business people that are price gouging'."
"It's not that government can't create stable currency.. it's that they don't have an incentive to."
"You don't have to be a 'conspiracy theorist' to figure this out.. you simply just apply common sense."
For anyone who thinks that my views promote income inequality, I would say:
Do some research on the Federal Reserve, and get back to me.
On welfare:
It is my personal belief that welfare has done far more harm than good.
If you look up the statistics, more people were rising out of poverty before Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" which began in the late 60's.
The amount spent on these programs ranges in the trillions, but even in the early 90's, the proportion of people living in poverty was about what it was when these programs began.
Also, do some research on the illegitimacy of children in this country. Up until these programs really took off, it was roughly 5-10% in all ethnic groups.
Numerous studies have shown that there are serious consequences to children growing up in this sort of environment. Higher tendency to engage in crime, drug use, end up in prison, etc.
Granted, this isn't an absolute; there are plenty of great single parents out there. I know several great people who came from broken homes.
However, if a stable family is touted as being a "privilege" as some progressives in Australia have stated... don't you think that this is something to aspire to, rather than something to knock down?
I've been told that I'm lucky for coming from a warm, loving family.. which I agree with.
But I would also point out that my good fortune is the result of my parents making the right decisions. My father decided to have a family once he was set in his career, and could afford to.
Now all this being said; I'm not suggesting that people on food stamps and welfare be thrown off and left to starve. I do believe in providing help for those who need it.
Were I in charge, I would implement a series of tax and spending cuts, with these benefits being one of the last, if not the last thing that gets touched.
Once the economy gets strong enough, I would announce a "sunset" on the programs.. People would have, say a year or two to find a job.
For those who think that this seems harsh, it really isn't. The welfare reform that Bill Clinton signed into law made working a requirement in order to collect benefits. Sure enough, after he signed it, there was a rapid departure from the welfare rolls.
The fact is that under those laws, the work that you were given was automatically assigned to you.. you didn't have a say.
It's like being drafted, versus enlisting voluntarily in the army. If you volunteer, you can pick where you go. If you're drafted, they stick you where they need you.
And also... a private charity has an incentive to get people off of their roles, because it shows that they're successful at alleviating poverty. I also think that in today's world, it's easier to find out which charities are reputable, and you know whether your money is being put to good use or not.
People in government want people to be on their roles, because then they're guaranteed to vote for them, and people in their party.
On political correctness:
Most people who know me pretty well, know how ridiculous I find this.
I think the reason that this has become a "thing", is that my generation, as well as the last few were wrongly taught two things:
1) You have a "right" not to be offended.
To me, being offended is like dealing with death in the family, disease, money problems, unemployment, natural disasters, relationship problems, bad bosses, doing tasks at work that you don't want to deal with, etc.
These are all unavoidable aspects of living as an adult, in the real world.
Wouldn't it make more sense for colleges to prepare students for these things, rather than protect their feelings?
2) You deserve respect automatically, regardless of what you say or do.
This is the "everyone gets a trophy, because everyone is a winner".
Anyone who has worked in the real world know what bunk this is.
People who look for someone else to protect their feelings are nothing more than overgrown children, that don't know how to resolve their own disputes.
Looking to the government, or a school to protect your feelings to me, is the equivalent of hearing:
"Mom! He was mean to me again!"
It's way easier to say "I'm offended by this!" than it is to actually debate the other person, I realize.
This mentality goes against the conventional wisdom of the ages, on how to resolve fears and discomfort.
If you're afraid of something, you have to confront it to learn how to deal with it.
I know this from personal experience.... I used to be very shy, but getting out into the real world made me learn how to deal with it.
I ultimately realized that I was far too hard on myself, and was holding myself up to an ideal standard. I realize that now that I am an extrovert, I just had to overcome my insecurities to embrace it.
Now, that being said; I don't believe that people should go around deliberately being offensive. I'm a believer in "The Golden Rule", despite no longer being a Christian.
I believe that people own their thoughts and words. You can say what you want, but you also have to deal with the consequences of it.
On the price of college tuition and school in general:
Why college is so expensive
For those who think that college is expensive because of "the free market", ask yourself why college during our parents' and grandparents' era was far more affordable.
I have talked to, and watched interviews of people who went to college 40 or more years ago, and they have said that their college was either paid off when they left, or they owned less than five figures worth of debt.
I wrote a blog about it (the link above), in which I laid out how government guaranteed loans drove the cost dramatically, if you're interested in hearing an explanation on it.
In the case of grade schools, I often hear that "poor people don't have access to good schooling"... Okay, well who runs the schools, or perhaps better put, who holds a near monopoly on them?
And why do politicians (usually Democrats) tout how great our public school system is, but send their kids to private schools?
On healthcare:
Healthcare
I wrote a blog talking about why healthcare is so expensive.
Most people don't realize that there are special interests that are driving up the costs in order to enrich themselves.
Conclusion
Some things to think about. If anyone has feedback, I will gladly hear it.
-STK
