- Get rid of purity tests - The infighting of no-true-Scotsman has to be limited to early primary candidate selection. Once we have a candidate, rally behind them. This doesn't mean we cannot criticize, but know what stage of the game you are in. This also helps broaden the tent. Be a directional libertarian rather than a destination libertarian.
- Focus on uncompetitive states - perhaps never leave California or perhaps more appropriately Texas or just both of those two important states. Imagine building a strong base in demographically and electorally important areas. The Free State Movement envisioned flocking to a small state to dominate politics there, New Hampshire emerging as the destination. Rather than focusing on winning a small state's electoral votes, this would be a strategy of focusing on winning hearts and minds to reshape the policy debate.
- Articulate stances in better sound bites - Help the voters know in the simplest terms why they are taking the leap to support, advocate, and vote Libertarian. A platform of less government is not enough. Specifics are crucial here, but more importantly we need to highlight solutions rather than what sounds to many like retreat into the darkness. A great example is Corey DeAngelis' straightforward and impactful message on school choice/education reform: "fund students (families) instead of institutions" and "let the money follow the child".
- Stop sounding like extremists - This dovetails with the prior idea. “End the Fed”, “Taxation is Theft”, et al. are not salient. Find a way to be against war without sounding like a 60s hippie—pacifism is right but it doesn’t sell. You can’t win support by telling people they are awful. You have to sell the message of hope and progress.
- Look the part - Quit going for shock value. You need to look like a candidate out of central casting. No nicknames on the ballot (e.g., Spike). No taxation is theft hats. The target new voter does not want to elect someone from Comic-Con.
- Focus on a few key, pivotal issues that resonate in the current election - Might I suggest The Big Five?
- Get more exposure in mainstream channels - We have to bring the message to a much broader audience. We are certainly still in the brand awareness stage of marketing. Where is the Free To Choose of the modern era? Perot built a voter base from primetime segments he paid for and starred in. How about a libertarian town hall? How about starting this now and developing some multi-year momentum?
Sunday, November 8, 2020
Libertarian Party 2020 Presidential Run - A Postmortem
Sunday, October 25, 2020
Justifiable Points of View
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
List of Ambivalence
- Chick-fil-e’s Sunday Policy -- I am disappointed from the point of view as a customer; I am very much in support of their ability to choose to do this and I am impressed by the choice.
- The Trump Presidency -- not Trump himself, who I find quite objectionable. There are just some things to like and some things to very much dislike. I had the same appraisal of Obama, Bush, Clinton, . . .
- Deplatforming by social media, other tech companies, and financial processing firms/networks -- It is certainly within their rights in almost all cases, but I am fairly sure it is not good ethically or pragmatically in all but the most isolated cases.
- Hunting -- I am not sure it is always morally objectionable, but it is often enough.
- The National Anthem before sporting events -- Notice how we don’t see this practiced at high brow events like the philharmonic, etc.
- Separating activities, clubs, etc. by boys and girls and by men and women (e.g., Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Men’s Grill, Lady’s Auxillary, etc.) -- Is this socially healthy? Is it logical? I think in some cases it certainly is, but there is a slippery slope.
- Roundabouts (aka, circle, traffic circle, road circle, rotary, rotunda, and island) -- These are unfairly criticized in many cases, but they are also irresponsibly used and often inappropriately built.
Sunday, October 11, 2020
The Electoral College by Private Land Mass
Thursday, October 8, 2020
Tax Policy as Explained by DuckTales
It should be no surprise that in this presidential election we yet again hear nothing but nonsense regarding tax policy from those seeking office. Among the many principles being ignored are:
- You cannot tax wealth more than once--if you can even tax it the one time given tax avoidance and evasion opportunities and incentives.
- You cannot lower taxes and increase government spending--government spending is taxation (today through taxes or tomorrow through debt).
- You cannot tax without discouraging that which you tax--there is no tax free lunch.
- You cannot tax income--it may look like you are taxing income, but you are actually taxing consumption. On this point we have DuckTales and the hero Scrooge McDuck as the perfect illustration.
What Explains Country Variation in COVID Deaths?
I see a lot of vague or implied speculation on why there are such large differences in COVID-19 death rates (et al.) among various countries and regions. But many of these have internal tensions once we think a little deeply about the arguments being hinted at. Biases are leading to a lot of lies of omission if not just outright bad reasoning.
Why is Sweden different than Finland? What explains Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea versus France, Italy, and Spain? Germany versus Belgium? USA NE versus Texas versus Florida versus USA Midwest?
Here is a partial list of the usual and some unusual suspects:
- General health in the population
- Partial immunity including from prior coronavirus exposures
- Climate including ability to comfortably be outdoors and in open-air environments (definitely relative to when the virus struck)
- Prior and continued use of various drugs and treatments
- Proportion of at-risk people especially elderly
- Quality of procedures for protecting the vulnerable
- Quality of testing
- Quality of tracing
- Population density (within cities and otherwise relative to where people actually live; e.g., excluding most of Canada when measuring for Canada)
- Government NPIs including lockdowns and other policies but not test and/or trace
- Degree of movement within and among various communities (city to city, within a city, cross sociodemographic, in and out of country, et al.)
- Strain(s) of C-19 virus affecting country and timing of the infection
The Forrest Gump Diet: A few simple rules for a better diet
Most dieting plans are nonsense. And most dieting is not about losing weight--it is about signaling that one would like to lose weight, is involved in a struggle, and would like sympathy. If people really wanted to lose weight, they would.
Diets come in a thousand varieties, but it is clear that while each might work for a while for some people, they fail (or people fail them) as often as they work. That we know so very little about this highly desired realm of knowledge, it is a big economic paradox. My guess is that it is highly dependent on individual circumstances (extreme heterogeneity) and these are both governed by external environmental factors including cultural influences as well as genetic factors. As such, one size fits more than one might not be true. And yet I do think some guiding principles can be derived that can greatly help us on our journey:
- Eat when you are hungry. (Note that this pushes back against intermittent fasting.)
- Eat slower. You are not in a speed contest.
- Eat less. You are not in a volume contest. This can most easily be achieved by simply not ever completely finishing what you have been served.
- Eat less of the things that you want to eat. It is very likely that your desire is to eat more of the things that are not as good for you.
- Eat more of the things that are not as desirable to you. This is the converse of the prior point.
- Eat a greater variety. This likely helps with the gut microbiome, and it makes life more interesting. That said, some things may just not be right for your body, and that is fine.
- Eat less processed foods and prepackaged foods. This one helps with #s 2, 3, and 4 by making food less convenient especially food that is generally nutritionally poorer for you.
- Look to make good choices at the margin, but diet over weeks and months not hours and days. No one ever starved to death by missing a single meal, and no one ever became obese by indulging oneself one time.
- The first key is to avoid temptation by avoiding bad situations.
- The second key is to routinely seek to make a slightly better choice at each opportunity.
- The final key is to be able to look back over weeks and months to see if you have generally been making good choices and improving choices. While this might entail the need to keep a journal, which is contrary to the spirit of this list of keeping things simple, evaluations over longer periods of time are essential to understanding if you’re making progress.