Geolibertarian Discussion

I have created a group for social liberals, which covers all of the social liberty
issues in which positions are strongly correlated. I have not found any other
such group on livejournal or elsewhere on the internet:
http://community.livejournal.com/s…

Libertarian capitalists are tyically social liberals, but only a portion of social
liberals are libertarian capitalists. This is therefore a broader group, and one
which focuses purely on the social liberty issues.

Dan Sullivan, my political mentor and, IMO, one of the best writers out there on the subject of geolibertarianism, just recently posted this essay. It is a synopsis of the book "Why Is There No Socilaism In The United States?", written at the turn of the century by a European socialist (Werner Sombart) who came to this country and saw it first hand to answer that very question.

Any single quote from this piece would not do it justice. It's a crystal-clear look at what this country looked like at that time, what the different political systems have to do with it, and where land rents fit into the whole equation. I highly recommend taking the time to read through it.

Out of sincere interest: does anyone have any sort of program for de-statification?

Roderick Long on the elections, and support for a Green-Lib alliance

I have just received confirmation that Dr. Ramos-Horta has received this letter and is giving it consideration.

( Read more...Collapse )

Territocracy

...by the way, he's right, about the government lobbying.  The largest contributors are real estate groups.

And the laws pertaining to real estate are definitely monopolistic in nature.  I have some experience working in the industry.

There is now a left libertarian community
http://community.livejournal.com/l…

I felt it would be good to have around.

cross posted

Emily here, with the announcement that Michael Badnarik's official campaign Journal Community, badnarik_in_dc, is now up. Everyone here knows he was our presidential candidate in 2004; now he is turning his energies toward winning a congressional seat in 2006. Though the district is in Texas, we have a wide range of national support and I already have volunteers from many different states.

If you'd like to help, or if you just want to be kept informed of news and events from the campaign, please join. All are welcome.

What would be the best way of assessing taxes on resources? At the time of extraction, capitalization, or as a value added tax passed on to consumers? Or in some other way?

Does anyone think that only land per se and not extracted resources should be taxed? If so, why?

The key problem with Austrian economics is that it assumes that the market will keep itself transparent while governments inherantly won't. My take is that neither will be transparent and any act of deception is an act of coercion, therefore market forces such as corporations or individual capitalist businessmen coerce when they are not transparent. There is no rational reason for them being transparent. There is only a moral reason. Therefore, Austrian economic model is predicated on an almost naive moral picture of human beings. The Austrian assumption made sense a century ago when means to deceive where not as developed by both governmental and corporate use of psychology in propaganda and advertising.

However, the Freidman and Keynesian economic analysis place a value on efficiency that empirical data does not bare out as being a benchmark of corporate or non-corporate or even most social structure. People, in my experience, do not automatically gravitate towards the less efficient means.

So that leaves Marxist and Syndicalist economics, while, while sharing Austrian economic very legitmate fear of the state and ideological apparatuses, misses the fact that it IS essentially an ideological apparatus dependent on strengthening some sort of state like structure, where it be a commune or a syndicate or whatever.

Most other liberal forms of economics are, well, simply not existent. Unlike the Austrian ones which place things on entirely rational grounds and do not expose their own moral assumptions, the market socialism of the left "lite" is essentially a moral argument that hides its lack of economic understanding.

I am hoping to find this argument in Georgism and Geolibertarian thought as well as non-syndicalist versions of left libertarianism, but as of current, all these ideas seem somewhat incomplete.

This leads me to my current predictament: if I have rejected the current framework on both rational and moral grounds, I am left to come up with an alternative and consistent framework, which I, at the moment, cannot do.

cross-posted to personal journal. (Note: I know there are some huge assumptions here. Feel free to call them out, but I do not see how Austrian economics answers the call for market transparency well and it DOESN'T handle the notion that land ownership is predicated on the existence of a state).