tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/libertarianism-9636/articlesLibertarianism – The Conversation2024-02-07T08:36:12Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2219302024-02-07T08:36:12Z2024-02-07T08:36:12ZFive signs that you might be rightwing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573119/original/file-20240202-25-p9hoyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=62%2C152%2C5928%2C3835&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/rear-businessman-front-crossroad-signpost-arrows-1589679016">Shutterstock/StunningArt</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Europe is anticipated to <a href="https://ecfr.eu/publication/a-sharp-right-turn-a-forecast-for-the-2024-european-parliament-elections/">take a sharp right turn</a> in this year’s European parliament elections. The past decade has already seen a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230231166197">rightward shift in India</a>, and the United States has the greatest gap between left and right <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/10/the-polarization-in-todays-congress-has-roots-that-go-back-decades/">for 50 years</a>. In light of these global trends, it’s crucial to understand what being “rightwing” actually means, rather than simply <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/cultural-revolution-9781632864239/">using the term as an insult</a>.</p>
<p>The idea of “the right” <a href="https://time.com/5673239/left-right-politics-origins/">originated</a> in the French National Assembly of 1789. There, it described those who supported giving the king veto powers (who were to gather on the right hand side of the assembly hall). Today, however, “the right” covers a wide range of political positions. </p>
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<img alt="A painting of hundreds of people gathered in a large building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573126/original/file-20240202-29-1u00lq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573126/original/file-20240202-29-1u00lq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573126/original/file-20240202-29-1u00lq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573126/original/file-20240202-29-1u00lq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573126/original/file-20240202-29-1u00lq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573126/original/file-20240202-29-1u00lq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573126/original/file-20240202-29-1u00lq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The French National Assembly, where the first (literal) swing to the right took place.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Estatesgeneral.jpg">Wikipedia/Bibliothèque nationale de France</a></span>
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<p>Some are mainstream, such as conservatism (focusing on tradition and order), nationalism (promoting national sovereignty and identity), and neoliberalism (supporting free markets and small government). Others are more radical, including the <a href="https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/sites/default/files/assets/document/Stopfarright%20Final%20Report.pdf">far right</a>, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/alt-right">alt-right</a>, and <a href="https://graymirror.substack.com/p/principles-of-the-deep-right">deep right</a>. New variants continue to emerge, like <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Conservatism/Yoram-Hazony/9781684511105">national conservatism</a> and forms of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/618154/regime-change-by-patrick-j-deneen/">post-liberalism</a>. </p>
<p>Such diversity makes it hard to define what being rightwing entails. Yet, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506221119324">a recent study</a> of over 5,000 people in the US shed new light on the matter. </p>
<h2>The five signs</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506221119324">This study</a>, which used a more robust approach than much previous research, found that the more strongly someone identified as conservative or rightwing, the more likely they were to agree with five specific viewpoints:</p>
<p><strong>1. Belief in hierarchy</strong>. Most indicative of being on the political right was seeing the world as naturally hierarchical. This means believing that everything, from people to animals and objects, can be ranked based on their importance, quality or value. It’s not that people on the right want the world to be this way; they just think it naturally is.</p>
<p><strong>2. Sense that the universe has purpose.</strong> Rightwing people tended to believe there was more to the universe than just the mechanical movement of molecules. They believed it was in some sense alive and felt there was a deeper reason or purpose behind events.</p>
<p><strong>3. Acceptance of the status quo.</strong> Rather than striving to constantly improve the world, those on the right were more inclined to accept things as they were. They didn’t necessarily see the world as something that always needs fixing or changing.</p>
<p><strong>4. Resistance to new experiences.</strong> Being rightwing was linked with a certain reluctance to try new things. This mindset opposes the idea that everything is worth trying or doing at least once.</p>
<p><strong>5. Belief in a just world.</strong> Rightwing people tended to believe that the world is a place where working hard and being nice pays off. In such a world, people get what they deserve.</p>
<p>It is easy to see how common rightwing preferences, such as valuing tradition, religion, authority, personal responsibility, family <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/nana.12924">and country</a>, follow from these five beliefs.</p>
<h2>Why do people become rightwing?</h2>
<p>Contrary to popular opinion, people don’t simply become more conservative as they age. Our political views <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/706889">stay pretty consistent</a> throughout our lives. Instead, many factors influence the development of rightwing beliefs.</p>
<p>Genes gently mould our political views. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2020.03.012">About 40% of the difference</a> between people’s political beliefs can be linked to their genetic makeup. </p>
<p>Some, but <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2009.11.013">not all</a>, researchers think this is because genes impact aspects of personality, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/tp201596">such as openness to experience</a>, which shape our political views. Genes could also make people <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12230">more sensitive to threats</a> from changing circumstances, encouraging rightwing beliefs.</p>
<p>You may wonder what rightwing adults were like as children. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2005.09.005">One study found that</a> young conservative adults had often been preschoolers who felt “easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and relatively over-controlled and vulnerable”.</p>
<p>This could have been a result of parental upbringing, which can also shape people’s political views. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612440102">Research has found that</a> young rightwing adults were more likely to have had authoritarian parents when they were infants.</p>
<p>All this creates <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052970">rightwing brains</a>. For example, young rightwing adults tend to have an amygdala – part of the brain linked to fear and uncertainty – that is both <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2011.03.017">larger</a> and more active <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsx133">in the face of threat</a>.</p>
<p>Yet the state of society also influences how common rightwing beliefs are. The more threats a country faces, such as high unemployment, inflation and murder rates, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12014">more common rightwing beliefs</a> are.</p>
<h2>Living with the right</h2>
<p>Such research could lead you to think that people hold rightwing views simply because they are scared and unadventurous. The right already face the prejudice that their beliefs result from their being “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413514249">mentally troubled</a>”, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672221089451">stupid, or immoral</a>. </p>
<p>This leaves little space for the alternative idea that people hold rightwing beliefs after careful thought about the nature of humans and the world. Those with different political beliefs may disagree with the right’s conclusions. Yet it is always easier to denigrate the character of rightwing people than to evaluate the validity of rightwing ideas.</p>
<p>In reality, being on the right doesn’t mean poor psychological health. Having rightwing views are not linked to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167213478199">unhappiness, low self-esteem or lower life satisfaction</a>.</p>
<p>Nor can the entire rightwing be dismissed as immoral. The right simply has different <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015141">moral foundations</a> to the left. Leftwing morality <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015141">focuses on preventing harm and being fair</a>. While these issues also matter to the right, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015141">rightwing morality additionally emphasises</a> respect for <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/19485506221119324/suppl_file/sj-docx-1-spp-10.1177_19485506221119324.docx">authority, purity and loyalty</a>.</p>
<p>This leaves us with the left’s perception that people on the right are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672221089451">more stupid than evil</a>. Here things get complicated. People with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/per.2027">worse thinking skills are more likely to endorse rightwing beliefs</a>. Conservative political beliefs <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0424">are linked to</a> a lesser ability to hold information in mind, plan and adapt to changing situations.</p>
<p>However, it could be that rightwing people are simply <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2019.104124">less motivated to do well</a> on such tasks. Furthermore, holding rightwing economic views <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672211046808">may be linked to better thinking skills</a>, while leftwing authoritarianism is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000341">linked to poorer thinking skills</a>. </p>
<p>Crucially, all this tells us precisely nothing about the validity of rightwing ideologies. These must be judged on their merits, not their holders.</p>
<p>As societies become more politically divided, appreciating different viewpoints is essential to fostering dialogue and mutual understanding. When election time arrives we must debate with ideas rather than disparage with labels.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221930/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon McCarthy-Jones receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program via a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Network.</span></em></p>Being rightwing involves specific beliefs about the world but is also linked to our genes and environment.Simon McCarthy-Jones, Associate Professor in Clinical Psychology and Neuropsychology, Trinity College DublinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2125142023-08-31T17:21:47Z2023-08-31T17:21:47ZHow this summer’s hit ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ was appropriated by both the right and left<p>This summer two American country singers, Jason Aldean and Oliver Anthony, came out of nowhere with unexpected hits. In both cases, their songs were <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/17/rich-men-north-of-richmond-song/">politically appropriated</a>. </p>
<p><em>Rich Men North of Richmond</em> by Oliver Anthony, which appeared on YouTube just a few weeks ago, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/arts/music/rich-men-north-of-richmond-billboard-chart.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes">is the No. 1 song in the U.S. this week</a>, surpassing even Taylor Swift. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">“Rich Men North of Richmond” is now the No. 1 song on the U.S. Billboard Top 100.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Sociologically speaking, although its content is essentially libertarian, the song <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230818-rich-men-north-of-richmond-the-hit-song-that-has-divided-the-us">muddies the waters</a> between the American populist left and the right. It is celebrated by both the Trumpist wing of the Republican Party and some Democrats. </p>
<p>Anthony’s song was featured at the first 2024 Republican presidential primary debate. The singer has said he hates to “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/25/entertainment/oliver-anthony-song-response/index.html">to see that song being weaponized</a>. I see the right trying to characterize me as one of their own, and I see the left trying to discredit me.”</p>
<p>While Anthony has avoided partisan politics, the singer of <em>Try that in a Small Town</em>, Jason Aldean, is an avowed Trump supporter. His hit is clearly on the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/07/jason-aldean-donald-trump/674842/">right of the political spectrum</a> and lauded by Republicans.</p>
<p>Oliver Anthony presents himself as “pretty dead centre on politics.” But that didn’t prevent him from reading verses of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6J9AVlI0ZQ">Psalms, evoking God’s enemies</a>, during a recent performance of his hit song. The song’s lyrics fit the ideology of the American libertarian universe well. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Try that in a Small Town’ is clearly on the right of the political spectrum.</span></figcaption>
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<p>As researchers working in the field of political sociology, we are interested in representations of those within nationalist and populist movements. </p>
<h2>Two visions of the “people”</h2>
<p>But before analyzing the songs, let’s recall what populists on both the left and the right have in common.</p>
<p>Each sees the political field as divided between the people (seen as organic, authentic and moral) and elites (which are considered disconnected, strategic, inauthentic and above all, immoral). The left tends to see the people as a <em>demos</em> — the bedrock of democracy — while the right views them as an <em>ethnos</em> or <em>heartland</em> — guardians of the nation’s authenticity. </p>
<p>Right-wing populists see the community as distinct from the state. In their view it is characterized by its high capital of autochthony, of “local people,” as opposed to immigrants or elites. The evocation of the <em>small town</em> in Aldean’s hit is typical of this representation.</p>
<h2>Work valued, work despised</h2>
<p>The American populist right is characterized by its adherence to both the ideologies of producerism and libertarianism. </p>
<p>Producerism is an attachment to a rigorous work ethic in both senses of the word — rigorous in the Protestant sense of a disciplined, vocational and meritorious relationship to work, but also in the valorization of manual and physical labour, or what sociologist Everett Hughes describes as <a href="https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/industrial-organizational-psychology/recruitment/dirty-work/">“dirty work.”</a></p>
<p>Recent research on the social identity of “dirty” occupations explains how its artisans reconstruct their self-perception in order to create a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/259134">positive image</a>. From this perspective, Anthony’s evocation of the situation of miners activates solidarity among the people who do this kind of work. In this way, they reconfigure their identity by responding to the contempt in which their occupation is held. </p>
<p>Finally, assiduous religious practice is often associated with adherence to a populist conception of politics. In <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-flag-and-the-cross-9780197618684?cc=us&lang=en&"><em>The Flag and the Cross</em></a>, sociologists Philip S. Gorsky and Samuel L. Perry demonstrate that white people who identify as evangelical Christians are much more likely to adhere to Christian and white nationalism than are non-believers. </p>
<h2>A class discourse with a libertarian dimension</h2>
<p>However, what sets Anthony’s song apart from the usual populist right-wing discourse is that it formulates a class opposition based on socioeconomic income. This goes further than the vague evocation of an opposition between common people and elites. And this explains why the song also appeals to some on the left. </p>
<p>Yet there’s nothing specifically “left-wing” about the moral denunciation of the rich. Above all, it has deep roots in the Christian tradition. </p>
<p>Conversely, for the social-democratic tradition, it’s not the fact of being rich that’s evil in itself, but rather the absence of labour law, of freedom of association and of mechanisms and institutions that ensure redistributive justice. </p>
<p>So, as singer Billy Bragg points out in a song responding to <a href="https://genius.com/Billy-bragg-rich-men-earning-north-of-a-million-lyrics">Anthony’s hit</a>, unions are conspicuously absent in Anthony’s worldview, as they are in that of libertarians. </p>
<p>To counter the very real difficulties brought about by the transformation of the working world, contemporary social democrats suggest establishing major continuing education programs and investing in adult education. This type of occupational retraining will attenuate the anxiety generated by the “New World” Anthony evokes in his song. </p>
<h2>Inflation and ‘peripheral regions’</h2>
<p>On the right, several factors explain the success of Anthony’s anthem.</p>
<p>Firstly, there’s the widespread perception that the left has abandoned the blue-collar workers to whom <em>Rich Men</em> is de facto addressed. Part of this segment of the population feels scorned by “elites” who monopolize symbolic, educational and cultural capital. The fact that they are considered privileged on the basis of their “race” and their “gender,” according to some rather mechanical analyses, does little to help us understand the stigma these workers actually face, nor the social issues confronting post-industrial regions. </p>
<p>This first dynamic is amplified by what is also perceived as a lack of understanding of the day-to-day reality of people who live far from major urban centres.</p>
<p>Inhabitants of the rural areas <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10371656.2019.1645429?needAccess=true">tend not to feel represented</a> by elected representatives and the media. Even if this dynamic persists year after year, it is rare for the left to question the importance of including the point of view of rural inhabitants within “good” diversity. </p>
<p>On the other hand, inflationary times favour the spread of libertarian “solutions.” When citizens see their purchasing power melt away and the price of their mortgage soar, they are faced with difficult choices, or even seeing their life project at risk. If they don’t see the positive impact of the taxes they pay, they are likely to see the social state and redistributive justice as mechanisms that don’t work for them. </p>
<h2>Polarization benefits populists</h2>
<p>There is no magic bullet to stop the rise of the populist right. But there are some sociological lessons to be learned about polarization.</p>
<p>The social identity of groups is largely constructed through framing, rituals and interactions. To defuse the polarization that feeds the populist right, its opponents must stop appealing to them as a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/08/31/deplorables-basket-hillary-clinton/">“basket of deplorables,”</a> to cite Hilary Clinton’s elitist phrase. Opponents of the populist right must also stop pathologizing them, as is often the case in psychological approaches to political radicalization. Rather than defusing the framing and polarization that benefit populist politicians, these approaches reinforce them.</p>
<p>The main effect of excluding groups from participating in legitimate political interactions is to reinforce their solidarity. Mocking their rituals has the same effect. A legal framework must prevent incitement to violence and defamation and protect the right to one’s reputation and privacy. Ultimately, however, allowing participation can enable members of groups to reframe their discourse. It can also bring about changes that defuse or alter the social identity of people who identify with the groups. </p>
<p>Members of the populist right are generally able to supply cognitive or moral reasons to justify their actions. No one is obliged to share them, nor to find them “good.” However, we must seek to understand them, and to reconstruct the perceptions of justice and injustice that they fuel, or on which they are based. It’s an avenue as unpopular as it is difficult, but the alternatives are not clear.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212514/count.gif" alt="La Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Although its content is essentially libertarian, the No. 1 song of the summer in the U.S. resonates with both some Democratic supporters and those on the Trumpist right.Frédérick Guillaume Dufour, Professeur en sociologie politique, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)Alexis Harton, Étudiant à la maîtrise en sociologie, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1886612022-10-03T19:03:10Z2022-10-03T19:03:10ZDoomsday bunkers, Mars and ‘The Mindset’: the tech bros trying to outsmart the end of the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487689/original/file-20221003-21-qpxfiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C237%2C5447%2C3391&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Peter Thiel: his plan to build a bunker-type lodge in remote NZ was stymied.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Carolyn Kaster/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Douglas Rushkoff’s newest book, <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/survival-of-the-richest-9781922585790">Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires</a>, grew out of a brilliant 2018 <a href="https://onezero.medium.com/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1">Medium article</a> of the same name, which went viral and had people (aka his US editor) clamouring for a full-length treatment. </p>
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<p><em>Review: Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires – Douglas Rushkoff (Scribe Publications)</em></p>
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<p>In both pieces, Rushkoff recounts being invited to speak about “the future of technology”, only to find himself at a luxury desert resort in an undisclosed location, speaking to a select audience of five unnamed hedge fund billionaires. Within minutes, the conversation takes on a distinctly prepper-ish tone. One of the CEOs tells Rushkoff about his newly completed underground shelter, then asks, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?” </p>
<p>Rushkoff is bemused, but also grimly amused by it all. “Here they were, asking a <a href="https://theconversation.com/karl-marx-his-philosophy-explained-164068">Marxist</a> media theorist for advice on where and how to configure their doomsday bunkers,” he writes. “That’s when it hit me: at least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/with-threats-of-nuclear-war-and-climate-disaster-growing-americas-bunker-fantasy-is-woefully-inadequate-179625">With threats of nuclear war and climate disaster growing, America's 'bunker fantasy' is woefully inadequate</a>
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<h2>The Mindset</h2>
<p>So far, so head-spinningly good. Unfortunately, however, Rushkoff moves away from the billionaires and their intriguingly delusional self-preservation tactics, into a realm of high ideas. </p>
<p>Over the next 12 and a half chapters, Rushkoff offers a Grand Unified Theory of tech billionaire ideology. Inspired by a 1995 article, “<a href="https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/californian-ideology">The Californian Ideology</a>”, he chooses to call this “The Mindset” – a frustratingly vague term that doesn’t really clarify things. </p>
<p>At times, “The Mindset” is roughly synonymous with the ideology of libertarianism; at others, it is much more amorphous – referring to everything from growth-based capitalism, to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-queen-has-left-her-mark-around-the-world-but-not-all-see-it-as-something-to-be-celebrated-190343">colonialism</a>, to <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-narcissism-a-mental-health-problem-and-can-you-really-diagnose-it-online-188360">narcissism</a>. And as Hugo Rifkind notes in <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/survival-of-the-richest-escape-fantasies-of-the-tech-billionaires-by-douglas-rushkoff-review-how-the-elite-prep-for-the-end-of-the-world-38s2wlg7j">The Times</a>, “while the Mindset is interesting, it’s not nearly as interesting as the bonkers escape plans to which it leads”.</p>
<p>If you’re after a primer on the various ills of late capitalism, then strap yourself in and enjoy this wide-ranging, freewheeling romp by one of the US’s most entertaining digital culture raconteurs. </p>
<p>His subjects include – but not are not limited to – monopolies, financialisation, behavioural science, “scientism” (<a href="https://theconversation.com/our-selfish-genes-contain-the-seeds-of-our-destruction-but-there-might-be-a-fix-77927">Richard Dawkins</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/steven-pinker-lauds-reason-but-people-need-freedom-this-might-not-end-well-91928">Steven Pinker</a> et al.) and the sex crimes of <a href="https://theconversation.com/jeffrey-epsteins-arrest-is-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-human-trafficking-is-the-worlds-fastest-growing-crime-120225">Jeffrey Epstein</a>. There’s the 1980s business savvy of General Electric CEO Jack Welch and “the Western, linear drive towards progress”. Our estrangement from nature. The persistence of Aristotelian plot structures. And even “Western language systems, which tend to be more noun-based than many of their counterparts”.</p>
<h2>Relentless and breathless</h2>
<p>Rushkoff is an accessible, pithy writer, with no shortage of examples, analogies and anecdotes to string together. That said, his relentless synthesising and breathless proclamations also make the book feel a bit shambolic, a bit over-reachy. (For instance, “The Mindset prefers straight lines, linear progress and infinite expansion over the ebbs and flows in the real world.”) </p>
<p>This is especially so if you’re searching for the what-it-says-on-the-label bits – the tech bros and their bizarre survival plans. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8bceePdFruU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Inside seasteading – one of the ‘bonkers escape plans’ billiionaires are considering.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Case in point: Rushkoff tells a quite-long story about arguing with Richard Dawkins about morality at a Manhattan dinner party in the 1990s. Great. He then claims that Stephen Pinker and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett">Daniel Dennett</a> believe “the brain is mere hardware” and “humans are just robots running programs”. Sure. Next, he points out that Dawkins, Pinker and Dennett were all photographed on Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet on their way to a TED talk. Guilt by association fallacy, but okay. As a finale, Epstein is described as “truly the model, self-sovereign, transhumanist billionaire prepper”. </p>
<p>Here’s the problem: while Jeffrey Epstein was a lot of terrible things, he wasn’t a prepper, in the proper sense of that word. There’s no record of him saying he thought society was about to collapse, or that he was making any just-in-case plans. More generally, none of the aforementioned four are Silicon Valley titans, or billionaires – they’re three scientists and one <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/14/jeffrey-epstein-net-worth-is-he-billionaire-or-not/1708479001/">multimillionaire</a> Wall Street financier/paedophile. And they’re only tangentially relevant to the matter at hand. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485546/original/file-20220920-3577-9pb278.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C132%2C4173%2C2285&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485546/original/file-20220920-3577-9pb278.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C132%2C4173%2C2285&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485546/original/file-20220920-3577-9pb278.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485546/original/file-20220920-3577-9pb278.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485546/original/file-20220920-3577-9pb278.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485546/original/file-20220920-3577-9pb278.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485546/original/file-20220920-3577-9pb278.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485546/original/file-20220920-3577-9pb278.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jeffrey Epstein’s stone mansion on Little St James Island, in the US Virgin Islands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gabriel Lopez Albarran/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-survive-a-tactical-nuclear-bomb-defence-experts-explain-181340">How to survive a tactical nuclear bomb? Defence experts explain</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Libertarian tech bros</h2>
<p>Also, given how much other ground is covered, it is a little surprising that Rushkoff doesn’t name check that ur-text of cyber libertarianism, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Survive-Collapse-Welfare/dp/0684810077">The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State</a> (1997), by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg. </p>
<p>Davidson and Rees-Mogg dream of a time when individuals will be freed from the shackles of government, <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fiatmoney.asp">fiat currency</a> (government-issued paper money, not backed by a commodity such as gold) and law in general. (William Rees-Mogg’s son, UK politician Jacob Rees-Mogg, was one of the most vocal cheerleaders for <a href="https://theconversation.com/boris-johnson-and-partygate-he-who-lives-by-the-brexit-sword-dies-by-the-brexit-sword-175323">Brexit</a>.) </p>
<p>In this thrilling new age, a “cognitive elite” will be able to rule – or ignore – the rest of the world, as they see fit. The Sovereign Individual is a hugely influential text in the start-up world; early Facebook backer, Paypal co-founder and conservative libertarian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel">Peter Thiel</a>, who is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/18/peter-thiel-refused-consent-for-sprawling-lodge-in-new-zealand-local-council">infamous in New Zealand</a> for buying his citizenship and attempting to build luxury bunkers in the wilderness wrote the foreword to the 2020 reprint. </p>
<p>Survival of the Richest contains an excellent anecdote about Rushkoff being in a Zoom meeting with some tech developers on 6 January 2021, which is derailed by the breaking news of an attempted coup at the Capitol building (if you think <em>that’s</em> bad, wait till you hear how the programmers react!). </p>
<p>There’s this jaw-dropping factoid: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Jeff Bezos has a yacht with a helipad that serves as a companion yacht to his main yacht, which has large sails that would get in the way of his helicopter during takeoff and landing. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are some extremely sharp reflections on artificial intelligence: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Whether AI will develop human and superhuman abilities in the next decade, century, millennium, if ever, may matter less right now than AI’s grip over the tech elite, and what this obsession tells us about The Mindset. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Regarding the prospect of artificial intelligence putting millions of people out of work in the near future, entrepreneurs such as Reid Hoffmann (LinkedIn CEO) and Mark Cuban (startup dude, billionaire) are worried that unemployed humans might coalesce into vengeful, billionaire-resenting mobs and attack them. Though they’re not worried about ruining all those people’s lives in the first place. </p>
<p>But – and this is a little ironic – there’s precious little biographical detail about Mark Cuban, or Reid Hoffmann, or any of the other bros in the book. Their function is purely as symbols of rapacious greed: embodiments of The Mindset. They are not examined as deeply flawed, but nonetheless complex human beings. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Dh1JZVjKUAo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Journalist Baz MacDonald searches for evidence of the survival bunkers being shipped to New Zealand.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-do-we-owe-future-generations-and-what-can-we-do-to-make-their-world-a-better-place-189591">What do we owe future generations? And what can we do to make their world a better place?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Dismissive rather than curious</h2>
<p>In some ways, this is a question of method, and access. While Rushkoff mixes in some pretty wild company on his global speaking gigs, and has serendipitous encounters with some outlandish figures, he’s not doing any journalistic or enthnographic legwork here. </p>
<p>In short: he hasn’t interviewed any of tech billionaires he writes about. He doesn’t really know what motivates them – or at least, not all of it. When it comes to these wealthy, selfish people’s strategies to survive “the event”, Rushkoff is dismissive rather than curious. He is adamant that a billionaire’s prepper scheme – any scheme – just won’t work. </p>
<p>In Chapter One, he contends that “the probability of a fortified bunker actually protecting its occupants from the reality of, well, reality, is very slim”, because “the closed ecosystems of underground facilities are preposterously brittle”. If your underground hydroponic garden is overrun by mould or bacteria, there’s no “do-over”; you’ll just die.</p>
<p>Similarly, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>small islands are utterly dependent on air and sea deliveries for basic staples […] the billionaires who reside in such locales are more, not less, dependent on complex supply chains than those of us embedded in industrial civilization. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/floating-cities-the-future-or-a-washed-up-idea-116511">Seasteading</a> – the libertarian idea of building autonomous, floating mini-states, which operate outside of state control – is mentioned, but not discussed in any detail. And the modest proposals of Elon Musk, Richard Branson, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-solar-system-belongs-to-us-all-not-just-jeff-bezos-173610">Jeff Bezos</a> et al. to <a href="https://theconversation.com/want-to-become-a-space-tourist-you-finally-can-if-you-have-250-000-and-a-will-to-sign-your-life-away-160543">commercialise space travel</a> and colonise Mars are rejected with the observation “only trillionaires will actually make it to space to terraform planets, anyway”. </p>
<p>This might be true enough – but it’s also the ostensible subject of the book, and as such, perhaps worth spending a bit more time on. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uEwSpQWnS-w?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">How Space X and NASA plan to colonise Mars.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Billionaire bunkers as metaphors</h2>
<p>For Rushkoff, then, “the billionaire bunker strategy is less a viable strategy for apocalypse than a metaphor for this disconnected way of life” – a canny insight, to be sure. But those bunkers aren’t <em>only</em> metaphorical; they’re also very real, and large, and expensive, and fascinating in their logistic intricacies and (im)possibilities. </p>
<p>If Survival of the Richest had told us more about this insane infrastructure, and about the people who dreamed it up, we might be able to better understand the <a href="https://www.the-sun.com/lifestyle/tech-old/1638425/jeff-bezos-world-record-space-penis/">unmistakably phallic spaceships</a> as symbols, too. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485550/original/file-20220920-26-ermdgr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485550/original/file-20220920-26-ermdgr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485550/original/file-20220920-26-ermdgr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485550/original/file-20220920-26-ermdgr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485550/original/file-20220920-26-ermdgr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485550/original/file-20220920-26-ermdgr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485550/original/file-20220920-26-ermdgr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485550/original/file-20220920-26-ermdgr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Readers with specific interest in doomsday bunkers, and what they might represent in ideological terms, should seek out Bradley Garrett’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/bunker-9780141987552">Bunker: Building for the End Times</a> (2020). Mark O’Connell writes insightfully about Peter Thiel’s New Zealand boltholes as a symptom of extreme libertarian misanthropy in <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/558414/notes-from-an-apocalypse-by-mark-oconnell/">Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back</a> (2020).</p>
<p>Those wishing to learn more personal details about the computer nerds and venture captial bros who hold such outsized sway in contemporary life should read Max Chafkin’s 2021 biography <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/609711/the-contrarian-by-max-chafkin/">The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power</a>, or Ashlee Vance’s 2015 book <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/elon-musk-ashlee-vance?variant=32161254965282">Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Is Shaping Our Future</a>, as well as David Runciman and John Lanchester’s incisive essays about <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n18/david-runciman/competition-is-for-losers">Thiel</a> and <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n17/john-lanchester/let-s-all-go-to-mars">Musk</a> respectively in the London Review of Books. </p>
<p>Or, what the hell, rewatch <a href="https://www.netflix.com/au/title/70132721">The Social Network</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188661/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Doig does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Douglas Rushkoff’s Survival of the Richest is less about tech billionaires and their ‘bonkers’ escape plans than it is an entertaining primer on the various ills of late capitalism.Tom Doig, Lecturer in Creative Writing, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1739032022-02-03T01:15:34Z2022-02-03T01:15:34Z‘Worthy of a Bond villain’: the bizarre history of libertarian attempts to create independent cities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443340/original/file-20220131-21-1f0bemq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Late last year, El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-59368483">announced plans</a> to build “Bitcoin City” – a tax-free territory in the country’s east.</p>
<p>The city will use the <a href="https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2019/jun/cryptocurrency-ten-years-on.html">cryptocurrency</a> and be powered by the nearby Conchuagua volcano. According to Bukele, there will be:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>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.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Whether or not <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/rates-bonds/el-salvador-plans-first-bitcoin-city-backed-by-bitcoin-bonds-2021-11-21/">Bitcoin City</a> eventuates, it joins a long and bizarre history of libertarian-inspired attempts to start independent cities and countries.</p>
<h2>Bitcoin City</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443341/original/file-20220131-13-1i1nkdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443341/original/file-20220131-13-1i1nkdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443341/original/file-20220131-13-1i1nkdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443341/original/file-20220131-13-1i1nkdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443341/original/file-20220131-13-1i1nkdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1020&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443341/original/file-20220131-13-1i1nkdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1020&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443341/original/file-20220131-13-1i1nkdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1020&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The generous financial incentives in Bitcoin City are aimed at encouraging foreign investment. </p>
<p>However, the plan has quickly been derided by finance commentators as something “<a href="https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/building-a-volcano-powered-city-worthy-of-a-bond-villain-in-el-salvador-using-%241-billion">worthy of a Bond villain</a>”. There are doubts construction will ever begin. </p>
<p>As the Australian Financial Review <a href="https://www.afr.com/technology/why-the-world-s-first-bitcoin-city-is-a-disaster-in-the-making-20211207-p59fid">observes</a>, Bitcoin City is likely nothing more than a “splashy distraction from Bukele’s economic woes”.</p>
<h2>New libertarian cities</h2>
<p>But Bukele is not the only one to be tempted to set up a new territory, with new (or no) rules.</p>
<p>In a 2009 <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer_why_the_world_needs_charter_cities">TED Talk</a>, American economist Paul Romer argued developing nations should partner with foreign countries or corporations to create autonomous model cities. </p>
<p>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 city’s 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. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-el-salvador-and-nigeria-are-taking-different-approaches-to-digital-currencies-plus-are-we-living-in-a-simulation-the-conversation-weekly-podcast-transcript-174807">How El Salvador and Nigeria are taking different approaches to digital currencies – plus, are we living in a simulation? The Conversation Weekly podcast transcript</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Romer argues such cities would attract <a href="https://www.cgdev.org/publication/technologies-rules-and-progress-case-charter-cities">significant international investment</a> 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 Romer’s proposition.</p>
<h2>The Honduran experiment</h2>
<p>In 2011, the Honduran Congress amended its constitution to facilitate the development of Romer’s idea. Cities built within “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26208396">special development regions</a>” would not be subject to Honduran law or taxation. Instead, they would be self-governing under a unique legal framework. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443331/original/file-20220131-15-1uxs7f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443331/original/file-20220131-15-1uxs7f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443331/original/file-20220131-15-1uxs7f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443331/original/file-20220131-15-1uxs7f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443331/original/file-20220131-15-1uxs7f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443331/original/file-20220131-15-1uxs7f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443331/original/file-20220131-15-1uxs7f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele announced his Bitcoin City plans to a gathering of cryptocurrency investors in November 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Salvador Melendez/AP/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>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 “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/your-next-government/F6D293F69755E864F82D8468604235C7">zone for employment and economic development</a>” (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. </p>
<p>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, <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/120559/honduras-charter-cities-spearheaded-us-conservatives-libertarians">the first committee</a>, announced in 2014, was heavily comprised of libertarians and former advisers to United States President Ronald Reagan. In 2020, the first site was <a href="https://econamericas.com/2020/07/first-charter-city-honduras-prospera-revives-zedes/">launched</a>, but development does not appear to have commenced. </p>
<h2>To the sea</h2>
<p>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. </p>
<p>Since 2008, attention has focused on the California-based Sea Steading Institute. </p>
<p>Founded by American libertarian <a href="https://twitter.com/patrissimo">Patri Friedman </a>(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. </p>
<hr>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-australia-micronation-central-and-do-you-still-have-to-pay-tax-if-you-secede-162518">Why is Australia 'micronation central'? And do you still have to pay tax if you secede?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.shimajournal.org/issues/v10n2/e.-Simpson-Shima-v10n2.pdf">interested</a> in sea steading’s potential to “peacefully test new ideas for governance” so “the most successful can then inspire change in governments around the world”. </p>
<p>No city has yet been built. In 2017 <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/354491/hundreds-march-in-tahiti-against-buildin%20%20g-of-floating-islands">negotiations with French Polynesia</a> for the development of floating cities within their territorial waters stalled when community pressure forced the government to withdraw. Many wondered <a href="https://iconbooks.com/ib-title/sealand/">whether</a> “facilitating the tax evasion of the world’s greatest fortunes” would actually be beneficial for the islands. </p>
<h2>The Republic of Minerva</h2>
<p>Other <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/micronations-and-the-search-for-sovereignty/B0414A3A322695D9EE71E4CDDFDA06DE">proposals</a> 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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A village on a Micronesian atoll." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443342/original/file-20220131-25-1cba7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443342/original/file-20220131-25-1cba7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443342/original/file-20220131-25-1cba7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443342/original/file-20220131-25-1cba7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443342/original/file-20220131-25-1cba7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443342/original/file-20220131-25-1cba7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443342/original/file-20220131-25-1cba7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">To date, plans for new, independent floating territories have not been realised.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over the second half of 1971, Oliver’s 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. </p>
<p>Progress proved hard going. Only 15 acres of land had been reclaimed by the time Oliver’s funds were exhausted. Nearby countries were also watching with alarm. In June 1972, King Tupou IV declared Tongan sovereignty over the atoll and ejected Oliver’s team. </p>
<p>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 <a href="https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/137202/1/SST-2-2-2019-Hayward.pdf">expelled</a> by the Tongan military. Today, Minerva <a href="https://reason.com/2008/08/01/artifact-hope-floats/">has been</a> “more or less reclaimed by the sea”.</p>
<p>Perhaps they should have invested in Bitcoin.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173903/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Harry Hobbs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele wants to build “Bitcoin City” – a tax-free territory in the country’s east, powered by a nearby volcano.Harry Hobbs, Senior lecturer, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1471702020-10-06T23:04:40Z2020-10-06T23:04:40ZThe rise of ACT in 2020 highlights tensions between the party’s libertarian and populist traditions<p>New Zealand’s election is coming down to a simple contest between the Labour-Green bloc on the left and the National-ACT bloc on the right. Although the right is behind in the polls, if it were to gain the majority, ACT Party leader David Seymour could become deputy prime minister. </p>
<p>Either way, ACT is newly assertive. Although Seymour owes his Epsom seat to National’s grace and favour, he seems less inclined nowadays to be their political lapdog. He wants people to support ACT on its own terms.</p>
<p>Remarkably, the party has risen in opinion polls from below 1% to <a href="https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/09/nz-election-2020-labour-s-support-slips-can-t-govern-alone-in-new-poll.html">recently</a> as high as 8%. That would give ACT up to ten seats in parliament. Would Seymour also negotiate to bring one or more first-time MPs into cabinet alongside him?</p>
<p>In the past two elections, ACT held on with only one electorate seat, thanks to the National Party deal: Epsom’s National supporters agree to vote for the ACT candidate as their local representative but give their party vote to National.</p>
<p>This <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11919181">arrangement</a> goes back to 2005. It paid a handsome dividend in 2008 when ACT won Epsom and achieved 3.65% in the party vote. This delivered the party a proportional share of five seats, despite being below the 5% party-vote threshold. </p>
<p>With ACT’s support on the right, and two other parties in the centre, John Key formed a National-led government that lasted three terms. Then ACT’s party vote fell below 1% in 2014 and 2017, with only the Epsom seat keeping it in parliament.</p>
<p>In 2020, however, after a term in opposition and no longer overshadowed by National, ACT is flourishing again. </p>
<h2>ACT rises at National’s expense</h2>
<p>Seymour has held his own, speaking up for freedom of speech and <a href="https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2019/04/david-seymour-why-i-oppose-the-gun-reforms.html">opposing</a> the banning of semi-automatic guns following the mosque shootings in March 2019. He introduced a member’s bill to permit euthanasia that is likely to come into force after a decisive <a href="https://www.referendums.govt.nz/endoflifechoice/index.html">referendum</a> to be held alongside the general election.</p>
<p>However, National leader Judith Collins has bluntly <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12367428">stated</a> she sees ACT’s job as being to win Epsom and to help eliminate the populist New Zealand First Party, which on recent polling is likely to be ousted from parliament on October 17. </p>
<hr>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-missing-question-from-new-zealands-cannabis-debate-what-about-personal-freedom-and-individual-rights-146304">The missing question from New Zealand's cannabis debate: what about personal freedom and individual rights?</a>
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<p>ACT’s rise in the <a href="https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/09/newshub-reid-research-poll-for-the-first-time-exclusive-polling-shows-how-voting-habits-changed-since-last-election.html">polls</a> does come partly from those conservative erstwhile New Zealand First voters who are disillusioned with Winston Peters for forming a coalition government with Labour.</p>
<p>But Collins must be worried that some centre-right voters have given up on National winning and are exercising their freedom of choice by <a href="https://www.newsroom.co.nz/the-secret-to-acts-popularity">defecting</a> to ACT — and she wants them back.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361756/original/file-20201005-22-s6zzej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361756/original/file-20201005-22-s6zzej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361756/original/file-20201005-22-s6zzej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361756/original/file-20201005-22-s6zzej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361756/original/file-20201005-22-s6zzej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361756/original/file-20201005-22-s6zzej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361756/original/file-20201005-22-s6zzej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Recent surveys show ACT picking up voters from National, Labour and the Māori Party.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screenshot/Newshub-Reid Research</span></span>
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<h2>What ACT supporters want</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.act.org.nz/principles">Association of Consumers and Taxpayers</a> was founded in 1993 by former National cabinet minister Derek Quigley and Sir Roger Douglas, formerly minister of finance in David Lange’s Labour government and engineer of the economic deregulation that became known as “Rogernomics”.</p>
<p>The party stands for less government, more private enterprise and freedom of choice. It is therefore a child of neoliberalism — indeed, its only legitimate child. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/assisted-dying-referendum-people-at-the-end-of-their-lives-say-it-offers-a-good-death-144112">Assisted dying referendum: people at the end of their lives say it offers a 'good death'</a>
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<p>For example, Seymour’s referendum bill to allow assisted dying (euthanasia) was officially named the <a href="https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/bills-and-laws/bills-proposed-laws/document/BILL_74307/end-of-life-choice-bill">End of Life Choice Bill</a>, asserting its ideological origins with the word “choice”. He is <a href="https://www.act.org.nz/budget2020">proposing</a> much more radical cuts to public spending and taxation than his only possible coalition partner, National.</p>
<p>We gained an insight into how ACT supporters think from the online reader-initiated <a href="https://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/about-massey/news/article.cfm?mnarticle_uuid=76E7E758-24B0-44C8-88E1-4B276399ECE3">Stuff/Massey opinion poll</a> in July. Compared with the other parties in parliament, ACT supporters stand out as:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>most likely to rate the New Zealand government’s overall response to COVID-19 as “unsuccessful”: 29.5% compared with 9.9% for the whole sample</p></li>
<li><p>most strongly in favour of abolishing the Māori electoral roll: 68.2% compared with 36.6% overall</p></li>
<li><p>more likely to prefer that the government take a “cautious and sceptical” approach on climate change: 72.5% compared with 36.4% overall</p></li>
<li><p>more in favour of the country getting back to “business as usual” rather than reforming the economic system itself during the post-pandemic rebuild: 75% compared with 31% overall.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Populist or purist?</h2>
<p>ACT supporters’ values are largely diametrically opposed to those upheld by Green supporters, as might be expected of a libertarian party that stands for individualism and deregulation. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10007322">In the past</a>, though, the party has resorted to populist law-and-order and anti-welfare policies. In 2011 it deployed the “<a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10764866">one law for all</a>” slogan to attack policies addressing indigenous rights.</p>
<p>As ACT leader since 2014, Seymour has steered the party back towards free-market liberalism. But there is still an element of right-wing populist thinking among ACT’s supporters. </p>
<p>Sizeable minorities of them agree with conspiracy theories about COVID-19 (25%) and hope Donald Trump is re-elected in November (32%) — more than among National supporters who stood at about 20% on both points.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nz-election-2020-survey-shows-voters-are-divided-on-climate-policy-and-urgency-of-action-146569">NZ election 2020: survey shows voters are divided on climate policy and urgency of action</a>
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<p>If current polling holds true, Seymour will bring with him into parliament a caucus of freedom-loving individuals, none of whom has any previous representative experience. </p>
<p>Among them is a firearms enthusiast, a former police officer and a farmer. At number seven on the list is a <a href="https://www.act.org.nz/karen-chhour">self-employed mother of four</a> who the party claims “is better than ten ivory tower ‘experts’” when it comes to beating poverty.</p>
<p>So far, ACT’s best election result was in 2002 when it gained 7.14% of the party vote and nine seats in the 120-seat House of Representatives. If it repeats that in 2020, Seymour will go from being a lone voice for his party to the leader of a small but inexperienced caucus.</p>
<p>Managing that team of individualistic newbies may well be the first test of his libertarian instincts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147170/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Grant Duncan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Climbing in the polls and less inclined to be National’s political lapdog, is the ACT Party more or less than the sum of its parts?Grant Duncan, Associate Professor, School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1399912020-06-03T14:45:26Z2020-06-03T14:45:26ZCourt throws South Africa’s lockdown exit strategy into disarray. But it got it wrong<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339529/original/file-20200603-130903-10r366w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa's professional surfers have been allowed back in the water. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brenton Geach/Gallo Images via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A South African High Court has declared the government’s lockdown regulations <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZAGPPHC/2020/184.pdf">unconstitutional</a> and, therefore, invalid, driving a coach and horses through its COVID-19 strategy. </p>
<p>Justice Norman Davis found that both the <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/disaster-management-act-regulations-alert-level-3-during-coronavirus-covid-19-lockdown-28">level 3</a> and <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/minister-senzo-mchunu-level-4-risk-adjusted-measures-public-service-response-covid-19-8-may">level 4</a> regulations are “irrational”. The government has <a href="https://www.gov.za/Coronavirus">five COVID-19 alert levels</a>, from level 5 down to level 1, when most normal activity can resume. </p>
<p>After <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/president-cyril-ramaphosa-extension-coronavirus-covid-19-lockdown-end-april-9-apr-2020-0000">two months</a> of enduring one of the most stringent lockdowns of any country, there have been signs of restlessness in some communities. As the government added greater detail to the regulations, when the country moved from level 5 to level 3, the credibility of restrictions has been stretched.</p>
<p>But the legal and governance impact of this week’s <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZAGPPHC/2020/184.pdf">judgment</a> is far-reaching. It will heap further unwelcome pressure onto a government that is already under intense pressure as it tries to navigate a complex, wholly unfamiliar and ever-changing decision-making terrain.</p>
<p>The judgment declares that the regulations are invalid. But, with the exception of some, it suspends the declaration of invalidity for 14 days to allow the Minister of Cooperative Governance, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to</p>
<blockquote>
<p>review, amend and republish the regulations (with) due consideration to the limitation each regulation has on the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights contained in the constitution.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This requires the government to redo the work that it has done in preparing, and then promulgating, the regulations. It also creates a new layer of uncertainty to an already highly fluid situation.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/rule-of-law-has-moved-centre-stage-in-lockdown-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters-139045">Rule of law has moved centre stage in lockdown: what it is and why it matters</a>
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<p>During the 14-day period, the newly instituted <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/disaster-management-act-regulations-alert-level-3-during-coronavirus-covid-19-lockdown-28">level 3 regulations</a>, which reopened a large part of the economy and allowed the sale of alcohol, will remain in force. But, the judgment means that it will not be possible for the government to revert to the old level 4 regulations without a substantial rewrite.</p>
<p>An appeal by government to the Constitutional Court is highly likely, and highly desirable. It is hard to think of a more significant judgment in terms of how many people and how wide a sweep of the economy it affects. </p>
<p>But, in my view, the judgment is unconvincing in many respects and has applied the law incorrectly. </p>
<p>Given the stakes, it is important that it is properly understood and held up for public scrutiny. </p>
<h2>Rationality test</h2>
<p>For a government decision to be held by the court to be “irrational” does not mean that the court finds the decision itself to not be based on logical reasons or clear thinking.</p>
<p>Instead, the rationality test permits the court to review a decision based on an assessment of whether there is a rational connection between the government decision, the process used to reach it, and a legitimate government purpose.</p>
<p>The court notes that the government’s affidavit had argued that the “means justify the end” and, therefore, the regulations pass the rationality test. But, Justice Davis then observed that he wondered aloud during argument whether in fact the government actually intended to apply the Machiavellian notion of the “end justifies the means”.</p>
<p>As the judgment unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that he takes a dim view of the reasonableness (not rationality) of a good deal of the government’s decision-making, thereby potentially confusing the law.</p>
<p>He finds, for example, that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Restricting the right to freedom of movement in order to limit contact with others in order to curtail the risks of spreading the virus is rational, but to restrict the hours of exercise to arbitrarily determined time period is completely irrational.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The court’s responsibility was to see if there was any rational connection between the decision and the purpose, not whether there was a better means of serving the end goal.</p>
<p>Moreover, it requires the court to examine with great precision each and every step of the decision-making process, and to assess the evidence of how the decision was taken and whether, in an objective sense, the decision was correctly deemed to be in service of the purpose. </p>
<p>Justice Davis’s judgment fails to do so. Although, if government did an inadequate job at placing sufficient evidence of their reasoning and decision-making process, then they are partly at least the architects of their own misfortune.</p>
<p>Regardless, Justice Davis appears to review both sets of regulations and then pick out the ones that displease him most in terms of whether they “make sense” to him or not, and to declare all of them invalid, and not just those that he has sought to apply the rationality test to.</p>
<p>The reference to evidence is scanty. For example, the court observes – without any citation – that millions of South Africans in the informal sector have less daily contact than people attending a funeral, making the “blanket ban” on them “appear to be irrational”.</p>
<h2>Holes in the argument</h2>
<p>The court describes the approach of the government as “a paternalistic approach, rather than a constitutionally justifiable approach”.</p>
<p>Paternalism may be politically or ideologically unattractive to some, especially libertarians. But, it is not, per se, a constitutionally impermissible policy or strategic position for the government to adopt, pandemic crisis or not.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339534/original/file-20200603-130929-180zbbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339534/original/file-20200603-130929-180zbbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339534/original/file-20200603-130929-180zbbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339534/original/file-20200603-130929-180zbbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339534/original/file-20200603-130929-180zbbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339534/original/file-20200603-130929-180zbbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339534/original/file-20200603-130929-180zbbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Waste recyclers queue for food handouts in Johannesburg as the nationwide lockdown left them unable to work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The judgment may also be vulnerable to attack for adopting a simplistic approach to the “legitimate government purpose”, which it finds to be solely to contain the spread of the virus. This is a misunderstanding.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/numbers-can-kill-politicians-should-handle-south-africas-coronavirus-data-with-care-136587">Numbers can kill: politicians should handle South Africa's coronavirus data with care</a>
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<p>The risk-adjusted strategy that creates the framework of different COVID-19 alert levels, under the <a href="http://www.cogta.gov.za/cgta_2016/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/DISASTER-MANAGEMENT-ACT.pdf">Disaster Management Act 2002</a>, seeks to strike a balance at every stage of the unfolding crisis between competing and overlapping priorities. </p>
<p>This includes the public health priority of building capacity in the health system to absorb an inevitable rise in infections, and the duty of the state to protect lives and livelihoods.</p>
<p>The other puzzling aspect of the judgment relates to its approach to the Bill of Rights and possible limitation of the rights enshrined in it.</p>
<p>Clearly, the lockdown involved the limitation of certain “normal” freedoms. The question is whether the limitations are constitutionally permissible pursuant to the test set out in section 36 of the constitution. This requires that <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1727-37812014000600002">such limitations be proportional</a>. This means that the government may use only the least restrictive measure for achieving its aim.</p>
<p>But, having found the regulations to be irrational and therefore invalid, the court had no need to consider whether they unjustifiably infringed any right protected in the Bill of Rights. Justice Davis bluntly finds that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…in an overwhelming number of instances the Minister (sic) have not demonstrated that the limitation of the Constitutional rights already mentioned, have been justified in the context of section 36 of the Constitution.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Confusingly, the court order requires the government not to fix the impugned “irrationality” of the regulations, but instead to review them with regard to whether they may infringe the Bill of Rights. </p>
<h2>Rule of law</h2>
<p>Government lawyers, as well as cabinet ministers and officials, will be scratching their heads over this judgment. Not least because the notion of a “rationally justifiable” infringement of constitutional rights is a novel formulation.</p>
<p>Whether the judgment is overturned on appeal or not, what it shows – once again – is that South Africa’s rule of law and its judicial independence are alive and kicking.</p>
<p>At a time of such extreme crisis, courts may be inclined to give the government a little more latitude – such as the decision of the German Supreme Court last month, <a href="https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2020/bvg20-036.html">in finding</a> that its government has a wide scope for the assessment, evaluation and design of its COVID-19 response. </p>
<p>As South Africa’s Constitutional Court has found in <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2009/28.html">other cases</a> involving complex public policy and socio-economic rights, the more “polycentric” the governmental decision-making or policy choice, the more careful the court should be not to stray into the executive’s lane. Nothing could be as polycentric as COVID-19. </p>
<p>This is not to say that government should be given a free hand or a blank cheque. A state of national disaster cannot permit lawmaking through the back door, nor enable a slippery slope into autocracy. Far from it. As the High Court judgment shows, government will have to work hard to ensure that it is acting within the law, respecting hard won rights every step of the way.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139991/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Calland is a Founding Partner in political risk consultancy, The Paternoster Group, and a member of the Advisory Council of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution.</span></em></p>The judgment creates a new layer of uncertainty in an already highly fluid situation and heaps further unwelcome pressure onto government.Richard Calland, Associate Professor in Public Law, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1057822018-10-30T15:52:02Z2018-10-30T15:52:02ZBitcoin turns ten – here’s how it all started and what the future might hold<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242958/original/file-20181030-76387-j8wrca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/bitcoin-concept-printed-circuit-board-processor-691346062?src=l37Sdn0-y_jQyrBkOhfGvA-1-17">Sashkin / Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A mysterious, anonymous entity known as “Satoshi Nakamoto” posted a <a href="https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf">white paper</a> on October 31 2008 entitled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”. It was the first time that the concept of Bitcoin entered the world. But outside of the <a href="https://cryptoanarchy.wiki/getting-started/what-is-a-cypherpunk">cypherpunk</a> mailing lists – those promoting the use of privacy-enhancing technology – this event was hardly noticed. Ten years on, who hasn’t at least heard of the cryptocurrency?</p>
<p>On just nine pages, the white paper explained how the Bitcoin system would work. Many attempts at electronic cash had already been made going right back to computer scientist David Chaum’s <a href="https://www.chaum.com/ecash/">“Digicash”</a> developed in the 1980s. Using an intricate dance of cryptography, Digicash enabled people to pay each other online anonymously, yet prevented users from sending the same money to two different people at the same time (the so-called <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/doublespending.asp">“double spending problem”</a>).</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-history-of-bitcoin-told-through-the-five-different-groups-who-bought-it-98359">A history of Bitcoin – told through the five different groups who bought it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>For a while, Digicash caught on. Even the likes of <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB831416067295410500">Deutsche Bank adopted it</a>, and a growing list of merchants started accepting it. Compared to the credit-based systems of Visa, Mastercard and later Paypal, at least some people could see the benefits of a currency that allowed micropayments with extremely low transactions fees. Anyone with libertarian tendencies loved the idea of using a currency outside the control of any authority. </p>
<p>But Visa and Mastercard upped their game and won the battle for payment dominance. It seemed the struggle was over, but some cypherpunks refused to give up. Adam Back <a href="http://www.hashcash.org/">created “Hashcash” in 1997</a>, which together with <a href="http://www.weidai.com/bmoney.txt">Wei Dai’s “b-money”</a> (both cited in Nakamoto’s white paper) and <a href="https://nakamotoinstitute.org/bit-gold/">Nick Szabo’s “Bitgold”</a> were the last significant efforts to create an online cash system before Bitcoin. The idea fizzled out following the dotcom bust of 2000-02. It was only brought back to life by Nakamoto in 2008.</p>
<h2>Nakamoto’s vision</h2>
<p>Previous attempts came close to creating secure digital cash, but there was always one major problem they encountered: the need for a trusted third party like a bank to maintain the system in some way. Nakamoto’s white paper solved this problem by distributing the process of maintaining a totally transparent public ledger (known as the blockchain) among a network of competing “miners”. As long as one miner does not control more than half of the whole network of computing power, the system is secure. </p>
<p>Cryptography, computer science, and now crucially an elaborate system of economic incentives all came together into a mindblowing overall piece of ingenuity. The cypherpunk vision to enhance privacy, limit government power and increase its transparency had finally been realised.</p>
<p>Or had it? If there was any lesson to be learned from the failure of Digicash, it was that you could invent a brilliant system, but you had to convince people to use it, despite them never being able to come close to understanding how it actually works. With Bitcoin, we have seen extraordinary hype, with <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-bitcoin-bubble-how-we-know-it-will-burst-88511">astronomical price booms and busts</a>, and thousands of spin-off cryptocurrencies and private blockchains that are all just variations of the original. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/anthill-23-bursting-the-bitcoin-bubble-93337">Anthill 23: Bursting the Bitcoin bubble</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Ethereum is arguably one of the most significant spin offs. It shows how blockchain technology can be combined with <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/information/ethereum-smart-contracts-work/">smart contracts</a>, potentially providing a costless, decentralised way of replacing the colossal global army of trust-based service industries that conventional money relies on. </p>
<p>There is, however, only one existing blockchain that is consistent with Nakamoto’s vision: <a href="https://www.bitcoincash.org/">Bitcoin Cash</a>, a so-called “hard-fork” of Bitcoin that generally shares the same history and protocol, except for two crucial details. The blocks on its chain are a massive 32-times larger than the original Bitcoin, and growing. More transactions per block, means lower fees per transaction, paving the way for global adoption. Plus, built-in codes that were switched off in the original Bitcoin, have been reignited, potentially allowing all the smart contract capabilities of Ethereum. </p>
<h2>Vision accomplished?</h2>
<p>The white paper itself is not explicit about goals, but the main implicit aim is clear: to create a secure form of online cash that does not depend on a trusted third party. This has already been demonstrated as a concept. The only question that remains is, to what extent will it be adopted?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242971/original/file-20181030-76413-k4lncu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242971/original/file-20181030-76413-k4lncu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242971/original/file-20181030-76413-k4lncu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242971/original/file-20181030-76413-k4lncu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242971/original/file-20181030-76413-k4lncu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242971/original/file-20181030-76413-k4lncu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242971/original/file-20181030-76413-k4lncu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Will Bitcoin become the payment system of the future?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/customer-paying-nfc-technology-271711736?src=nWcby-CzKFUCyzO2eTuNOA-1-3">s4visuals/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>A recent clue to that question may lie right in the heart of London’s financial centre, Canary Wharf. Here, the Brewdog company <a href="https://www.brewdog.com/lowdown/blog/bitcoin-cash-and-brewdog">recently launched a promotional event</a> accepting Bitcoin Cash as payment. It is cheaper for them to process payments compared to credit cards, even allowing for the cost of them having to convert Bitcoin Cash back to pounds sterling. Recently, computer companies <a href="https://www.newegg.com/">Newegg</a> and Microsoft have also started accepting Bitcoin Cash as payment. </p>
<p>Further afield, more and more developing countries like South Africa are experimenting enthusiastically with new apps that store Bitcoin Cash like <a href="https://www.centbee.com/">Centbee</a>, which may help people who can’t open bank accounts. A new app developed in Spain called <a href="https://handcash.io/">HandCashapp</a> and an even bolder concept called <a href="https://www.moneybutton.com/">The Money Button</a> hint at a whole new paradigm of automatic click-based micropayments that could also spell the end of pop-up adds appearing on popular content online. </p>
<p>Nakamoto’s vision, in some sense, may have already been achieved, but will Bitcoin Cash permanently replace all fiat currencies and become <a href="https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/1998/09/24/one-world-one-money">one global money</a>? The world wide web arrived in 1990, and you could argue it took a dramatic collapse and 20 years before its true commercial potential could be realised. In 2028, maybe it’s not unfeasible that the technology underlying Bitcoin will do the same for global money and all trust-based financial, legal and other services.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>More <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/bitcoin-1358?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=Bitcoin">Bitcoin</a> articles, written by academic experts:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/bitcoins-rollercoaster-ride-reflects-the-biggest-issue-facing-cryptocurrencies-regulation-101690?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=Brexit">Bitcoin’s rollercoaster ride reflects the biggest issue facing cryptocurrencies: regulation</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/beyond-bitcoin-how-blockchains-can-empower-communities-to-control-their-own-energy-supply-99411?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=Brexit">Beyond Bitcoin: how blockchains can empower communities to control their own energy supply</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/why-energy-sapping-bitcoin-mining-is-here-to-stay-92138?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=Brexit">Why energy-sapping bitcoin mining is here to stay</a></em></p></li>
</ul>
<p><em>For more evidence-based articles by academics, subscribe to our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=Brexit">newsletter</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105782/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jack Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Satoshi Nakamoto proposed Bitcoin in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.Jack Rogers, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of ExeterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/983592018-08-28T12:59:11Z2018-08-28T12:59:11ZA history of Bitcoin – told through the five different groups who bought it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233853/original/file-20180828-86150-1dk7i9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/golden-bitcoin-on-keyboard-540755671?src=l37Sdn0-y_jQyrBkOhfGvA-1-28">GeniusKp/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/bitcoins-rollercoaster-ride-reflects-the-biggest-issue-facing-cryptocurrencies-regulation-101690">fluctuations</a> in Bitcoin’s value are just the latest in a series of spectacular peaks and troughs since it was created in 2009. (Though its price has been falling recently, it remains five times higher than last April, before the latest major peak began.)</p>
<p>Commentators are often <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-bitcoin-bubble-how-we-know-it-will-burst-88511">dismissive</a> of Bitcoin buyers, writing them off as naive victims of a fraudulent bubble. But if we look more carefully, we can trace the history of Bitcoin through five key narratives. Each has drawn in a different group of buyers and in doing so contributed to its long-term growth in value.</p>
<h2>The idealists</h2>
<p>Bitcoin arose from a tiny group of cryptographers who were trying to solve the <a href="https://www.bitcoin.com/info/what-is-bitcoin-double-spending">“double spend” problem</a> facing digital money: “cash” held as a digital file could easily be copied and then used multiple times. The problem is easily solved by financial institutions, who use a secure central ledger to record how much everyone has in their accounts, but the cryptographers wanted a solution that was more akin to physical cash: private, untraceable, and independent of third parties like the banks. </p>
<p>Satoshi Nakamoto’s solution was the Bitcoin blockchain, a cryptographically secured public ledger that records transactions anonymously and is kept as multiple copies on many different users’ computers. The first narrative of Bitcoin’s value was built into Nakamoto’s original “<a href="https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf">white paper</a>”. This claimed that Bitcoin would be superior to existing forms of electronic money such as credit cards, providing benefits like eliminating chargebacks to merchants and reducing transaction fees.</p>
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<h2>The libertarians</h2>
<p>But from an early stage, Nakamoto also marketed Bitcoin to a libertarian audience. He did so by stressing the absence of any central authority and particularly Bitcoin’s independence from both states and existing financial institutions. </p>
<p>Nakamoto criticised central banks for debasing money by issuing increasing amounts of it and designed Bitcoin to have a hard limit on the amount that could be issued. And he stressed the anonymity of Bitcoin transactions: safe, more or less, from the prying eyes of the state. Libertarians became enthusiastic advocates and buyers of Bitcoin, more as an act of rebellion than for financial reasons. They have remained highly influential in the Bitcoin community.</p>
<h2>The savvy young</h2>
<p>These, however, were small constituencies, and Bitcoin really started to take off in July 2010 when <a href="https://news.slashdot.org/story/10/07/11/1747245/bitcoin-releases-version-03">a short article</a> on Slashdot.org (“news for nerds”) spread the word to many young and technically savvy buyers. This community was influenced by the “Californian ideology” – belief in the capacity of technology and entrepreneurs to transform the world. </p>
<p>Many bought small quantities at a low price and were somewhat bemused to find themselves sitting on significant investments when the price multiplied. They became used to huge fluctuations in the price and frequently advocated “hodling” Bitcoin (a mis-spelling of “hold”, first used in a now <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=375643.0">iconic message</a> posted by an inebriated user determined to resist constant “sell” messages from day traders). The hodlers insisted, half seriously, that Bitcoin was going “to the moon!” (used 178,000 times on the bitcointalk forums), and talked of buying “lambos” (lamborghinis) with their gains. This countercultural levity generated a sense of community and a commitment to holding Bitcoin that helps to sustain its value.</p>
<h2>The investors</h2>
<p>The last two groups that have contributed to Bitcoin’s history are more conventional. What I consider the fourth group of investors consists of speculators who have been attracted by the volatility and peaks in Bitcoin prices. </p>
<p>On the one hand, we have the day traders, who hope to exploit the volatility of Bitcoin’s price by buying and selling quickly to take advantage of short-term price movements. Like speculators in any other asset, they have no real interest in the larger picture or of questions of inherent value, but only in the price today. Their only narratives are “buy” and “sell”, often employed in an attempt to influence the market. </p>
<p>On the other hand, we have those who are drawn in by news of price bubbles. Ironically, bubble narratives in the press, often designed to deter investors, can have the opposite effect. These investors join what Keynes called a “beauty contest” – they only care what other people might be prepared to pay for a Bitcoin in the short to medium term future.</p>
<h2>The portfolio balancers</h2>
<p>The final and newest group of Bitcoin buyers are the portfolio balancers: more sophisticated investors who buy Bitcoin to hedge against wider risks in the financial system. According to modern portfolio theory, investors can reduce the riskiness of their portfolios overall by buying some Bitcoin because its peaks and troughs don’t line up with those of other assets, providing some insurance against stock market crashes. This is an emerging group, but one that could significantly raise Bitcoin’s acceptability among mainstream investors.</p>
<p>Bitcoin’s value, then, has been built on an evolving series of narratives which have drawn in successive waves of buyers. While mainstream commentators are often dismissive of Bitcoin as lacking inherent value, all asset market values depend on narrative processes like these. </p>
<p>Bitcoin may well collapse again, but so may any other financial asset. Investing in Bitcoin is neither more nor less risky than investing in the latest technology company launched on the stock market without ever having made a profit.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98359/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dave Elder-Vass receives funding from the Independent Social Research Foundation. He owns an (increasingly) modest quantity of bitcoin.</span></em></p>When you look carefully, the history of Bitcoin can be traced through five key narratives.Dave Elder-Vass, Reader in Sociology, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1003512018-07-25T20:05:22Z2018-07-25T20:05:22ZSurvey: Americans don’t like the government, but on average they want more of it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228713/original/file-20180722-142438-1di3h20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C60%2C1130%2C837&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Headquarters of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, DC. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_C._Weaver_Federal_Building#/media/File:Robert_C._Weaver_Federal_Building,_headquarters_of_HUD,_the_U.S._Department_of_Housing_and_Urban_Development,_Washington,_D.C_LCCN2011633627.tif"> Carol M. Highsmith/Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A sizeable academic literature seeks to explain why the Americans have a smaller welfare state than similar Western countries, especially in Europe. One interesting observation this literature relies upon is that the US population believes in the meritocratic principles of the “American dream”. It is true that American opinions place more weight on hard work than luck, compared to Europeans, to explain people’s success in life, and that such beliefs make people less supportive of redistribution (<a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/alesina/files/alesina_stantcheva_teso_mobility.pdf">Alesina, Stantcheva and Teso, 2017</a>). However, this does not necessarily mean that Americans really have the system they want.</p>
<p>In an April 2017 Internet survey of 1,037 individuals representative of the age and race composition of the adult population in the United States, we explored people’s opinions about government intervention and welfare policies.</p>
<p>Our survey shows that Americans, on average, want more from their government in areas of social policy, but they are highly polarised. In particular, a libertarian minority wants less government.</p>
<h2>Who promotes social justice? Not primarily the government</h2>
<p>A striking initial finding in this survey is that government is not high on the list of institutions that promote social justice, according to those surveyed. Political parties even appear at the <em>bottom</em> of the list. Families, friendship networks and private institutions appear at the top. In line with our <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-americans-critical-embrace-of-religion-100281">survey on religions</a>, the contribution of religious groups is highly ranked. It is surprising that two types of institutions that often devote themselves to social justice explicitly, NGOs and labour unions, appear in the second tier of the list, after the government. Social enterprises and cooperatives – a highlight of the last <a href="http://www.unrisd.org/UNRISD/website/projects.nsf/(httpProjects)/AC3E80757E7BD4E9C1257F310050863D?OpenDocument">UNRISD report</a> – are high on the list, which is interesting given that they are seldom in the news.</p>
<p>One should notice that, on the scale from 0 to 100, most of the items are below 50, which reveals the rather limited appreciation by the respondents of the work done by these institutions for social justice.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228601/original/file-20180720-142420-jabymc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228601/original/file-20180720-142420-jabymc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228601/original/file-20180720-142420-jabymc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228601/original/file-20180720-142420-jabymc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228601/original/file-20180720-142420-jabymc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228601/original/file-20180720-142420-jabymc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228601/original/file-20180720-142420-jabymc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Among the survey sample, women and middle-aged respondents give lower scores to most items, whereas progressive or religious respondents give higher scores than average. The young have a more positive view than average about government and unions. The minorities have a more positive view than average about international organisations and unions.</p>
<h2>More government involvement, not less</h2>
<p>One could interpret such findings as support for the view that “government is not the solution to our problem, government <em>is</em> the problem,” as then-president Ronald Reagan <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ixNPplo-SU">famously said in 1981</a>. But this assumption would be wrong. In fact, for most items in a list of policy areas, respondents want <em>the same degree of involvement or more</em>, and this is particularly true for poverty relief, but also for income redistribution and elderly and child care, as well as education. There is only one item where less government involvement is wanted, the regulation of private behaviour (more on this below).</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228602/original/file-20180720-142426-1qdceqy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228602/original/file-20180720-142426-1qdceqy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228602/original/file-20180720-142426-1qdceqy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228602/original/file-20180720-142426-1qdceqy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228602/original/file-20180720-142426-1qdceqy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228602/original/file-20180720-142426-1qdceqy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228602/original/file-20180720-142426-1qdceqy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Redistribution of income and wealth is less supported by the middle-aged and the rich respondents, and more by the progressives and the moderately religious. Poverty relief is supported more by the progressives and the religious respondents. Public intervention in health care is supported more by the highly educated and less by the conservatives in the sample.</p>
<p>As far as the current situation is concerned, women and middle-aged respondents see less government intervention across the board, whereas religious respondents tend to see more of it. No systematic correlation with political opinions appears on the assessment of the current situation.</p>
<h2>On health, taxes and inheritance, liberal and libertarian ideas are popular</h2>
<p>It would be also be incorrect to conclude that Americans want more government intervention, period. On specific policy issues, one sees a surprising mix of ideas – including liberal and libertarian ones that flatly contradict one another – appearing jointly high on the lists.</p>
<p>In particular, free health care is strongly supported, which is in line with recent debates about “Medicare for all”. However, the idea that government should not intervene in health issues is not as unpopular as one could believe given the strong support for free health care, even if it comes at the bottom of the list.</p>
<p>More strikingly, there is a strong support for progressive taxation, but simultaneously a substantial level of support for the libertarian idea that there should be no redistribution. Among the possible path-breaking reforms that have been discussed for the redistribution system, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/survey-reveals-young-people-more-likely-to-support-universal-basic-income-but-its-not-a-left-right-thing-87554">universal basic income</a> (a basic grant given to everyone without condition) and the flat tax (a fixed tax rate on all levels of income) obtain less support than the idea of focusing taxation on consumption expenditures rather than income (i.e., exempting savings).</p>
<p>Finally, on inheritance taxation, one sees a strong support the elimination of inheritance tax (a libertarian idea) but also high support for the reform advocated by A. Atkinson in <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674504769"><em>Inequality: What Can Be Done?</em></a> and consisting in making the heirs pay as a function of what they receive over their lifetime rather than taxing the bequests left by the deceased.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228603/original/file-20180720-142414-wngm43.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228603/original/file-20180720-142414-wngm43.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228603/original/file-20180720-142414-wngm43.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228603/original/file-20180720-142414-wngm43.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228603/original/file-20180720-142414-wngm43.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228603/original/file-20180720-142414-wngm43.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228603/original/file-20180720-142414-wngm43.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Let us analyse how the sample is divided about these issues. As a general pattern, libertarian ideas are defended more by male, young, rich, not highly educated, conservative, and highly religious respondents, whereas liberal ideas are defended more by the opposite categories.</p>
<p>More complex coalitions arise for less obviously ideological or partisan issues. The universal basic income is supported more by young respondents and minorities jointly with low-income and progressive respondents. The Atkinson proposal about inheritance taxation is supported more by young, minority, rich, very progressive, and highly religious respondents. A progressive income tax is supported more by male, minority, progressive and highly religious respondents.</p>
<h2>Regulating private behaviour</h2>
<p>Let us finally come back to the issue of regulating private behaviour. Here again, one finds substantial support both for government intervention (safety information, repression of illegal drugs) and for opposite libertarian stances. The only statement below the 50 bar is that drugs should all be legalised, and there is strong disagreement among the sample on this question as well as on legalising prostitution.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228604/original/file-20180720-142435-vd7yx1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228604/original/file-20180720-142435-vd7yx1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=198&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228604/original/file-20180720-142435-vd7yx1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=198&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228604/original/file-20180720-142435-vd7yx1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=198&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228604/original/file-20180720-142435-vd7yx1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228604/original/file-20180720-142435-vd7yx1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228604/original/file-20180720-142435-vd7yx1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Support for libertarian ideas here comes from different coalitions than for social policies. Legalising drugs and prostitution is supported more by young, male, progressives and opposed more than average by the highly religious respondents. Putting government out of private behaviour completely is supported more than average by young, male, minority respondents, and less by progressives, while religiosity is not correlated with responses.</p>
<p>Support for government intervention against alcohol as a drug gathers male, progressive and highly religious respondents, whereas the punishment of behaviour under influence is supported more by rich and highly religious respondents. The punishment of consumers of prostitution gathers elderly respondents with minority, progressive and religious respondents, and is supported less than average by middle-age respondents (no significant gender difference appears).</p>
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<p><em>Pariroo Rattan has contributed to analysing the data.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100351/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marc Fleurbaey and IPSP received funding from IFFS for this survey series. </span></em></p>An April 2017 survey explored Americans’ opinions about government intervention and welfare policies. It found that on average, they want more from their government, but are highly polarised.Marc Fleurbaey, Professor in Economics and Humanistic Studies, Princeton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/935762018-04-12T01:37:21Z2018-04-12T01:37:21ZAre Australians ready to embrace libertarianism?<p><em>This article is the third in a five-part series on the battle for conservative hearts and minds in Australian politics. Read part one <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-the-liberal-party-hold-its-broad-church-of-liberals-and-conservatives-together-93575">here</a> and part two <a href="https://theconversation.com/tony-abbott-and-the-revenge-of-the-delcons-94531">here</a>.</em></p>
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<p>How much influence does libertarianism have on Australian politics? The first thing to know is that the Australian political system has very few libertarians in it.</p>
<p>The only federal member of parliament to self-describe as a libertarian is Senator David Leyonhjelm of the Liberal Democratic Party. Other candidates – like my former colleagues at the <a href="https://ipa.org.au/">Institute of Public Affairs</a> (IPA), Senator James Paterson and Tim Wilson – describe themselves as classical liberals.</p>
<p>Ideological classifications can get very tedious very quickly, but generally libertarianism is a variety of classical liberalism. Both philosophies believe that public policy should be designed to maximise free markets and civil liberties. That is, governments should get out of both the wallet and the bedroom. Libertarianism is generally seen as inhabiting the more radical end of the classical liberal spectrum.</p>
<p>A 2007 study published by the <a href="https://www.cis.org.au/">Centre for Independent Studies</a> (CIS) <a href="https://www.cis.org.au/app/uploads/2015/04/images/stories/policy-magazine/2007-23-4-breanna-pellegrini-sinclair-davidson-tim-fry.pdf">estimated</a> that 3–6% of the Australian electorate were classical liberals. So it is unsurprising they have little electoral influence on Australian politics.</p>
<p>The reason libertarians and classical liberals exercise some degree of influence is that they make up a disproportionate share of Australia’s policy wonks, think tank staff (especially at the IPA and CIS), and political commentators.</p>
<h2>An extremely big tent</h2>
<p>Australia’s right-of-centre political community is not so large as to have exclusively libertarian or conservative think tanks, as exist in the United States. Everyone works together. This co-mingling hasn’t generally been an issue because Australian political debate has tended to pivot around economic issues (taxation, regulation, privatisation) or basic shared liberty issues (like freedom of speech) rather than the thorny moral debates that might divide the two camps.</p>
<p>Occasionally there have been polarising issues. Same-sex marriage is one. Conservatives were generally opposed, while libertarians tended to be in favour. But there was also broad agreement that any change to marriage laws should also protect religious freedom.</p>
<p>Immigration – particularly asylum seeker policy – is another. Libertarians are inclined towards freer immigration, whereas conservatives want more control over the borders. Here the tiny number of libertarians have been completely ineffective against the policy stalemate.</p>
<p>For the most part, there is much agreement between conservatives and libertarians about the current state of Australian politics. Both think the Turnbull government is a disappointment, for much the same reasons. It failed on the campaign to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, which has become an iconic restriction on free speech. It has also repeatedly raised taxes, and been unable to drive any serious economic reform.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/can-the-liberal-party-hold-its-broad-church-of-liberals-and-conservatives-together-93575">Can the Liberal Party hold its 'broad church' of liberals and conservatives together?</a>
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<p>This may sound excessively Pollyanna-ish, as if everything is just swell between Australian conservatives and libertarians. Much has been said (almost all by commentators on the left) about a political split between libertarians and classical liberals on the one side and conservatives on the other. But I don’t really see it.</p>
<p>In the US, the <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/11/fusionism-conservatives-libertarians-success-national-review/">fusion movement</a> of the 1950s and 1960s was a deliberate project to build an alliance between these two distinct systems of political thought. The presidency of George W. Bush pushed that alliance to breaking point, and it seems the Trump administration has broken it.</p>
<p>By contrast, Australian politics has never been large enough to maintain such divergent streams. Every Liberal prime minister has for the most part maintained a sort of centre-right middle ground that kept everyone equally disappointed and dissatisfied. People are leaving the Liberal Party under the Turnbull government, not because it is too conservative or libertarian, but because it is too, well, nothing.</p>
<h2>Liberal achievements and libertarian growth</h2>
<p>The last quarter of the 20th century saw Australian public policy take major strides in a classical liberal direction. The economic reform movement that substantially liberalised the economy was matched with social reforms such as the decriminalisation of homosexuality and the repeal of obscenity laws.</p>
<p>I’ve <a href="https://econjwatch.org/articles/classical-liberalism-in-australian-economics">argued in the past</a> that Australian economic thought has had a distinct – even occasionally dominant – classical liberal tradition. There is no question that this tradition has driven policy debate and reform at a few key historical moments. </p>
<p>Though classical liberal efforts were often focused on economics rather than social policy, it’s worth pointing out that the IPA was one of the key voices against state overreaches such as the Hawke government’s ill-fated <a href="http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/explore/cabinet/by-year/1984-85/australia-card.aspx">Australia Card</a>, and more recently, <a href="https://ipa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/archive/2014-08-05-Media_release-Mandatory_Data_Retention_treats_all_Australians_like_criminals-IPA.pdf">mandatory internet data retention</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tony-abbott-and-the-revenge-of-the-delcons-94531">Tony Abbott and the revenge of the ‘delcons’</a>
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<p>In recent years, there has been some notable growth of libertarianism as a self-aware and distinct group. A large part of that has been the <a href="http://www.alsfc.com.au/">Friedman Conference</a> – named after <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Friedman.html">Milton Friedman</a>, David Friedman and Patri Friedman, who represent nearly the entire spectrum of classical liberal/libertarian thought in one family – which attracts hundreds of libertarians and fellow travellers to Sydney every year.</p>
<p>The Friedman Conference is in its sixth year, thanks to the organisational efforts of Tim Andrews (of the <a href="http://www.taxpayers.org.au/">Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance</a>) and John Humphreys (of the <a href="https://libertarian.org.au/">Australian Libertarian Society</a>). The political success of the Liberal Democrats with David Leyonhjelm in the Senate is another factor in libertarianism’s modest gains.</p>
<p>My hope is that this sort of organisational effort fosters the idea in Australia of libertarianism as a distinct political philosophy, not just a quirky sub-category of the Australian right.</p>
<p>There is a need for this. The challenges we face now are not the same as they were in the over-mythologised 1980s. The combination of growth of the regulatory state, radical technological change, and the crisis of democratic trust require new ideas and new policy solutions. Libertarianism offers a framework to understand how these economic and social questions interact.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93576/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Berg is affiliated with the Institute of Public Affairs, the Australian Taxpayers' Alliance, and has been involved with the Friedman conference since it started.</span></em></p>Libertarianism is a minority concern in Australian politics, but it offers a philosophical framework to understand contemporary social and economic challenges.Chris Berg, Senior Research Fellow, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/828632017-08-25T07:39:29Z2017-08-25T07:39:29ZRuby Ridge: 25 years since the siege that fired up the US’s radical right<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183173/original/file-20170823-4869-1dhpuv8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C140%2C1200%2C752&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A surveillance photograph of Vicki Weaver at Ruby Ridge, 1992.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASurveillance_photograph_of_Vicki_Weaver_21_Aug_1992.jpg">U.S. Marshal Service/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>History matters a great deal on the American right – and a highly significant anniversary is just around the corner.</p>
<p>On August 30 1992, negotiators brought an end to the violent siege of an isolated homestead in mountainous northern Idaho. The standoff at Ruby Ridge claimed the lives of a federal agent, a 14-year-old boy, and a mother with a baby in her arms, though the man at the centre of the siege, Randy Weaver, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/09/03/standoff-at-ruby-ridge/3704b446-abed-4cf9-9a89-7b19208079b9/?utm_term=.4dbac158c925">never fired a shot</a> in retaliation.</p>
<p>Weaver had taken his family into seclusion near the Canadian border as part of his <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/ruby-ridge-part-one-suspicion/">ideological transition</a> from fundamentalist Protestantism to an idiosyncratic blend of visionary religion, conspiracy theory and racial separatism. Before the siege began, an undercover informant had tried and failed to coerce Weaver into spying on a community of neo-Nazis in nearby <a href="https://timeline.com/white-supremacist-rural-paradise-fb62b74b29e0">Hayden Lake</a>, but succeeded in setting him up for a firearms offence. Weaver did not appear for his court hearing – it later transpired that a letter requiring this appearance had <a href="https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opr/legacy/2006/11/09/rubyreportcover_39.pdf">given the wrong date</a> – and became the subject of year-long surveillance by US Marshals. </p>
<p>Believing himself to be the victim of entrapment, Weaver’s anti-government paranoia was confirmed by his discovery of listening devices that had been planted around his cabin. On August 21, marshals disturbed the family dogs, triggering a short firefight that killed both Deputy US Marshal Bill Degan and Sammy Weaver, who had been shot in the back. The next day, Vicki Weaver was killed by a sniper while standing in the doorway of her cabin home. </p>
<p>The siege of the Weaver cabin grew to involve hundreds of federal agents, and lasted 12 days, until civilian negotiators were able to strike a deal. The court case that followed cleared Randy Weaver of all charges other than missing his court date and violating bail, for which he was fined US$10,000 and given a short custodial sentence. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/09/03/standoff-at-ruby-ridge/3704b446-abed-4cf9-9a89-7b19208079b9/?utm_term=.4dbac158c925">investigation</a> that followed the court case determined that the situation at Ruby Ridge had escalated thanks to the carelessness and overreach of federal agencies, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1995-08-16/news/mn-35756_1_ruby-ridge">awarded the family</a> a US$3.1m settlement, and confirmed that Weaver’s paranoia had not been misplaced. But the lessons were not quickly learned. </p>
<h2>Up in flames</h2>
<p>In March and April 1993, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Ruby-Ridge-incident#ref1197110">same sniper</a> who shot Vicki Weaver in the Ruby Ridge incident was sent to Waco, Texas, to take part in another siege. This time, the government confronted a large and well-established religious community known as the Branch Davidians, an offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventists, who were suspected of hoarding <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jul/07/news/mn-49078">illegal firearms</a> in their compound. After a <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-waco/">protracted standoff</a>, federal forces attempted to flush out the community’s members with tear gas, but the complex was engulfed by a fire that killed 76 people.</p>
<p>Apart from their hostility to the federal government and its agencies, the Weaver family and the Waco community had little in common. Randy Weaver was a racial separatist who had some informal association with the Aryan Nations movement; the Branch Davidians were a mixed-race religious community whose only association with extreme politics was an intense suspicion of government power and faith in guns.</p>
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<p>Nevertheless, the deaths at Ruby Ridge and Waco provided the emerging radical right with a <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PTR7AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=ruby+ridge+formation+militia+culture&source=bl&ots=4Cb-XaxTC9&sig=eSzca3uRWGXTe9XE7ij4t0YDd0I&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiiyJT2oOnVAhXpDcAKHVfNDUoQ6AEIQzAH#v=onepage&q=ruby%20ridge%20fo">pantheon of martyrs</a> that a then-nascent modern militia movement could claim as its own. </p>
<p>The seemingly out-of-control actions of government agencies at Ruby Ridge and Waco pulled competing elements of the radical, conservative and libertarian right into an informal coalition, one that contributed to the conspiratorial popular cultures of the mid- and late-1990s. </p>
<p>This tendency’s most extreme and lethal expression came on April 13 1995, the second anniversary of the Waco fire, when <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2001/09/mcveigh200109">Timothy McVeigh</a> planted a bomb next to a federal building in Oklahoma City. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ9Li_sxljk">ensuing explosion</a> killed 168 individuals, making it the worst incident of domestic terrorism in American history.</p>
<h2>On the march again</h2>
<p>As a <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/oklahoma-city/">recent PBS documentary</a> suggests, the events of Ruby Ridge, Waco and Oklahoma City are as politically potent as ever, and not just as turning points in the rise of the radical right of the 1990s.</p>
<p>Despite the events in <a href="https://theconversation.com/confederate-and-black-america-why-clashes-at-charlottesville-show-civil-war-alt-histories-are-more-than-just-fantasy-82348">Charlottesville</a>, when it comes to the fight over whose politics can be acceptably commemorated in public, the left is winning. In the name of eradicating slaveholders and Confederate leaders from commemorative public life, universities have changed the lyrics of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39559232">university hymns</a> and the <a href="http://college.usatoday.com/2017/02/14/renaming-university-buildings-with-racist-namesakes-is-an-uphill-battle/">names of prominent campus buildings</a>. Confederate battle flags have been removed from public display across the South, including by <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/10/politics/nikki-haley-confederate-flag-removal/index.html">state governments</a>. Campaigners are now turning their attention to other examples of the exhibition of Confederate iconography, including the Charlottesville statues whose fate sparked the recent fracas.</p>
<p>This campaign is gathering pace. After Charlottesville, anti-racist protesters gathered in Durham, North Carolina, to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-uAZa4H1vk">topple a statue of General Robert E. Lee</a>; city authorities in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/16/baltimore-takes-down-confederate-statues-in-middle-of-night">Baltimore</a> and <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-taney-statue-removed-20170818-story.html">Annapolis</a> removed Confederate memorials by night in a bid to forestall further public action, and authorities <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/15/us/confederate-memorial-removal-us-trnd/index.html">elsewhere</a> are reportedly planning to follow suit.</p>
<p>But insofar as these efforts are meant to erase the memory of the Confederate past, they are almost certainly futile. It is almost impossible to police cultures of commemoration: the American right, newly reconfigured, radicalised and increasingly agitated, is searching for historical roots and historical identity, and it will find them somewhere. After all, history will always offer some sort of <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ruby-ridge-siege-25-years-called-rallying-cry/story?id=49296439">vindication</a> for anyone who seeks it out.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82863/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Crawford Gribben has received funding for his work on radical religion from the Irish Research Council and the Ministerial Advisory Group on Ulster Scots (DCAL, Northern Ireland). He is writing about cultures of survivalism in north Idaho in a current book project.</span></em></p>The radical right has a keen sense of its own history, and the violence of the 1990s is still fresh in its memory.Crawford Gribben, Professor of history, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/785792017-06-06T10:41:17Z2017-06-06T10:41:17ZWhy Churchill would have disagreed with Theresa May’s stance on European human rights<p>History teaches us that the clash within Conservative ranks between populists and free-marketers may be decisive in shaping Conservative human rights policy after the election.</p>
<p>Earlier in 2017, it <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-campaign-leave-european-convention-on-human-rights-2020-general-election-brexit-a7499951.html">appeared likely</a> that the Conservative party would make the UK’s withdrawal from the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) a centrepiece of its next general election campaign, despite <a href="https://www.dominicgrieve.org.uk/news/why-human-rights-should-matter-conservatives">pointed disagreement</a> within party ranks. </p>
<p>The chief instigator was reported to be the prime minister herself. As home secretary, Theresa May had become so irate at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg that she had called on the UK to leave the ECHR outright, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/european-convention-human-rights-eu-referendum-brexit-theresa-may-a6999701.html">expressing outrage</a> that the treaty “binds the hands of parliament.” In February, she <a href="https://www.una.org.uk/file/11615/download?token=4sYI3y1m">reaffirmed</a> that the Conservative government aimed to replace the Human Rights Act, which enshrines the ECHR into British law, with a British Bill of Rights, one that “will remain faithful to the basic principles of human rights found in the original European Convention on Human Rights”.</p>
<p>So proponents of the UK’s continued participation in the ECHR were pleasantly surprised when May appeared to reverse course, at least temporarily. As her newly-minted <a href="https://www.conservatives.com/manifesto">manifesto</a> stipulates: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We will not repeal or replace the Human Rights Act while the process of Brexit is underway but we will consider our human rights legal framework when the process of leaving the EU concludes. We will remain signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights for the duration of the next parliament.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even so, other parts of the manifesto should give supporters of the Strasbourg court pause for thought. These passages, though not directly concerned with human rights law, announce a broader realignment of Conservative views on the relationship between the individual and the state. The manifesto says: “We must reject the ideological templates provided by the socialist left and the libertarian right and instead embrace the mainstream view that recognises the good that government can do.”</p>
<p>This has been widely <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/june2017/2017/05/theresa-mays-conservative-manifesto-buries-dogmatic-thatcherism">interpreted</a> as a repudiation of the free-market individualism of Thatcherism in favour of an affirmation of a strong positive role for the state in domestic affairs. In practice, the document retains longstanding Conservative calls for less regulations and taxes, while proposing an array of government interventions and subsidies in the domain of economic and social policy more sweeping than many of its predecessors. </p>
<p>“We do not believe in untrammelled free markets,” May <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/8460e678-3bb0-11e7-ac89-b01cc67cfeec">announced</a> when introducing the document in Halifax, Yorkshire. “We reject the cult of selfish individualism. We see rigid dogma and ideology not just as needless but dangerous.” </p>
<h2>Removing controls on totalitarianism</h2>
<p>My <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-conservative-human-rights-revolution-9780199811380?cc=gb&lang=en&">research</a> suggests that a less libertarian tenor to Conservative economic and social policy has implications for whether a future Conservative government would take steps to limit the application of the ECHR in Britain. It could also lay the groundwork for an eventual withdrawal from the treaty.</p>
<p>If this is far from obvious today, it is due to longstanding misconceptions regarding the role of Conservatives in the ECHR’s origin. In the late 1940s, Conservative MPs Winston Churchill and David Maxwell Fyfe were at the forefront of campaigning for the establishment of a European human rights court in advance of the ECHR’s adoption by the Council of Europe in 1950. The <a href="http://www.journalonline.co.uk/Magazine/56-9/1010095.aspx">common assumption</a> among supporters, detractors, and scholars of the ECHR alike is that the two men were concerned with the menace of fascism and communism alone – and that their conservative views on domestic matters were irrelevant.</p>
<p>Fascism and communism were certainly at the forefront of their concerns. But another spectre loomed: that of socialist efforts to enhance state power at the expense of individual freedoms and an independent judiciary. It was the fierce attachment of Churchill and Maxwell Fyfe to free-market individualism that distinguished their vision of human rights from that of the left. Following the Conservatives’ loss in the 1945 general election, they feared the awesome powers of a British state whose reach had grown dramatically during the war, and was now at service of a Labour majority. </p>
<p>For Maxwell Fyfe, Britain’s adherence to the ECHR was meant to limit the ability of parliamentary majorities to enact legislation harmful to British human rights, which he understood to mean personal liberties, including property rights, rather <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-civil-and-political-rights-have-been-easier-to-secure-than-social-and-economic-ones-77027">than social rights</a>. He conceived of a higher court that would have the power to declare acts of parliament in violation of the ECHR. </p>
<p>Undoubtedly, Churchill and Maxwell Fyfe would have found much to like in the 2017 Conservative manifesto. Even so, they would certainly have disapproved of its subordination of the individual to the collective, as well as May’s endorsement of a more populist vision of conservatism that rejects judicial constraints on parliamentary majority rule. </p>
<p>By announcing that “our responsibility to one another is greater than the rights we hold as individuals … because that is what community and nation demands”, the <a href="https://www.conservatives.com/manifesto">manifesto</a> signals not just a rejection of Thatcherism. It also sounds the Conservative party’s retreat from a free-market libertarian critique of state power and tyranny of the majority. It was this that had fuelled Churchill and Maxwell Fyfe’s exceptional enthusiasm for Britain’s participation in the birth of a European human rights system with extraordinary controls on national executives and legislatures.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78579/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marco Duranti does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Conservative party manifesto’s repudiation of the ‘libertarian right’ bodes ill for the European Court of Human Rights.Marco Duranti, Lecturer in history, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/680432016-11-07T11:01:12Z2016-11-07T11:01:12ZLibertarian economics: A philosophical critique<p>The focus of my research as a political philosopher is on matters of economic justice. I ask questions such as: Are markets consistent with justice? Is freedom enhanced through economic exchange? If so, why, and if not, why not? </p>
<p>One position that I have held for most of my career is that free market, or libertarian, thinking suffers from major conceptual and moral failings. While my efforts have centered on the work of various 19th- and 20th-century proponents of free markets, in the interest of getting a contemporary look at this thinking, I recently sat down with <a href="https://www.lp.org/platform/">the platform</a> of the American Libertarian Party. </p>
<p>What I found did not surprise me. The platform suffers from the very same factual and conceptual difficulties that we find in the writings of the political philosophers that inspired it. </p>
<p>That’s a strong claim, so let me defend it by examining a few points from the platform. </p>
<h2>Looking at the platform</h2>
<p>Let’s start with this one: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“A free and competitive market allocates resources in the most efficient manner.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is wishful thinking. </p>
<p>Markets can be inefficient for many reasons. Sometimes the costs or benefits of market transactions fall on people who are not in the market. For example, your purchase of a vaccine keeps me healthier, while your dumping waste in the river that runs past my house has the opposite effect. Such occurrences, known as externalities, are considered market failures in that resources have not been allocated efficiently. </p>
<p>To correct such failures and make markets efficient, governments intervene by providing things like courts, roads, police and fire departments, as well as regulations requiring polluters to pay for their environmental damages. </p>
<p>Other types of market failures are caused when one or a few firms control the price and output of a good or service, or when consumers are not given adequate information to make their purchases, as, for instance, when investors are not sufficiently informed of the risks of their investments. Here again, the solution in most cases is some form of government intervention. Monopolies are broken up. Firms are forced to disclose relevant consumer information.</p>
<p>The problem for libertarians, and the reason they need to believe that markets are always efficient, is that - according to their platform - they also believe:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The difficulty with this statement is not just that it denies the reality of market inefficiencies. Of greater concern is how drastically it underestimates what is required to protect property rights. </p>
<h2>How charitable can we be?</h2>
<p>Consider, for example, the cost of maintaining a stable, peaceful society - a society in which those who fall on hard times do not threaten the system as a whole. And also consider this statement from the libertarian platform: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The proper and most effective source of help for the poor is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals. We believe members of society will become even more charitable and civil society will be strengthened as government reduces its activity in this realm.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The problem here is that there is simply no evidence that private charity has anywhere near the capacity to alleviate the sort of poverty that confronts many parts of this country. The more than <a href="http://www.census.gov/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-256.html">40 million people</a> below the poverty line would simply overwhelm organizations like the Red Cross, <a href="http://www.redcross.org/news/press-release/How-the-American-Red-Cross-Spends-Your-Donations">whose budget</a> is about <a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BUDGET-2016-BUD/pdf/BUDGET-2016-BUD.pdf">one 200th</a> of what the federal government provides for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/01/12/no-we-dont-spend-1-trillion-on-welfare-each-year/">welfare</a> and Medicaid. </p>
<p>Natural disasters alone far outstrip the capacity of churches and secular charities. FEMA, with its <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/FY15-BIB.pdf">US$14 billion</a> budget, would be a libertarian casualty.</p>
<p>If it isn’t the proper role of government to aid the poor, and private charities can’t handle it, then what? The short answer is that the people who do have property might not have it for long. Look to history. We see <a href="http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2012/February/economic-crises-can-trigger-rise-in-crime.html">property crimes rise</a> predictably with every downturn in the economy. If you take away public assistance, it stands to reason that whatever money you may save you’ll likely lose many times over in increased spending for policing, courts, prisons and other institutions that protect property owners. </p>
<p>Indeed, I would argue that welfare is a bargain. It may be, to quote again from the platform, that “All efforts by government to redistribute wealth … are improper in a free society,” but they are certainly not improper to one in which people are secure in their belongings.</p>
<p>There are a number of other basic fallacies in the platform. I’ll close with two. </p>
<p>First: “Libertarians would free property owners from government restrictions … as long as their choices do not harm or infringe on the rights of others.” </p>
<p>The difficulty here is that it is precisely to protect the rights of others (and the environment) that we have the regulations we do.</p>
<p>Second: “Governments are unaccountable for damage done to our environment and have a terrible track record when it comes to environmental protection.” </p>
<p>To be sure, governments around the world have been far less than perfect when it comes to protecting the environment. Yet even a modest comparison to private efforts – where, absent regulations, there are few if any incentives to act responsibly – demonstrates that public oversight is the only reasonable option. Leaving environmental decisions to the <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/exxon-valdez-oil-spill-anniversary-effects-facts-pictures-captains-drinking-rumors-1856434">Exxon</a>s, <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2006/07/generalelectric200607">GE</a>s and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/business/09bp.html">BP</a>s of the world would, as history has shown, have catastrophic consequences.</p>
<p>These Libertarian economic positions are a long way from those espoused by the Democratic Party. While there may be some overlap with the Tea Party cohort, most mainstream Republicans would also reject these extreme views. The bottom line is that until Libertarians give more thought to economic reality, they will simply not be a reasonable electoral choice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68043/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Lindsay does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Are the Libertarians a viable alternative to Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump? A political philosopher who studies economic justice looks at the platform.Peter Lindsay, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/527792016-01-05T17:36:27Z2016-01-05T17:36:27ZOregon siege: the US militia movement is resurgent – and evolving<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107305/original/image-20160105-28980-1d79yfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cliven and Ammon Bundy.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cliven_%26_Ammon_Bundy_(14742520503).jpg#/media/File:Cliven_%26_Ammon_Bundy_(14742520503).jpg">Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For several days now, a small group of armed men have <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/04/us/oregon-wildlife-refuge-what-bundy-wants/">occupied an office of the National Wildlife Refuge</a> in southeastern Oregon, 300 miles from Portland. They are demanding the “return” of land from the federal government to the American people, and leniency for two ranchers convicted of arson on federal lands. </p>
<p>By chance or by design, the siege overlapped with President Obama’s announcement of a sweeping <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/05/politics/obama-executive-action-gun-control/">executive order</a> to restrict the unlicensed sale of guns and enforce background checks for gun buyers – measures widely decried by gun ownership advocates on the right.</p>
<p>The Oregon protesters are led by the sons of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/01/cliven-bundy-standoff-grazing-rights-nevada-ranch">Cliven Bundy</a>, a Nevada rancher who in March and April 2014 precipitated an extended stand-off with federal agents over unpaid grazing fees on federally owned land. That episode drew the approval of prominent conservative pundits, which in turn encouraged scores of protesters to rally to Bundy’s defence, and identified his clan as martyrs and ideologues in the re-birth of America’s anti-government militia culture.</p>
<p>Shortly after the occupation of the wildlife centre, Cliven’s son Ammon Bundy, the spokesman of the militia, set up a new <a href="https://twitter.com/Ammon_Bundy">Twitter account</a> (now suspended). Identifying his group as <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CitizensForConstitutionalFreedom?src=hash">#CitizensforConstitutionalFreedom</a>, he began laying out his principles.</p>
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<p>But these pronouncements aside, he’s given very little further detail on his aims, identifying no obvious exit strategy. And with his call for other militias to join the rising, Ammon Bundy may have initiated one of the thorniest domestic challenges of President Obama’s final year in office. </p>
<p>So where did the militia movement come from – and why has it suddenly come back?</p>
<h2>Tragedy and terror</h2>
<p>There is of course a long history of distrust towards the federal government in America, one of which the militias of recent decades are acutely aware. Drawing on anti-Communist organisations of the 1950s and the paranoia of the Cold War, militia culture grew towards a fever pitch in the 1980s and 1990s. Novels such as 1978’s <a href="http://archive.adl.org/learn/ext_us/turner_diaries.html">The Turner Diaries</a> spun myths about the condition of American modernity that provided both ideas and inspiration to violent and unstable white supremacist movements. Many of the same ideas were presented to the wider public in less political and racist terms in hugely popular films, among them Red Dawn (1984). </p>
<figure>
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<p>The tragedy and incompetence of the security agencies’ responses to the sieges of the Weaver family on <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/us/an-idaho-family-and-federal-tactics-under-siege.html">Ruby Ridge, Idaho</a> (three deaths, August 1992) and the <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/31/sacred-and-profane-4">Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas</a> (76 deaths, April 1993) only confirmed to many patriots that the government was willing to pursue unconstitutional methods to attack liberty-loving, gun-owning religious communities and political conservatives. </p>
<p>But the popularity of this newly radicalised “paranoid style” came to a sudden halt on the second anniversary of the burning of the Waco compound, when Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2015/april/oklahoma-city-bombing-20-years-later/oklahoma-city-bombing-20-years-later">bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City</a> in what was then the most significant terrorist incident in American history, killing 168 people. </p>
<p>One year later, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/26/us/for-radical-freemen-all-the-courts-are-stages.html">siege of the Montana Freemen</a> seemed like a last hurrah for militia culture. Its peaceful conclusion suggested that security agencies had learned the lessons of earlier disasters, and were now willing to engage with armed patriots in a manner that would both deny them martyrdom and ensure public safety.</p>
<p>But now the Bundys’ invasion of the wildlife sanctuary has announced that militias are back. Their popularity <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/mar/04/us-surge-rightwing-extremist-groups">began to grow again</a> after President Obama was first elected, as commentators on the radical right began to wonder whether conservatives might ever regain power. Many among their number began to speculate how best to survive or resist what they thought a perverse and illegitimate new direction in American culture. </p>
<p>Increasingly, they turned to websites such as <a href="http://survivalblog.com/">survivalblog.com</a> and the survivalist novels and manuals of James Wesley Rawles, a bestselling Penguin author whose website claims more than <a href="http://www.conservapedia.com/Talk:James_Wesley_Rawles">320,000 hits per week</a>. </p>
<p>In 2011, Rawles began to promote the evacuation of religious conservatives to the “<a href="http://survivalblog.com/redoubt/">American Redoubt</a>”, a territory covering several states in the Pacific northwest. As I was told by several of my interviewees during fieldwork in Idaho, several thousand people have heeded his call. Many will have been shocked by the horrors of the <a href="http://www.redstate.com/2015/10/28/new-video-confirms-illegal-abortion-methods-used-planned-parenthood/">Planned Parenthood videos</a>, the Supreme Court’s recent <a href="http://www.conservativehq.com/article/20588-patriot-county-clerks-defy-supreme-court-same-sex-%E2%80%9Cmarriage%E2%80%9D">ruling on same-sex marriage</a>, and the possibility of an <a href="http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/us/the-islamic-invasion-of-america-has-already-begun">invasion</a> of Muslim refugees. </p>
<p>And the number of migrants to the Redoubt could increase dramatically now President Obama has issued his executive order on gun control, which sidesteps the Congress to limit freedoms that many believed were guaranteed by the Second Amendment. </p>
<p>So it’s perhaps not especially surprising that the latest Bundy stand-off is taking place in the Pacific northwest, nor that it is happening now. What may be more surprising is that the Bundys and their supporters are moving away from some of the old militia movement’s fundamental tenets.</p>
<h2>Young guns</h2>
<p>The new coalition is broad and ideologically diverse, and its principal spokesmen explicitly repudiate racism. Some of its leaders promote the goal of a theocratic society: Rawles’ Penguin bestseller, <a href="http://www.penguin.co.uk/books/how-to-survive-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/9780141049342/">How to Survive the End of the World as we Know It</a> (2010), argues that the Ten Commandments provide the most secure basis for society. Other leaders are emphatically political: the <a href="http://iiipercent.blogspot.co.uk">III Per Cent societies</a> promote a particular libertarianism that justifies physical force only in self-defence. </p>
<p>Notably, the Oregon occupation is not being supported either by <a href="http://survivalblog.com/">survivalblog.com</a> or III Per Cent leaders, and it may represent the Bundys’ jockeying for position in the intensely competitive world of anti-government activism. But Ammon Bundy represents the breadth and innovation of these new interests. His new Twitter account evidences respectful engagement with at least one self-described “Afrocentrist”:</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107384/original/image-20160106-14970-4m6a36.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107384/original/image-20160106-14970-4m6a36.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107384/original/image-20160106-14970-4m6a36.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107384/original/image-20160106-14970-4m6a36.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107384/original/image-20160106-14970-4m6a36.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107384/original/image-20160106-14970-4m6a36.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107384/original/image-20160106-14970-4m6a36.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>One irony of the occupation may be to demonstrate that the militia movement is turning its back upon racism – even as the government’s lack of immediate armed intervention fuels fears that its response may be racist. </p>
<p>That suggests that <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/oregonunderattack?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Ehashtag">#OregonUnderAttack</a> could be the first significant example of a new militia ethos in action – one that could potentially reach across racial divisions to enable a broader discussion of constitutional issues as they affect all Americans. But the “double standard” argument over the authorities’ tentativeness shows that there’s still a way to go – as did a New York Times interview in which the elder Bundy wondered aloud if black Americans were <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/us/politics/rancher-proudly-breaks-the-law-becoming-a-hero-in-the-west.html?_r=0">better off under slavery</a>. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Twitter commentators have played upon the rural background of the Oregon militia to deride its members as <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/yall-qaeda-twitter-users-mock-oregon-right-wing-militia-action-and-its-awesome/">#YallQaeda</a> – yet the aspirations of #CitizensforConstitutionalFreedom for political change in America go far beyond the complaints about agricultural zoning that supposedly began the occupation. </p>
<p>The invasion of the wildlife sanctuary may demonstrate the power of social media to do for American militia culture what Facebook and Twitter contributed to the Arab Spring – even though Ammon Bundy’s most useful asset may be President Obama’s increasingly hard-line moves against guns.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52779/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Crawford Gribben does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The violent American militias of the 1990s faded from view long ago – but have they begun coming back in a new form?Crawford Gribben, Professor of early modern British history, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/526672015-12-30T23:10:11Z2015-12-30T23:10:11ZSenator’s call for return of cracker night … and burns, amputations and blindings?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107045/original/image-20151230-11941-1qfqntj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Personal fireworks have been banned from sale in Australia since the 1980s.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sterlic/18827553404/">Scott Akerman/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With massive public displays of fireworks set for New Year’s eve tonight, the accidental Senator David Leyonhjelm has <a href="https://www.facebook.com/LDP.australia/videos/10153265199972672/">recently</a> called for the abolition of the ban on personal purchasing of fireworks throughout Australia so that people can again “set off a few double bungers”. </p>
<p>Leyonhjelm <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/how-mistaken-identity-and-luck-won-on-the-day-20131004-2uzse.html">won his Senate position</a> because of a combined donkey vote and many asleep-at-the-wheel voters confusing his Liberal Democratic Party with the Liberal Party. He now uses his position as a soapbox for his pet causes.</p>
<p>Fireworks have been banned from personal sales in all Australian jurisdictions except Tasmania and the Northern Territory since the 1980s.</p>
<p>Leyonhjelm’s news release argued that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Most of us who grew up with fireworks will remember good times and using common sense to manage our own safety. This was a good lesson that children no longer receive.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107044/original/image-20151230-11932-1i1hy9l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107044/original/image-20151230-11932-1i1hy9l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107044/original/image-20151230-11932-1i1hy9l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107044/original/image-20151230-11932-1i1hy9l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107044/original/image-20151230-11932-1i1hy9l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107044/original/image-20151230-11932-1i1hy9l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=631&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107044/original/image-20151230-11932-1i1hy9l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=631&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107044/original/image-20151230-11932-1i1hy9l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=631&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leyonhjelm’s news release.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Press release.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I’m the same age as Leyonhjelm and grew up with the excitement of letting off fireworks. The lesson I recall receiving was that you could buy unlimited gigantic red bungers and cause mayhem. They were sold from every corner store and petrol station with none of Leyonhjelm’s dreaded nanny state dampeners on selling only to responsible adults. </p>
<p>I and my mates thought it was hilarious fun to load people’s letterboxes with bungers the size of a sausage and see what damage we could do. Accounts were legion of kids terrorising cats and dogs, throwing them at passing cars and cyclists, and of valorous guys who would hold an inch long double-happy while it exploded (I would only hold tom thumbs).</p>
<p>But when early injury surveillance work began to show that all this mayhem was not just “great fun” but caused often serious injury and very occasionally death, governments acted to make firework displays public events, set off by professionals. </p>
<p>It’s highly unlikely that anyone among the millions watching tonight around Australia will be injured by public fireworks.</p>
<p>In 2014, <a href="http://health.nt.gov.au/library/scripts/objectifyMedia.aspx?file=pdf/95/39.pdf&siteID=1&str_title=Bulletin%20September%202014.pdf">monitoring</a> of five Northern Territory hospital emergency departments found there were 21 firework-related injuries. Nineteen were burns. The majority were male (71%), young (median age of 18 with six being children). One severe injury required hospitalisation. Another 14 injuries were moderate, with the rest minor.</p>
<p>The Northern Territory has about 1% of Australia’s national population. So if we extrapolated the NT’s 2014 firework injury rate nationally, we might expect 2,079 injuries elsewhere in Australia, with 99 being severe. </p>
<p>However, it is probably wise to consider the NT’s 2014 rate as abormally high. A <a href="http://www.publish.csiro.au/?act=view_file&file_id=NB03032.pdf">ten year study</a> of post-ban firework hospital admission in NSW between 1992 and 2002 found 114 cases, with an age-standardised rate of 0.19 per 100,000 population.</p>
<p>The injuries sustained were not little mozzie-bite level singes. The report states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Almost one in five separations were for traumatic amputation of part of the upper extremity. These included four complete or partial amputations of thumbs, 14 complete or partial amputations of other single fingers, one traumatic amputation at a level between the elbow and wrist and one amputation of the upper limb at an unspecified level. Other injuries included a variety of open wounds; fractures of nasal bones, mandible, ribs and bones of the arm, wrist and hand; traumatic pneumothorax; and traumatic haemothorax.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25047335">United States</a> between 2000 and 2010 there were 97,562 firework-related injuries treated in emergency departments.</p>
<p>Just search Google images for “firework injuries” and you’ll get a good idea of what’s involved.</p>
<p>Leyonhjelm’s fetish for eradicating Australia from the vice-like grip of his loathed nanny state regulations has seen him delineate an important ethical distinction. He is not opposed to drink driving laws and other road injury-reduction measures because most of these do not just protect drivers from “choosing” to harm themselves, but such laws also protect those harmed by the actions of freedom-exercising drivers with a skinful or a liking for speed. </p>
<p>Similarly, while the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/oct/02/thank-you-for-smoking-leyonhjelm-confirms-philip-morris-backing">tobacco industry-funded</a> Senator opposes most tobacco control because of his belief that smokers ought not be nudged into quitting or non-smokers into not starting, he does not oppose laws which prevent smokers from smoking near others, because of the mountain of evidence that secondhand smoke harms others.</p>
<p>But in calling for free access to fireworks, Leyonhjelm has now apparently abandoned this critical ethical distinction. In the Northern Territory study, half of those injured were bystanders. Risks to their safety are apparently just acceptable collateral to the rights of individuals to blow their own fingers off.</p>
<p>We also live in very different times to those when he and I got fun from letting off bungers or snapping throw-downs under people’s feet to startle them. With rising vigilance about terrorism, it takes little imagination to consider the prospect of hoons letting off volleys of bungers in crowded or culturally targeted places. We recently saw footage of Parisians panicked by exploding fireworks in the post terrorist days as they laid tributes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52667/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
With massive public displays of fireworks set for New Year’s eve tonight, the accidental Senator David Leyonhjelm has recently called for the abolition of the ban on personal purchasing of fireworks throughout…Simon Chapman, Professor of Public Health, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/474752015-09-24T20:17:30Z2015-09-24T20:17:30ZIs the minimal state a reasonable response to the nanny state?<p>The <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Economics/Personal_choice">Senate inquiry</a> titled “Personal Choice and Community Impacts” has begun. The intent is to examine government measures “introduced to restrict personal choice for the individual’s own good”. Steering the ship is David Leyonhjelm, who suggests that the “nanny state” is an unacceptable violation of individual liberty. </p>
<p>Leyonhjelm recently <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/david-leyonhjelm-declares-war-on-nanny-state/story-fn59niix-1227415288323?sv=269b8156e7f4031a81b36975114c4e93">said</a> that your choices are:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… not the government’s business unless you are likely to harm another person. Harming yourself is your own business, but it’s not the government’s business.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) <a href="http://www.ldp.org.au/index.php/policies/1158-lifestyle-choices">suggests</a> that having a right to choose:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… inevitably means some people will make … choices of which others strongly disapprove. That does not entitle them to seek to interfere in those choices.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These claims can be traced back to John Stuart Mill’s 1859 classic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Liberty">On Liberty</a>. Mill <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlLbty1.html">argued</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised … is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite its intuitive appeal, this is in fact a very radical position. We don’t know what will come out of the Senate inquiry, but we do have some idea about what the “ship of state” would look like based on these principles.</p>
<h2>Drug policy</h2>
<p>The LDP website <a href="http://www.ldp.org.au/index.php/policies/1268-cannabis">argues for</a> the legalisation of cannabis:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Crimes associated with the cultivation, sale and use of cannabis by adults are “victimless” as only those who have consented are involved.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The party position is not fully articulated for other substances, but the same arguments seem to apply to most illegal drugs. Some drugs can cause more harm to the individual than cannabis, but the harm principle rules out intervening in these cases.</p>
<p>Some drugs can cause harm to others, but alcohol is still the drug that creates the most carnage in this respect and would have to be banned under any consistent policy aimed at prohibiting drugs because they harm others. The LDP would be unlikely to go down that path. </p>
<p>So far so good – on drug policy I’m broadly on board with Leyonhjelm.</p>
<h2>Sexual preferences</h2>
<p>In the section of the website titled “lifestyle choices”, the LDP <a href="http://www.ldp.org.au/index.php/policies/1158-lifestyle-choices">says</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… private sexual activities and lifestyle choices voluntarily undertaken by adults are not matters for government intervention except to prevent coercion and protect children.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>True to his ideals, Leyonhjelm <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/liberal-democrat-david-leyonhjelm-introduces-samesex-marriage-bill-20141126-11uolh.html">introduced</a> a bill into the Senate to legalise same-sex marriage. </p>
<p>There are other activities, not discussed on the party website, that some will find less appetising than same-sex marriage. At least some forms of incest seem compatible with libertarianism. Two related consenting adults are not harming anyone by choosing each other as partners (as long as they do not procreate). A person choosing to have several spouses also seems acceptable as long as the relationships are not harmful.</p>
<p>Logical consistency, something that Leyonhjelm advocates, means the libertarian position also allows bestiality. Leyonhjelm argues that the state should not interfere because an act is offensive or immoral. The justification for intervention is that the act is harmful to others. </p>
<p>One might claim that the animal is being harmed or not consenting, but I doubt that Leyonhjelm would go down this path given that he supports the use of animals for food production. </p>
<p>You might be a bit green around the gills at this point but still agree with libertarians that repulsion at such acts doesn’t mean we should make criminals of people who perform them.</p>
<h2>Firearms</h2>
<p>It’s definitely time to head for the lifeboats when it comes to the LDP’s gun policy. The <a href="http://www.ldp.org.au/index.php/policies/1152-firearms">party position</a> is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sport, hunting and self-defence are all legitimate reasons for firearm ownership …Those who wish to carry a concealed firearm for self-defence are entitled … to do so unless they have a history or genuine prospect of coercion.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Leyonhjelm does not deny that guns can cause harm, but he doesn’t think we should curtail the freedom of the vast majority because of the actions of a few crazed individuals. He also suggests that an armed citizenry would prevent gun-related atrocities. </p>
<p>Leyonhjelm’s position is that it is acceptable, and preferable, for all Australians to be packing heat on the trip to the supermarket.</p>
<h2>Deregulation and privatisation</h2>
<p>The LDP opposes taxing people to pay for things like the NBN, ABC, SBS, Medibank Private, electricity generation, TAFE, universities, hospitals and schools. The state should also stop regulating liquor licences, workplace conditions, occupational licences, taxi services, retail trading hours, crash helmets for bikes and seatbelts for cars. </p>
<p>Road regulations should also be relaxed, but the LDP <a href="http://www.ldp.org.au/index.php/policies/1158-lifestyle-choices">says</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… should be accompanied by a health system that does not impose on society the cost of recovery of irresponsible and dangerous drivers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I take this to mean that the uninsured who harm themselves because they drive recklessly will receive only the most basic, if any, medical assistance. </p>
<p>Leyonhjelm’s economic vision is where I abandon ship. If freedom is about choice, as he suggests, the government has to have a redistributive role because resources have a big impact on choices. By ignoring this the libertarian position reveals itself for what it really is: a philosophy of freedom for the few.</p>
<h2>Where to from here?</h2>
<p>As we can see, an idea that seems intuitively appealing turns out to be quite radical. The great virtue of the harm principle is its clarity. As Mill <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlLbty1.html">says</a>, it asserts:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… one very simple principle as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For many people, including myself, this parsimony comes at too heavy a price. </p>
<p>It will be interesting to see whether an inquiry headed by a person of libertarian persuasion will offer something that is palatable to the Australian public regarding the appropriate limits to state intervention.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47475/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David van Mill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We don’t know what will come out of the Senate inquiry into the ‘nanny state’, but we do have some idea about what Australia would look like based on libertarian principles.David van Mill, Associate Professor in Political Science and International Relations, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/440662015-07-14T10:09:10Z2015-07-14T10:09:10ZPsychologists are known for being liberal – but is that because they understand how people think?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87974/original/image-20150709-10908-mwrqqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's not that studying psychology made me a bleeding heart, but that studying psychology gave me a better understanding of how people think and behave. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-205459033/stock-photo-a-road-sign-with-liberal-conservative-words-on-sky-background.html?src=exSXmN27T3yHD39VcZ3nmg-1-5">Sign via www.shutterstock.com.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Is the field of social psychology biased against political conservatives? There has been intense debate about this question since an <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/images/fileUpload/documents/Duarte-Haidt_BBS-D-14-00108_preprint.pdf">informal poll</a> of over 1,000 attendees at a social psychology meeting in 2011 revealed the group to be <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social-psychology-biased-republicans">overwhelmingly liberal</a>. </p>
<p>Formal surveys have produced <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1745691612448792">similar results</a>, showing the ratio of liberals to conservatives in the broader field of psychology is 14-to-1.</p>
<p>Since then, social psychologists have tried to figure out why this imbalance exists. </p>
<p>The primary explanation offered is that the field has an anticonservative bias. I have no doubt that this <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1745691612448792">bias exists</a>, but it’s not strong enough to push people who lean conservative out of the field at the rate they appear to be leaving.</p>
<p>I believe that a less prominent explanation is more compelling: learning about social psychology can make you more liberal. I know about this possibility because it is exactly what happened to me.</p>
<h2>‘<em>Homo libertus</em>’ becomes a social psychologist</h2>
<p>I used to be a libertarian. I believed that protecting individual liberties was the highest purpose of law, and that the government should have no role in shaping people’s behavior. These views tended to align with Republican positions more than Democratic ones on issues such as gun control, environmental policy and treatment for addiction. </p>
<p>I believed that people should have every opportunity to make their own choices, and should bear the full responsibility of the consequences of those choices.</p>
<p>The libertarian worldview assumes that each of us is a <em>homo libertus</em>, a creature that acts with its full mental capacity all the time, reasoning through every decision in terms of its complete implications for the individual’s values and well-being. </p>
<p>A perfect libertarian society wouldn’t need laws to protect the environment, for example, because each <em>homo libertus</em> would consider the impact on the environment of every decision that he or she makes. Society’s care for the environment would be reflected automatically in the choices of its citizens.</p>
<p>One of social psychology’s most powerful insights is that humans are not <em>homo liberti</em>. Thinking about ourselves in this way is alluring, but also mistaken. We are not radical individuals; we are <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497">social creatures</a>. We do not think logically at all times; we take <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346">shortcuts</a>. We do not always <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2010.05.013">consider the future</a>. And even when we do, we are <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.54.7.462">biased by the present context</a>.</p>
<p>Learning about social psychology, about how people actually make important choices, made me aware of the critical role that society plays, through laws and other means, in enabling us to fulfill our values and ideals. This realization pushed me to be decidedly more liberal than I was before. </p>
<p>It’s not that studying psychology made me a bleeding heart, but that studying psychology gave me a better understanding of why people do what they do. Three topics in particular that shaped the evolution of my political views from libertarian to liberal: gun control, charity and self-control. </p>
<p>There are many others, but these three most vividly illustrate the flaws in the <em>homo libertus</em> assumption.</p>
<h2>Case study #1: gun control</h2>
<p>Learning about social psychology first changed my views about gun control. <em>Homo libertus</em> would follow first principles when deciding to use force: only out of self-defense, and only when there is a real threat of harm. </p>
<p>But we now know that people’s perceptions of threat are a blend of objective reality and subjective interpretation. The experience of threat is informed by our snap judgments of the situation and our preconceptions about the potential attacker.</p>
<p>For instance, people are <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.450">more likely to shoot</a> an unarmed black man than an unarmed white man. This is true of just about everyone, including <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.6.1314">African Americans</a>, highly trained <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167212473157">police officers</a>, and people who are horrified at the thought of having a racial bias and <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1521/soco.2008.26.4.401">motivated to be egalitarian</a>. Also, the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00061">mere presence of a gun primes people for aggression</a>, making violence more likely even when there is no rational basis for it. </p>
<p>Implicit biases, including ones that go against our overt beliefs, can sneak into life-and-death decisions. This knowledge convinced me that giving even the most well-intentioned people total liberty with guns leads to outcomes that violate equality and justice.</p>
<h2>Case study #2: Charity</h2>
<p>Decisions about charitable giving are another example. Government aid to foreign countries is unnecessary, I used to think, because if people care about what happens outside the US, then they’ll give money directly to those in need. </p>
<p>It turns out that we humans often have noble, charitable intentions, but we behave in <a href="http://journal.sjdm.org/7303a/jdm7303a.htm">strange and irrational ways</a> when it comes to actual giving.</p>
<p>For example, people give more money to save the life of one person who is vividly portrayed than to save hundreds of people who are depicted as statistics, a phenomenon known as the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2006.01.005">identifiable victim effect</a>. </p>
<p>Even when victims are equally identifiable, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2005.02.003">we tend to give less money</a> when there are more of them. If a <em>homo libertus</em> cared enough to donate $X to one person, then he would donate at least that much to two people. The fact that real humans act in the opposite way made me realize that formalizing our support for those in need through foreign aid and similar policies is a logical way for people in our society to ensure that we act on our charitable intentions.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87960/original/image-20150709-10904-toaur3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87960/original/image-20150709-10904-toaur3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87960/original/image-20150709-10904-toaur3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87960/original/image-20150709-10904-toaur3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87960/original/image-20150709-10904-toaur3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87960/original/image-20150709-10904-toaur3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87960/original/image-20150709-10904-toaur3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Homo libertus might have perfect self-control. The rest of us, not so much.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-244036057/stock-photo-don-t-smoke-sign.html?src=s_8sHi7HSX87MIRf6mel_A-1-9">Antismoking sign via www.shutterstock.com.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Case study #3: Self-control and bad behavior</h2>
<p>A final example of how social psychology made me more liberal comes from <a href="http://sanlab.uoregon.edu/research/">my own research on self-control</a>. </p>
<p>The libertarian view places the responsibility for choices and their consequences entirely on the individual. We have the right to engage in unhealthy behaviors such as cigarette-smoking or excessive eating, and the downstream problems arising from those behaviors are ours alone.</p>
<p>However, unlike <em>homo libertus</em>, many factors outside of our control interfere with our ability to quit smoking or eat healthfully. Simply <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1238041">being poor reduces self-control</a>. Being abused or neglected as a child <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-8606.2010.00145.x">reduces self-control</a> and <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001349">increases the risk of substance</a> use as an adult. In a perfect world, we would all have sufficient self-control to align our intentions neatly with our actions.</p>
<p>But in this world, where we do not, the fact that some people are saddled with deficits whose seeds were sown before birth undermines the libertarian assumption that people are capable, autonomous decision-makers.</p>
<p>These are just three examples, but I think they illustrate well the ways that the idealized folk psychology that underpinned my libertarian politics collapsed in the face of social psychological evidence.</p>
<p>You might think this means I think people aren’t responsible for their behavior, but actually I just think that we have a different kind of responsibility. The fact that we’re not always in total control of our immediate actions means that we have even greater responsibility to construct our situations and our institutions in alignment with our deep values.</p>
<p>As I continue to study social psychology, I increasingly believe in the importance of policies that recognize and accommodate the realities of human psychology, which necessarily insert certain roles for government in our everyday lives. And I bet I’m not the only one.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44066/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elliot Berkman receives funding from NIH.</span></em></p>Learning about social psychology can make you more liberal. I know this because it is exactly what happened to me.Elliot Berkman, Assistant Professor, Psychology, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/439162015-06-29T20:08:41Z2015-06-29T20:08:41ZOn ‘nanny states’ and race, Leyonhjelm exposes the moral thinness of libertarianism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86487/original/image-20150626-18207-x7dn5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Libertarians, such as David Leyonhjelm, refuse to see anything but individual liberty as having decisive moral weight.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Whatever you think of his views, or of how he came to <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-09/nsw-sends-liberal-democrat-to-senate/4945080">sit in the Senate</a>, it’s hard to deny that David Leyonhjelm is the real deal: a conviction politician whose positions are governed by principle, not populism.</p>
<p>The problem for his supporters is that Leyonhjelm is exposing the disturbing moral thinness of the libertarian principles he espouses.</p>
<p>In the wake of a parliamentary committee <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-24/government-labor-greens-show-support-for-indigenous-referendum/6571370">recommending a referendum</a> on constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians, Leyonhjelm repeated the claim that there’s doubt in anthropological circles that the Aboriginal nations were the first inhabitants of the Australian continent.</p>
<p>That claim struck many as decidedly odd. However, this empirical claim is just one component of a larger position that Leyonhjelm outlined in a speech in March. Appeals to anthropological data and a curious concern not to exclude those who don’t respect Aboriginal culture are just ornaments to his main objection. That comes near the end of <a href="http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;db=CHAMBER;id=chamber%2Fhansards%2F0e04f51c-90a0-44db-b9b2-2bbc9d548cae%2F0077;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansards%2F0e04f51c-90a0-44db-b9b2-2bbc9d548cae%2F0000%22">his speech</a>, and is both perfectly consistent with his ideological commitments, and perfectly emblematic of what’s wrong with libertarianism:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Every human being in Australia is a person, equal before the law. Giving legal recognition to characteristics held by certain persons – particularly when those characteristics are inherent, like ancestry – represents a perverse sort of racism. Although it appears positive, it still singles some people out on the basis of race.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is a familiar argument: if we’re all equal, and if it’s wrong to discriminate on the basis of race, then it’s just as wrong to discriminate positively as negatively.</p>
<p>The problem with talking about equality at this level of abstraction is that it makes the reality of material privilege invisible. And the bigger problem is that for libertarians, and a great many classical liberals, that’s not actually a problem at all.</p>
<h2>The skinless enlightenment man</h2>
<p>Treasurer Joe Hockey <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/treasurer-joe-hockeys-address-to-the-sydney-institute-20140612-zs5ok.html">insists</a> the state promises “equality of opportunity” but not “equality of outcome”. But “equality of opportunity” here is understood as mostly formal. It’s the equality Anatole France <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/361132-the-law-in-its-majestic-equality-forbids-rich-and-poor">spoke of</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The majestic equality of the law, which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But if you can strip human beings back to a self so abstract that purely formal equality seems compelling, you can convince yourself that practical disadvantage doesn’t matter. Leyonhjelm’s speech name-checked the Enlightenment, and this is fitting. What emerges from the Enlightenment and its early modern antecedents is, as the philosopher Charles Taylor puts it, a <a href="http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2008/09/02/buffered-and-porous-selves/">“buffered” self</a>, an autonomous agent impervious to external forces. </p>
<p>The men of the Enlightenment – figures like Locke, Hume, Kant, Jefferson and Rousseau – laid out the value of liberty and the essential dignity of humans spectacularly well, but the humans they were describing looked an awful lot like themselves. Being white, male, heterosexual, well-educated and materially comfortable – qualifications which allow you to pass through the world without the kinds of friction that others encounter – makes it much easier to conceive of yourself as an objective centre of disembodied reason and freedom.</p>
<p>Abstract reason doesn’t go hungry. Abstract reason has no skin; it is not born into a body situated into a world of meanings it cannot control.</p>
<p>Nor does it have a history. In speaking of everyone “celebrating ancestry”, Leyonhjelm quite explicitly collapses the experiences of an Indigenous Australian, an asylum seeker, and an Anglo-Celt into one very big but very shallow bucket. Racial identity is reduced to “ancestry” and shunted back into a past that’s available for voluntary “celebration” but exerts no real force on the present. </p>
<p>The “buffered self” isn’t buffeted, let alone constrained or determined, by the winds of history. It stands above history just as it stands above embodiment.</p>
<p>And to suggest otherwise? To suggest that history and its sequelae must be acknowledged? Why, that would be singling people out on the basis of their race. That’s racist.</p>
<h2>Saving us from ourselves</h2>
<p>In some ways this is all in keeping with libertarianism’s refusal to see anything but individual liberty as having decisive moral weight. Freedom, just so we’re clear, is desperately important. It’s one of the main features of the moral landscape that politics must be responsive to. But a myopic focus on individual liberty, linked to a thin conception of persons that sees human dignity simply as the free exercise of autonomy, obscures other vital features of that landscape.</p>
<p>Leyonhjelm has apparently <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2015/s4262236.htm">won support</a> for a parliamentary inquiry into the “Nanny State”. Once again, there is commendable philosophical clarity and consistency in his position:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The issue here is, to what extent is the government entitled to legislate – and we’re not talking about just giving advice – but to legislate, to protect you from your own bad choices. Bicycle helmets are a very good example of that: nobody is hurt if you fall off. If you don’t wear a bicycle helmet, your head’s not going to crack into somebody else and damage them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the classic <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/#HarPri">Liberal Harm Principle</a>: no-one is entitled to interfere with your personal behaviour so long as it doesn’t impact on anyone else. Hence if you want to smoke, or ride a bike without a helmet, this is an essentially “personal” matter that no-one else should interfere with. </p>
<p>Leyonhjelm <a href="https://twitter.com/davidleyonhjelm/status/611657851996508160">hit back</a> against criticism for apparently being more concerned about the imaginary health effects of <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/wind-turbine-syndrome">wind turbines</a> than the very real health effects of <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31600118">tobacco</a>. Such criticism misses the point: libertarians don’t care what you do to yourself, just to other people. Smoke ‘em if you got 'em.</p>
<p>I’ve <a href="https://theconversation.com/fuming-with-outrage-nazis-nannies-and-smoking-16682">noted before</a> that even classical liberals like Mill drew the line at suicide – as this destroys the very freedom that the Harm Principle is meant to respect – though some libertarians such as the late Robert Nozick were prepared to countenance a wider right of self-disposal.</p>
<p>But consider whether you have a right to wrestle a would-be suicide down from a window ledge or bridge. To conclude that this would be an unfair interference in their personal autonomy involves a certain blindness, a whittling of the person down to the point where their only remaining value is rational autonomy. The independent, buffered Enlightenment subject: a pure atomistic locus of self-directed freedom, including the freedom to jump.</p>
<p>What is bled out of that picture is the essential interconnection of persons, grounded in our intersubjective constitution. When John Donne famously <a href="https://web.cs.dal.ca/%7Ejohnston/poetry/island.html">declared</a> “no man is an island entire of itself”, he knew exactly what that implied:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>No-one “merely” harms themselves, but inevitably harms those around them in doing so. My life is not entirely my own – nor is its value reducible to my autonomy.</p>
<h2>Thick value and power-blindness</h2>
<p>People – real, concrete, loving, feeling, people – matter in deep, distinctive ways, ways that strain the resources of our moral language. And, accordingly, their deaths – which rob the world of something inherently precious – also matter, at least enough for us to sometimes try and save people from their own objectively bad choices. But that sort of thick moral value is lost in the remorseless thinning-down of libertarian calculation. </p>
<p>Even Leyonhjelm’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/strange-bedfellows-euthanasia-same-sex-marriage-and-libertarianism-29651">support of same-sex marriage</a>, for instance, doesn’t seem to be grounded in a view that long-term same-sex relationships are intrinsically good things that deserve access to the same sort of recognition as heterosexual ones, so much as a pervasive dislike of governments saying “no” to people.</p>
<p>Also, when you denude the world of moral pith by abstracting people down into their Enlightenment ghosts in this way, you end up peeling away the level on which real power operates. That makes it easier to pretend we’re now living in some sort of post-racial utopia in which any attempt to redress ongoing power imbalances becomes “reverse racism”. </p>
<p>Equality, it seems, is achieved simply by refusing to acknowledge that inequality remains to be overcome, and by refusing to see the privilege of one’s own position. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AypT0F-xv4Q?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">You know who talks about race? Racists.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Think of Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/human-rights-commissioner-tim-wilson-believes-race-hate-laws-are-bizarre-and-unequal/story-fnj3rq0y-1226868911981">complaining</a> that that the law – and not just social sanction – prohibits racially loaded terms being used by some people but not others. This misses the point that the words in question aren’t just words used to denigrate minorities: they’re words used by white people to denigrate others. </p>
<p>Wilson doesn’t magically stop being white when he speaks, and he doesn’t get to sidestep the historical meanings of a white man using those words. None of us gets to be the pure <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_(philosophy)">monad</a> of ahistorical, acultural reason the Enlightenment imagined us to be.</p>
<p>But this charge of “reverse racism” is deeply attractive from a certain perspective. It’s a way of pretending you can talk about racism, or sexism, or homophobia, without talking about power. That’s comforting for those who sense true equality would mean that they – we – might have to give up some of that power.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Patrick will be on hand for an author Q&A between 3PM and 4PM AEST on Tuesday, June 30. Post your questions in the comments section below.</em></p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This piece was updated after publication to clarify Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson’s comments.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43916/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patrick Stokes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>David Leyonhjelm is a conviction politician whose positions are governed by principle, not populism. But he is exposing the disturbing moral thinness of the libertarian principles he espouses.Patrick Stokes, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/439142015-06-26T06:21:08Z2015-06-26T06:21:08ZIs the ‘nanny state’ so bad? After all, voters expect governments to care<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86491/original/image-20150626-18237-1wj3edb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Libertarians have a deeply atomising picture about communities, states, even about what it is to be human.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/arselectronica/14697349890/">Ars Electronica/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Independent senator David Leyonhjelm has <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/david-leyonhjelm-declares-war-on-nanny-state/story-fn59niix-1227415288323">launched</a> a parliamentary inquiry into what he calls “the nanny state”. He objects to what he sees as government interference with the freedom of people to make choices, including, if they want, bad choices. </p>
<p>“It’s not the government’s business unless you are likely to harm another person,” he says. “Harming yourself is your business.” </p>
<p>Leyonhjelm is a libertarian: someone who believes that individual liberty is paramount and should be restricted in as few ways as possible. But you don’t need to be a libertarian to feel some sympathy for his call for the government to butt out. </p>
<h2>Liberty and choice</h2>
<p>The principle he invokes – that it is the business of government to interfere only when we risk harming others – is actually a cornerstone of liberal thought. It’s often called Mill’s principle, after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill">John Stuart Mill</a>, the famous liberal, utilitarian and early feminist. </p>
<p>In his seminal text, <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/130/">On Liberty</a>, Mill wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Leyonhjelm seems to invoke exactly this principle in decrying the nanny state.</p>
<p>Mill thought government interference in our choices was oppressive even if that interference was genuinely for our own good. Leyonhjelm agrees, though he also says as a matter of fact that we usually make better decisions for ourselves than the government would. </p>
<p>Most of us would probably agree that there ought to be limits on how much governments can interfere with our choices for our own good, and that we are often better judges in our own case than outsiders could be. But agreeing with this much leaves plenty of room for debate. </p>
<p>How much interference is too much? Are there domains in which we are not good judges of our own good and might benefit from – even welcome – outside interference?</p>
<p>There’s a large body of psychological literature on how good people are at making decisions that aim at their own well-being. The record is not encouraging: people regularly make choices that they think will make them happier but actually will not. </p>
<p>We have major problems with what psychologists sometimes call <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affective_forecasting">affective forecasting</a>: we think we know how happy something will make us, but we’re wrong. This leads us to make bad choices with regard to money, in particular: people think that a pay rise, or <a href="http://apps.webofknowledge.com/home.do;jsessionid=55B867B93BBCE527D6B68F62C9E518EB?UT=WOS%3aA1978FM23000013&IsProductCode=Yes&mode=FullRecord&product=WOS&SID=T1tfcc3Pfkmne5HD3Nw&smartRedirect=yes&SrcApp=Highwire&DestFail=http%3a%2f%2fwww.webofknowledge.com%3fDestApp%3dCEL%26DestParams%3d%253Faction%253Dretrieve%2526mode%253DFullRecord%2526product%253DCEL%2526UT%253DWOS%253AA1978FM23000013%2526customersID%253DHighwire%26e%3dhH2zexpHRGS6PGgAE_lYJX79xEo.NgJm6EwhlKCknceKK53d.SavxjG.Ty779rBu%26SrcApp%3dHighwire%26SrcAuth%3dHighwire&Init=Yes&action=retrieve&SrcAuth=Highwire&Func=Frame&customersID=Highwire&DestApp=WOS&DestParams=%3faction%3dretrieve%26mode%3dFullRecord%26product%3dWOS%26UT%3dWOS%3aA1978FM23000013%26customersID%3dHighwire%26smartRedirect%3dyes">winning the lottery</a>, will increase their happiness, but if they’re already comfortably well off, the money makes little or no difference. </p>
<p>And that’s not because nothing can be done to increase our happiness: memorable <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2013/08/05/want-to-buy-happiness-purchase-an-experience/">experiences</a>, for instance, do lead to increases in well-being. </p>
<p>We also routinely make decisions we later regret. For instance, in countries where there’s no real national health system and no compulsory insurance – countries of the sort that Leyonhjlem wants Australia to emulate – people routinely go under-insured, and often pay a high price for it. </p>
<p>Part of the reason for this is that we tend to think of ourselves as much less likely to become seriously ill than we actually are. In terms of health, then, government interference may save us from ourselves.</p>
<h2>Your kind of society</h2>
<p>While Mill’s harm principle is very attractive, it may well be that it’s psychologically unrealistic. It was formulated at a time when optimism in the power of rationality was at its peak and scientific psychology was in its infancy. We now know that we are less rational than we had hoped and that we often make better decisions collectively than we would by ourselves.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86485/original/image-20150626-18254-qttq8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86485/original/image-20150626-18254-qttq8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=297&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86485/original/image-20150626-18254-qttq8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=297&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86485/original/image-20150626-18254-qttq8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=297&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86485/original/image-20150626-18254-qttq8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86485/original/image-20150626-18254-qttq8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86485/original/image-20150626-18254-qttq8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ulysses tied himself to the mast so he wouldn’t be seduced by the sirens’ song, but most of us don’t need to be as dramatic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/freeparking/523448963/">freeparking/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many people who recognise that they are apt to make bad decisions in the heat of the moment take steps to prevent themselves doing so. In <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html">The Odyssey</a>, for instance, Ulysses tied himself to the mast so he wouldn’t be seduced by the sirens’ song. </p>
<p>Many of us do something similar, if less dramatic. We salary-sacrifice into superannuation not merely to take advantage of higher interest rates but to put the money out of our own reach. We deliberately buy a smaller tub of ice-cream so the hassle of going out and buying more will prevent us from bingeing, and so on. We impose restrictions on ourselves. </p>
<p>In a democracy, voting for a nanny state may also be a way of imposing restrictions on ourselves. A minority of people may not like that, but that’s just how democracy works. So long as the restrictions are not unduly burdensome (how hard is to put on a seatbelt?) they don’t have much call on our sympathy.</p>
<p>We don’t want government interfering with our fundamental freedoms, even for our own good. One of our most fundamental freedoms is the freedom to live in accordance with our own conception of the sort of society we want to live in. </p>
<p>Leyonhjelm’s proposal is not philosophically neutral. He has deep-seated philosophical views about the community, the state, even about what it is to be human. He thinks of human beings, in classical liberal fashion, as essentially independent individuals, each choosing for him or herself and bound to one another only by chosen ties. It is this deeply atomising picture he hopes to impose on us all. </p>
<p>We may choose to fight and vote for a different conception of what it is to be human; one in which we are each deeply bound to and interdependent on one another, and in which we may rightly ask each other to bear certain burdens. </p>
<p>That, too, is not a neutral conception of a flourishing human life, but it doesn’t pretend to be. Both pictures will be found attractive by many of us. Contemporary Australia represents a compromise between them and perhaps is all the better for it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Neil Levy receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Templeton Foundation. He has previously received funding from the Wellcome Trust.</span></em></p>David Leyonhjelm’s parliamentary inquiry into what he calls “the nanny state” reflects a view of human beings as essentially independent individuals. But that’s not kind of society most of us want.Neil Levy, Professor, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/400332015-04-22T10:03:59Z2015-04-22T10:03:59ZWho is John Galt? Ayn Rand, libertarians and the GOP<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77976/original/image-20150414-24648-1f6jesh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ayn Rand quote at Walt Disney World</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ayn_Rand_quote,_American_Adventure,_Epcot_Center,_Walt_Disney_World.jpg">Cory Doctorow - Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ayn Rand (1904-82) has arisen from the dead. Over the last decade the pop philosopher and propaganda fictionist extraordinaire has moved steadily from the cultish margins to the mainstream of US conservatism.</p>
<p>Her ghost may even haunt the current presidential race with the candidacy of Republican Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian darling who received a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/us/politics/rand-pauls-mixed-inheritance.html">set of Ayn Rand</a> books for his 17th birthday. </p>
<p>In her bestselling books and essays, Rand frankly celebrated selfishness and greed – and the underside of this celebration is a scorn toward and demonization of any simple caring about other human beings. Such a stance has become a hidden, yet driving force behind such loaded catchphrases as “spending cuts” and, more grandiosely, “limited government.”</p>
<p>In a larger sense, though, <a href="https://www.aynrand.org">Rand </a>had never died. Sales of her books remained steadily in the six figures in the years following her demise, their underground influence an unacknowledged-if-discomforting fact of American life. A couple of reader surveys carried out in the 1990s by Book-of-the-Month Club and the Library of Congress, and by the Modern Library imprint, showed Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead near the top of the polling results, according to author Brian <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/books/review/leonhardt.t.html">Doherty.</a> And, in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, sales of her works <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/10/ayn-rand-atlas-shrugged">tripled</a>.</p>
<p>Randianism, what she called Objectivism, now exists as a mass phenomenon, a grass-roots presence, a kind of folklore. “Who Is John Galt?”, her recurring slogan from Atlas Shrugged, can be seen on placards at Tea Party rallies, on leaflets casually affixed to telephone poles or on the <a href="http://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/articles/why-is-lululemon-athletica-quoting-ayn-rand/">shopping bags</a> of Lululemon Athletics, the Canadian sports apparel company. The firm’s CEO, Chip Wilson, is an avowed Rand fan. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/business/02bbt.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">So are </a>the current corporate chiefs at <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/04/09/gusher">Exxon</a>, Sears, the BB & T Bank in North Carolina and the funky Whole Foods chain.</p>
<p>And of course, there’s Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, who started out in the 1950s as Rand’s star disciple and never in the course of his career was to abjure the <a href="http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/bio/turbulence.html">special relationship.</a></p>
<h2>Rand and the mindset of the right</h2>
<p>Randthought, which I discuss in my book, <a href="http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/59850">On Nabokov, Ayn Rand and the Libertarian Mind, </a> serves as a major doctrinal component within the mindset of the libertarian, the latter being the most significant American ideological development of the last 35 years. </p>
<p>The title of a 1971 book by Jerome Tuccille (a libertarian journalist and Libertarian Party candidate for governor of New York State in 1974) says all: <a href="http://www.jerometuccille.com/it_usually_begins_with_ayn_rand_50404.htm">It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand</a>. Rand’s fan base has since grown to include Paul Ryan, the GOP’s 2012 vice-presidential nominee, who in 2005 openly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmW19uoyuO8">credited</a> Rand with his having entered government service and who reportedly has had his staffers read the market guru’s books.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77977/original/image-20150414-24627-2ch2im.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77977/original/image-20150414-24627-2ch2im.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77977/original/image-20150414-24627-2ch2im.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77977/original/image-20150414-24627-2ch2im.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77977/original/image-20150414-24627-2ch2im.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77977/original/image-20150414-24627-2ch2im.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77977/original/image-20150414-24627-2ch2im.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77977/original/image-20150414-24627-2ch2im.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ayn Rand.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ayn_Rand1.jpg">Phyllis Cerf</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rand did not invent libertarianism. The thinking, sans the name, had been around since at least the 1920s. And her contemporaries, economists such as Milton Friedman and the so-called Austrian School, gave the set of ideas academic standing and respectability. In Rand’s truculent fiction, however, an abstract theory effectively took on flesh via dashing heroes and unabashed hero worship, vivid myths and technological magic, page-turning suspense and torrid, violent sex. For every studious reader of ecnomist <a href="Friedrich%20von%20Hayek">Friedrich von Hayek</a>, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of eager devourers of Rand. </p>
<p>Curiously, an aging Rand loathed libertarians, attacked them as “scum,” “hippies of the right” and “a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people.” She hated them in great measure because, in her view, they had adopted her economic principles yet ignored her total “philosophy.” (Rand also disliked any situation over which she couldn’t exercise personal control.) </p>
<p>Her heirs and successors in the so-called Objectivist camp have since waged a kind of sectarian cold war with libertarians. One thinks of the split between Stalinists and Trotskyists or between Social Democrats and Communists.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the libertarians themselves have gone their merry way with their political party (the nation’s third largest) and Tea Parties, and with their myriad think tanks and media organs.</p>
<h2>The GOP’s fraught affair with Rand</h2>
<p>In the interim, starting with Ronald Reagan, the GOP has absorbed selected aspects of the rhetoric and larger aims of the libertarian purists (much as the New Deal did once pick and choose rhetoric and programs from the socialist left). At the same time, official party conservatism took to cultivating the evangelical Christian sectors, marshaling issues such as abortion and evolution in an aggressive bid to gain favor with fundamentalist voters.</p>
<p>In addition, picking up from the “Southern Strategy” of Republicans in the 1970s who wooed Southern Democrats by catering to racial tensions, candidates and publicists now play on continuing resentment over the Civil War defeat and the Civil Rights struggles. They deflect blame onto “Big Government” for any and all ills, much as libertarians and Randians are wont to do. The result is a marriage of convenience, an uneasy alliance between a pro-market, secular Right and the older, faith-based forces who make common cause against a perceived common enemy. </p>
<p>Rand, ironically, was an outspoken atheist, a fact that eventually led VP candidate Paul Ryan to publicly <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/08/14/paul_ryan_rejects_ayn_rands_objectivism_philosophy.html">repudiate</a> her “atheist philosophy,” claiming disingenuously that his once-touted Randianism was merely an “urban legend,” and that, as a Catholic, his thought came rather from St Thomas Aquinas.</p>
<p>Still, whatever these doctrinal differences, Rand’s vision will continue to provide inspiration and intellectual ammunition for the foot soldiers of US conservatism, libertarian or otherwise. </p>
<p>In many respects, America is becoming — in echo of the title of a<a href="http://www.gary-weiss.com"> book</a> by journalist Gary Weiss — an “Ayn Rand Nation.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40033/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gene H. Bell-Villada does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ayn Rand may be long gone but her theories about selfishness live on in today’s libertarian circles and influence the political philosophies of presidential contender Rand Paul and others.Gene H. Bell-Villada, Professor of Romance Languages, Williams CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/296512014-07-25T04:39:25Z2014-07-25T04:39:25ZStrange bedfellows: euthanasia, same-sex marriage, and libertarianism<p>The <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-24/euthanasia-advocate-philip-nitschke-suspended-by-medical-board/5615268">suspension of Philip Nitschke’s medical registration</a>, and the events leading up to it, has sparked one of the most heated discussions about euthanasia in Australia for some time.</p>
<p>What’s surprising, however, is that the debate hasn’t split along the usual pro-euthanasia versus “pro-life” lines. Instead, <a href="http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/euthanasiaandassistedsuicide/pages/introduction.aspx">advocates of both euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide</a> themselves have been condemning Nitschke for <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-03/nitschke-criticised-over-45yo-mans-suicide/5570162">failing to urge a 45-year-old man</a>, who had no terminal illness but who expressed a wish to take his own life, to seek psychiatric help.</p>
<p>Nitschke <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2014/s4038913.htm">has insisted</a> that it wasn’t his role to try to dissuade someone from “rational suicide”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If a 45-year-old comes to a rational decision to end his life, researches it in the way he does, meticulously, and decides that … now is the time I wish to end my life, they should be supported. And we did support him in that.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The pushback against Nitschke <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-07/nitschke-a-maverick-suicide-campaigner-rodney-syme-says/5579802">from euthanasia campaigners such as Rodney Syme</a> (as well as mental health advocates such as <a href="http://www.skynews.com.au/news/politics/national/2014/07/24/kennett-says-nitschke-has-damaged-the-cause.html">beyondblue’s Jeff Kennett</a>) provides a valuable lesson about what can happen when two very different ethical approaches converge on the same policy prescription; it becomes important to discuss the principles, not just the policy.</p>
<h2>The importance of liberty</h2>
<p>This problem isn’t unique to the euthanasia debate. Last week, newly-minted Liberal Democrats senator David Leyonhjelm announced plans to introduce <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/new-senator-david-leyonhjelm-urges-libertarian-mps-to-come-out-of-the-closet-and-support-samesex-marriage-20140714-3bw6w.html">a bill to legalise same-sex marriage</a>. </p>
<p>As a libertarian, Leyonhjelm has called for <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/new-senator-david-leyonhjelm-calls-for-lower-taxes-greater-freedom/story-fn59niix-1226983323454">lower taxes and a massively reduced role for government</a>. Yet his position on marriage equality aligns him with a policy more closely associated with the political left.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54839/original/rchbfhn8-1406250559.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54839/original/rchbfhn8-1406250559.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54839/original/rchbfhn8-1406250559.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54839/original/rchbfhn8-1406250559.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54839/original/rchbfhn8-1406250559.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54839/original/rchbfhn8-1406250559.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54839/original/rchbfhn8-1406250559.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some political conservatives support same-sex marriage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dunechaser/129583202">Andrew Becraft/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He’s not the only right-wing supporter of same-sex marriage of course. But when someone like <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/oct/05/david-cameron-conservative-party-speech">British Prime Minister David Cameron declares</a> “I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative, I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative,” he is doing something very different: he’s saying that marriage is a substantive good, and committed same-sex couples can and should be able to participate in that good. </p>
<p>Philosophers such as <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Long-Arc-Justice-Marriage/dp/0231135211">Richard Mohr have argued</a> that committed same-sex relationships already <em>are</em> marriages in a substantive sense, and the law should simply recognise that.</p>
<p>For libertarians (for the most part), the only real substantive good is individual autonomy. Leyonhjelm doesn’t argue, as far as I can see, that certain types of relationship have a special, substantive value; he simply thinks “<a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/new-senator-david-leyonhjelm-says-samesex-marriage-is-a-liberty-issue/story-fn59niix-1226988123380?nk=595f42bdd767655aa8e6f44776b7eb39">It is not the job of the government to define relationships</a>.” (In which case, we might ask, why should governments get involved in certifying marriage at all?)</p>
<p>Those of us who support same-sex marriage can probably live with that tension, if it delivers the outcome we want. But the philosophical tension between approaches is still there. </p>
<p>And the very moral thinness of libertarianism, its refusal to trade in any ethical currency other than liberty, sits uneasily with issues of life and death, where all sorts of other moral considerations are in play.</p>
<h2>The limits of autonomy</h2>
<p>That’s precisely why Nitschke’s comments about suicide are so shocking. Most arguments for euthanasia come down to a concern to alleviate needless suffering. </p>
<p>One reason death is viewed as normally being a harm to the person who dies is that it <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/death/#3">deprives us of goods we would have enjoyed</a> had we lived. In a situation where there is nothing left in the patient’s future but pain and loss of dignity, there are no more goods to lose.</p>
<p>Compassionate regard for someone whose fate is in our hands may mean helping them achieve a quicker, more dignified death is the <a href="http://virtualphilosopher.com/2006/11/least_worst_opt.html">least-worst option</a>. </p>
<p>Autonomy plays a crucial role in that, of course: we need to respect the patient’s decisions regarding their treatment, including their <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?id=dcK6-h1ngtcC&pg=PA159&lpg=PA159&dq=bonnie+steinbock+the+intentional+termination+of+life">refusal of further interventions</a>. Compassionate concern for others may mean allowing them a degree of control over their impending death.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54838/original/bcsjdtyn-1406250341.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54838/original/bcsjdtyn-1406250341.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54838/original/bcsjdtyn-1406250341.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54838/original/bcsjdtyn-1406250341.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54838/original/bcsjdtyn-1406250341.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54838/original/bcsjdtyn-1406250341.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54838/original/bcsjdtyn-1406250341.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Having only one source of light, the libertarian landscape is dimly lit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/grahammhodgson/1323051683">Graham Hodgson/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What Nitschke’s libertarian position does, however, is strip out everything <em>but</em> autonomy and reduce the whole issue to one of individual choice.</p>
<h2>Libertarianism’s moral moonscape</h2>
<p>If you think, as Nitschke apparently does, that the question here is simply about exercising a right to suicide, why should it matter whether someone is terminally ill or not? If someone wants to die, and they’re clear-headed enough to make competent decisions, who are we to interfere with their personal liberty in order to stop them?</p>
<p>And yet most of us <em>do</em> have fairly clear moral intuitions that the suicide of an otherwise physically healthy person, possibly with treatable mental health issues, is a terrible thing. </p>
<p>Libertarianism either can’t make sense of that intuition, or treats it as irrelevant.</p>
<p>When teaching classes on the ethical debate over euthanasia, I’ve found that students often seem to struggle with explaining why it should matter whether the patient is dying (or at least permanently debilitated) or not. Yet from a mercy perspective, it matters very much that there are, in fact, no truly good options left open. </p>
<p>In part, this is because mercy is <a href="https://theconversation.com/drowning-mercy-why-we-fear-the-boats-16394">a particular kind of response towards another</a>, a response that acknowledges their distinctive value – and understanding that value is essential to understanding the full tragedy of death, of what is lost when a person dies. </p>
<p>Acknowledging that value means <a href="https://theconversation.com/fuming-with-outrage-nazis-nannies-and-smoking-16682">accepting some limits on autonomy</a> where avoidable death is involved.</p>
<p>Respect for patient autonomy needn’t involve the sort of wilful blindness Nitschke has shown. If we want to make the case for progressive reforms, such as euthanasia and marriage equality – as we should, vigourously and doggedly – we should resist doing so in terms that leave us unable to make sense of our moral environment.</p>
<p><em>Anyone seeking support and information about suicide can contact <a href="https://www.lifeline.org.au/">Lifeline</a> on 131 114 or <a href="http://www.beyondblue.org.au/">beyondblue</a> 1300 22 46 36</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29651/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patrick Stokes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The suspension of Philip Nitschke’s medical registration, and the events leading up to it, has sparked one of the most heated discussions about euthanasia in Australia for some time. What’s surprising…Patrick Stokes, Lecturer in Philosophy, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/249822014-03-28T14:36:51Z2014-03-28T14:36:51ZBitcoin’s strength lies in its libertarian status<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45005/original/r92h5cxy-1396000857.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1022%2C726&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Too tangible. (Keyrings, not currency)</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/100239928@N08/11297228794/in/photolist-idifwN-fur6LV-fuFoAG-j1XXSa-idhQXW-idhGX6-idiemF-idhL1R-idhJ4V-idifen-i5Ki1a-fDWc6s-fD4SZs-e3sApC-fuFouL-gAtcyN-gAtHgq-gAtfuY-gAtJLD-gAtK29-gAteZE-iVmcmj-jPXX7v-gAunBn-dqRE9e-dPcqJ1-jjkaZK-edhswK-edo3nm-e9SmUj-idhSTu-gAu7Tc-gAub5c-hWQeQb-ec7iAz-frRZfV-frS6bV-fs7uhY-frS34B-kDPmMr-jh3G25-fs7uis-frS28r-fs7ujE-fs7ujW-frRZVT-frS2vz-frS19n-ihv7wk-jgW4ZL-jh1EUQ">BTC Keychain</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A turbulent last few months have seen numerous pieces announcing the end of Bitcoin, its imminent collapse, or the bursting of the bubble. Commentators are missing the point: the key to Bitcoin’s surprising resilience lies outside of traditional economic thinking.</p>
<p>Mark Williams of Boston School of Management predicts that Bitcoin will drop to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/williams-bitcoin-meltdown-10-2013-12#ixzz2sZtZXjLV">$10 a share by the first half of 2014.</a> In recent months Bitcoin transactions have been curbed in China on the orders of the central bank, declared illegal in Russia, and associated with <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/27/bitcoin-foundation-vice-chair-arrested-money-laundering">money laundering</a>. </p>
<p>Yet subsequent to each apparently terminal problem – the latest of which was the bankruptcy of the largest Bitcoin exchange site, <a href="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/mt-gox-files-for-bankruptcy/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0">Mt. Gox</a> – and wave of ensuing negative coverage, after an initial substantial drop Bitcoin has picked up value again fairly rapidly. Remarkably the Bitcoin <a href="http://preev.com">exchange rate</a> still sits at somewhere between $500-600 (at last check, although this is prone to drastic fluctuations). This suggests that the numerous economists who have prematurely dismissed Bitcoin are at least missing something in their analyses.</p>
<p>The electronic currency was created in 2009 by the pseudonym <a href="https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf">Satoshi Nakomoto</a> – possibly a group of hackers and cryptographers – and operates as an electronic peer-to-peer network transaction system that works through an expanding chain of numbers. This cryptographic system generates a fixed number of Bitcoin and the currency is released at 15-minute intervals in set quantities, Bitcoin will reach a final total of 21 million by 2140. They are released through a process known as mining, although the currency is most commonly acquired through exchanges with national currencies. Mining consists of expending computer power at considerable <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-12/virtual-bitcoin-mining-is-a-real-world-environmental-disaster.html">environmental cost</a> to find the hash key that generates the release of the next set of Bitcoin.</p>
<h2>Bitcoin Bubble</h2>
<p>The consensus amongst the majority of economic bloggers seems to be that Bitcoin is not a viable currency and a bubble that is soon to burst; most famously the Nobel laureates <a href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/golden-cyberfetters/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0">Paul Krugman</a> and <a href="http://rt.com/business/bitcoin-shiller-bubble-davos-127/">Robert Shiller</a> have expressed this view. If Bitcoin’s continued high valuation after several reportedly terminal crises should tell us anything: it is that it may be a bubble but it is not a conventional one, and this is because owners of the currency have longer-term political and ideological reasons for holding it. </p>
<p>Dismissing Bitcoin as a financial bubble misses precisely what is most significant about Bitcoin: First that it shows that alternative forms of community currency not created or backed by the state are at least possible. Second, it suggests people can invest in currencies and assets for other more durable reasons than short-term economic gain, like underlying beliefs and political ideology. Arguably economists have been so confused by Bitcoin because these are both points that contemporary mainstream economics tends to neglect.</p>
<p>One of the main reasons why Bitcoin may well be a bubble in the longer term is that there is a tendency to <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/02/05/272113082/episode-515-a-bet-over-bitcoin">hoard the currency</a> as some (but not all) individuals keep hold of it in the expectation of a continuing increase in value. Yet the finite number of Bitcoin means that <a href="http://www.paymentlawadvisor.com/files/2014/01/GoldmanSachs-Bit-Coin.pdf">its value as a currency is limited</a>, since if individuals see their Bitcoins as a store of value rather than spend them this damages its status as a currency. </p>
<p>Consequently Bitcoin drifts towards having a strong financial asset status as many people keep hold of the currency. With national currency, of course, central banks have the option of printing money when there is a lack of liquidity. This tendency to store has been noted in some <a href="http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/%7Esmeiklejohn/files/imc13.pdf">social network analysis research</a>, which estimates that in the first part of 2013, 64% of newly mined Bitcoin were not circulating.</p>
<h2>Bitcoin Community</h2>
<p>While Bitcoin’s status as a currency may not be sustainable, its continuing value as an asset does require further explanation and this can be found in the community of Bitcoin holders. Social anthropologists seem to be one of the few groups of writers that give primary attention to the underlying character of this community. For example, in <a href="http://simulacrum.cc/2013/03/04/the-demographics-of-bitcoin-part-1-updated/">the most extensive survey of the Bitcoin community to date</a> with more than 1,000 participants, curiosity and politics are strong reasons for holding the currency ranking closely alongside profit.</p>
<p>The survey also finds that the community seems to be overwhelmingly male and economically libertarian in spirit. In the context of political and economic beliefs there are clear echoes of the Austrian School of economists and Ludwig Von Mises. As Von Mises notes in The Theory of Money and Credit: “It is not the state but the common practice of all those who have dealings in the market, that creates money”. In line with Von Mises a key aim of the Bitcoin network is to challenge the idea that only the state can maintain a money system. The economic libertarianism of parts of the Bitcoin community seems to be anti-central banking, anti-governmental oversight and anti-state intervention.</p>
<p>The community has changed in recent months, for example <a href="http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article43897.html">hedge funds</a> have become more involved in the currency. How could speculators resist an asset so free from regulation and so volatile? Parts of the community are likely to be less enamoured of this than others, but presumably if you’re a good economic libertarian –- which Bitcoin owners tend to describe themselves as – you think that speculation is par for the course. In short, let the market decide.</p>
<p>Whether we have any sympathies with this political agenda, or whether we would strongly reject it. Bitcoin does illustrate that the durability of assets is determined by the beliefs of the communities that sustain them, and when an asset is underpinned by political values this can only add to its longevity. If something as volatile and improvisatory as Bitcoin can generate and sustain a significant degree of traction despite major set backs, surely it is only a matter of time before another electronic currency asserts itself on an international stage. In online circles a number of alternative candidates, like Dogecoin and Litecoin, are already circulating.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24982/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Dallyn does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations. He owns a small number of Bitcoins purchased as part of his research into the subject.</span></em></p>A turbulent last few months have seen numerous pieces announcing the end of Bitcoin, its imminent collapse, or the bursting of the bubble. Commentators are missing the point: the key to Bitcoin’s surprising…Sam Dallyn, Lecturer in Management and Organisation Studies, Manchester Business School, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.