A Win

As everyone who reads this blog, or has had a political conversation with me knows, I considered there to be almost no difference between Obama and Romney. I consider a victory for either of them to be a loss for me, and for America.

But, of course, those were our options last night, and no one else was going to win. An ideal world, given that fact, would have meant Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate, gets at least 5% of the vote. This would have meant the party could receive matching funds for the race in four years (ironic, I know). This would have taken us a long way toward ending the Republican Party, as it is.

Even though we didn't get this, I still consider election night to be a victory for the liberty movement. There actually are many small victories to celebrate:

Gay Marriage: As Reason reports, four states voted, via referendum, in favor of marriage equality. This is the first time such a referendum has been successful.

The Drug War: Washington and Colorado have legalized marijuana for recreational use (another first!), and Massachusetts has legalized it for medical use. This is a huge step in the right direction for ending the governments' war on its own people.

Other Great Stuff: Wisconsin elects the first openly gay senator. Jeff Flake becomes a Senator. Liberty PAC-endorsed candidates Thomas Massie, Justin Amash, David Schweikert, Walter Jones, Kerry Bentivolio, Steve Stockman, Randy Weber, Ted Yoho, and Ted Cruz all won.

Last, but not least, the Republican establishment was again rejected. I can only hope that they take this the right way: hammer home the fiscal issues, and go soft on the social ones. Stop making foolish comments about rape and abortion. Let people own themselves.

finally

I've been wanting to get ride of cable for a while.  Without going back into the whole saga, Optimum/Cablevision sucks.  I don't blame them, it's just that they have a monopoly, and it's illegal for me to buy from another cable company.

Anyway, I bought an expensive new tv (because the old one had no way for me to stream from my laptop), and just bought an off-lease desktop for $150.  That's like 2-3 months of cable.  Everything I watch can be streamed, anyway (netflix, hulu).  Not sure how this is going to affect the market long term, though.

My bet is that this is where the "net neutrality" thing started.

Microfinance is pretty key to pulling the poor out of poverty. Guess who's killing it in India?

I'll quote TJIC quoting the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/world/…

MADOOR, India â?? India’s rapidly growing private microcredit industry faces imminent collapse as almost all borrowers in one of India’s largest states have stopped repaying their loans, egged on by politicians who accuse the industry of earning outsize profits on the backs of the poor.

Remember – you can steal from existing property owners in order to benefit the peasants and improve your own electoral prospects.

…once.

After that, the property owners remove their wealth from the the sector that suffered the act of politically-motivated appropriation.

Yup.

One of the best posts on business, ever

Jobs are created by business, right?  Well, what goes in to expanding business?  Check out TJIC's list of questions he would want answered to consider expanding his business (this specific post is about expanding abroad, but I'm sure you can see how it wouldn't be much different if he were just expanding to another state).

It's truly amazing that things get done at all.  When starting a business, you not only want to know the answers to similar questions, but you then have to figure out what seemingly arbitrary regulation you have to comply with, as well.

A Thing I Did Not Know

It appears that Herber Hoover is the one who started the transformation of the Republican party into the "racist" party.  

It was the Democrats who fought integration, filibustered anti-lynching laws, and all that.  Part of Hoover's strategy to win votes included going after southern whites.  He replaced black leaders in the party with white ones, gunned for the vote, and became the first Republican to carry Texas.  This outraged the black leadership, they broke from the party, and sought out Dems who supported civil rights.  Weird, huh?

The fact that this guy turned what should have been a mild recession into the Great Depression should have been seen as a bad omen.

warnings and disclaimers

I'm conflicted about something, here, and I need to talk about it before I go on.  On the one hand, I don't want to start off every blog post with warnings and disclaimers (warning: I don't so much care what other people think about me; mandatory disclaimer: no one blog post is a complete thought, because I tend to write about issues that are highly complex, and blog posts are short), but on the other hand, this blog was created with a purpose.  I really want to be able to articulate points on this blog that will help liberals and conservatives see my political perspective.

Right now, with a Democrat as president, I'll appear to most people around me as a conservative (I know, I know, it doesn't help that I live in NYC, either), even though when Bush was president, most people thought I was a liberal.  I'm neither.  I would consider myself to be a voluntaryist.  That means I hate both parties equally, because I don't really see a difference.

Obviously, we can't blame all of societies problems on Bush, Obama, the Democrats, or the Republicans-- even though they have all had something to do with them.

We can only solve the problems by understanding one key thing, then taking action on it.  The world doesn't run on gumdrops and unicorn farts.  Policy doesn't create outcomes by wishing it.  Bad policy is bad policy, no matter what your intentions are.  Want to decrease abortion?  Me too!  We could ban it, because that really worked with heroine, crack, and prostitution, right?  Want to get rid of poverty?  Me too!  Current policy (give money away) is not working.  Let's find something that does.

What Is Your Single Greatest Fear?

But just out of these options:
1- Robots killing all the humans
2- Small pox/ebola or some kind of virus killing us
3- Gray Goo
4- Israel bombs Iran and starts WWIII
5- Computers are used in the future to control everyone
6- Runaway global warming killing us
7- The singularity taking too long to happen

They've made movies about 4 out of the 7 (that I know of).

I'm a #7 guy, like Peter Thiel, because I know that if I can imagine amazing technology that would eradicate hunger, extend lives, and help us colonize space, then the stuff I can't even imagine yet must be so much more awesome.  When I describe the time in the future when our current problems don't exist, my sentence tends to start with "If we don't kill ourselves first."  The Singularity has to happen before we blow ourselves up. 

The one I'm least worried about?  #6.