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Why Can’t We All Travel To Cuba? – Article by Ron Paul

Why Can’t We All Travel To Cuba? – Article by Ron Paul

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The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
April 24, 2013
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Earlier this month, entertainers Jay-Z and Beyoncé were given a license by the US government to travel to Cuba. Because it is not otherwise legal for Americans to travel to Cuba, this trip was only permitted as a “cultural exchange” by the US Treasury Department. Many suspect that the permission was granted at least partly due to the fame, wealth, and political connections of the couple.

Some Members of Congress who continue to support the failed Cuba embargo, demanded that the Administration explain why these two celebrities were allowed to visit Cuba. The trip looked suspiciously like tourism, they argued in a letter to the White House, and American tourism is still not allowed in Cuba. They were photographed eating at the best restaurants, dancing, and meeting with average Cubans, which these Members of Congress frowned on.

Perhaps it is true that this couple used their celebrity status and ties to the White House to secure permission to travel, but the real question is, why can’t the rest of us go?

The Obama administration has lifted some of the most onerous restrictions on travel to Cuba imposed under the previous Bush administration, but for the average American, travel to the island is still difficult if not impossible.

However, even those who are permitted to go to Cuba are not allowed to simply engage in tourist activities — to spend their money as they wish or relax on a beach.

The US government demands that the few Americans it allows to travel to Cuba only engage in what it deems “purposeful travel,” to “support civil society in Cuba; enhance the free flow of information to, from, and among the Cuban people; and help promote their independence from Cuban authorities.”
They must prove that they maintain a full-time schedule of educational activities, according to Treasury guidelines for “people-to-people” travel.

Leave it to the federal government to make the prospect of visiting that sunny Caribbean island sound so miserable.

The reason the US so severely restricts and scripts the activities of the few Americans allowed to travel to Cuba is that it believes travel must promote the goal of taking “important steps in reaching the widely shared goal of a Cuba that respects the basic rights of all its citizens.”

Although I have no illusions about the Cuban government – or any government for that matter — it is ironic that the US chose to locate a prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba because the indefinite detention and torture that took place there would have been illegal on US soil. Further, the US government continues to hold more than 100 prisoners there indefinitely even though they have not been found guilty of a crime and in fact dozens are “cleared for release” but not allowed to leave.

Does the administration really believe that the rest of the world is not annoyed by its “do as we say, not as we do” attitude?

We are told by supporters of the Cuba embargo and travel ban that we must take such measures to fight the communists in charge of that country. Americans must be prohibited from traveling to Cuba, they argue, because tourist dollars would only be used to prop up the unelected Castro regime. Ironically, our restrictive travel policies toward Cuba actually mirror the travel policies of the communist countries past and present. Under communist rule in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere it was only the well-connected elites who were allowed to travel overseas – people like Jay-Z and Beyoncé. The average citizen was not permitted the right.

Although the current administration’s slight loosening of the restrictions is a small step in the right direction, it makes no sense to continue this nearly half-century old failed policy. Freedom to travel is a fundamental right. Restricting this fundamental right in the name of human rights is foolish and hypocritical.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission.

Congress Exploits Our Fears to Take Our Liberty – Article by Ron Paul

Congress Exploits Our Fears to Take Our Liberty – Article by Ron Paul

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Ron Paul
April 24, 2013
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This week, as Americans were horrified by the attacks in Boston, both houses of Congress considered legislation undermining our liberty in the name of “safety.” Gun control continued to be the focus of the Senate, where an amendment expanding federal “background checks” to gun show sales and other private transfers dominated the debate. While the background check amendment failed to pass, proponents of gun control have made it clear they will continue their efforts to enact new restrictions on gun ownership into law.

While it did not receive nearly as much attention as the debate on gun control, the House of Representatives passed legislation with significant implications for individual liberty: the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). CISPA proponents claim that the legislation is necessary to protect Americans from foreign “cyber terrorists,” but the real effect of this bill will be to further erode Americans’ online privacy.

Under CISPA, Internet corporations are authorized to hand over the private information of American citizens to federal agents, as long as they can justify the violation of your privacy in the name of protecting “cyber security”. Among the items that may be shared are your e-mails, browsing history, and online transactions.

Like the PATRIOT Act, CISPA violates the fourth amendment by allowing federal agencies to obtain private information without first seeking a warrant from a federal judge. The law also allows federal agencies to pass your information along to other federal bureaucrats — again without obtaining a warrant. And the bill provides private companies with immunity from lawsuits regardless of the damage done to anyone whose personal information is shared with the federal government.

CISPA represents a troubling form of corporatism, where large companies cede their responsibility to protect their property to the federal government, at the expense of their customers’ privacy and liberty. In this respect, CISPA can be thought of as an electronic version of the Transportation Security Administration, which has usurped the authority over airline security from private airlines. However, CISPA will prove to be far more invasive than even the most robust TSA screening.

CISPA and the gun control bill are only the most recent examples of politicians manipulating fear to con the people into giving up their liberties. Of course, the people are told the legislation is for “limited purposes,” but authority granted to the federal government is rarely, if ever, used solely for the purpose for which it is granted. For example, the American people were promised that the extraordinary powers granted the federal government by the PATRIOT Act would only be used against terrorism. Yet soon after the bill became law, reports surfaced that it was being used for non-terrorism purposes. In fact, according to data compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union, 76 percent of the uses of the controversial “sneak-and-peak” warrants where related to the war on drugs!

Sadly, I expect this week’s tragic attacks in Boston to be used to justify new restrictions on liberty. Within 48 hours of the attack in Boston, at least one Congressman was calling for increased use of surveillance cameras to expand the government’s ability to monitor our actions, while another Senator called for a federal law mandating background checks before Americans can buy “explosive powder.”

I would not be surprised if the Transportation Security Administration uses this tragedy to claim new authority to “screen” Americans before they can attend sporting or other public events. The Boston attack may also be used as another justification for creating a National ID Card tied to a federal database with “biometric” information. The only thing that will stop them is if the American people rediscover the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin that you cannot achieve security by allowing government to take their liberties.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission.

Liberty Through Long Life – Video by G. Stolyarov II

Liberty Through Long Life – Video by G. Stolyarov II

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To maximize their hopes of personally experiencing an amount of personal freedom even approaching that of the libertarian ideal, all libertarians should support radical life extension.

References
– “Liberty Through Long Life” – Essay by G. Stolyarov II –
– Resources on Indefinite Life Extension (RILE) –
– “Libertarian Life-Extension Reforms” – Video Series – G. Stolyarov II –
– “Massive open online course” – Wikipedia
– Mozilla’s Open Badges
– “Open Badges and Proficiency-Based Education: A Path to a New Age of Enlightenment” – Essay by G. Stolyarov II
– “Deep Space Industries” – Wikipedia
– “Planetary Resources” – Wikipedia
– The Seasteading Institute
– “Seasteading’s Potential and Challenges: An Overview” — Essay by G. Stolyarov II
– “Seasteading’s Potential and Challenges: An Overview” — Video by G. Stolyarov II
– “Bitcoin” – Wikipedia
– “Benjamin Franklin and the Early Scientific Vision – 1780” – Foundation for Infinite Survival
– “Revisiting the proto-transhumanists: Diderot and Condorcet” – George Dvorsky – Sentient Developments
– “Marquis de Condorcet, Enlightenment proto-transhumanist” – George Dvorsky – IEET
– SENS Research Foundation
– “Ray Kurzweil” – Wikipedia

Liberty Through Long Life – Article by G. Stolyarov II

Liberty Through Long Life – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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G. Stolyarov II
April 14, 2013
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            It is commonly recognized among libertarians (and some others) that the freedom of individuals to innovate will result in a more rapid rate of technological progress. In “Six Libertarian Reforms to Accelerate Life Extension” I described six liberty-enhancing political changes that would more swiftly bring about the arrival of indefinite human longevity. But, as is less often understood, the converse of this truth also holds. Technological progress in general improves the prospects for liberty and its actual exercise in everyday life. One of the most promising keys to achieving liberty in our lifetimes is to live longer so that we can personally witness and benefit from accelerating technological progress.

            Consider, for example, what the Internet has achieved with respect to expanding the practical exercise of individual freedom of speech. It has become virtually impossible for regimes, including their nominally private “gatekeepers” of information in the mass media and established publishing houses, to control the dissemination of information and the expression of individual opinion. In prior eras, even in countries where freedom of speech was the law of the land, affiliations of the media, by which speech was disseminated, with the ruling elite would serve as a practical barrier for the discussion of views that were deemed particularly threatening to the status quo. In the United States, effective dissent from the established two-party political system was difficult to maintain in the era of the “big three” television channels and a print and broadcast media industry tightly controlled by a few politically connected conglomerates. Now expressing an unpopular opinion is easier and less expensive than ever – as is voting with one’s money for an ever-expanding array of products and services online. The ability of individuals to videotape public events and the behavior of law-enforcement officers has similarly served as a check on abusive behavior by those in power. Emerging online education and credentialing options, such as massive open online courses and Mozilla’s Open Badges, have the power to motivate a widespread self-driven enlightenment which would bring about an increased appreciation for rational thinking and individual autonomy.

            Many other technological advances are on the horizon. The private space race is in full swing, with companies such as SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Deep Space Industries, and Planetary Resources embarking on ever more ambitious projects. Eventually, these pioneering efforts may enable humans to colonize new planets and build permanent habitats in space, expanding jurisdictional competition and opening new frontiers where free societies could be established. Seasteading, an idea only five years in development, is a concept for building modular ocean platforms where political experimentation could occur and, through competitive pressure, catalyze liberty-friendly innovations on land. (I outlined the potential and the challenges of this approach in an earlier essay.) The coming decades could see the emergence of actual seasteads of increasing sophistication, safety, and political autonomy. Another great potential for increasing liberty comes from the emerging digital-currency movement, of which Bitcoin has been the most prominent exemplar to date. While Bitcoin has been plagued with recent extreme exchange-rate volatility and vulnerability to manipulation and theft by criminal hackers, it can still provide some refuge from the damaging effects of inflationary and redistributive central-bank monetary policy. With enough time and enough development of the appropriate technological infrastructure, either Bitcoin or one of its successor currencies might be able to obtain sufficient stability and reliability to become a widespread apolitical medium of exchange.

            But there is a common requirement for one to enjoy all of these potential breakthroughs, along with many others that may be wholly impossible to anticipate: one has to remain alive for a long time. The longer one remains alive, the greater the probability that one’s personal sphere of liberty would be expanded by these innovations. Living longer can also buy one time for libertarian arguments to gain clout in the political sphere and in broader public opinion. Technological progress and pro-liberty activism can reinforce one another in a virtuous cycle.

            To maximize their hopes of personally experiencing an amount of personal freedom even approaching that of the libertarian ideal, all libertarians should support radical life extension. This sought-after goal of some ancient philosophers, medieval alchemists, Enlightenment thinkers (notably Franklin, Diderot, and Condorcet), and medical researchers from the past two centuries, is finally within reach of many alive today. Biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey of the SENS Research Foundation gives humankind a 50 percent likelihood of reaching “longevity escape velocity” – a condition where increases in life expectancy outpace the rate of human senescence – within 25 years. Inventor, futurist, and artificial-intelligence researcher Ray Kurzweil predicts a radical increase in life expectancy in the 2020s, made possible by advances in biotechnology and nanotechnology, aided by exponentially growing computing power. But, like de Grey and perhaps somewhat unlike Kurzweil, I hold the view that these advances are not inevitable; they rely on deliberate, sustained, and well-funded efforts to achieve them. They rely on support by the general public to facilitate donations, positive publicity, and a lack of political obstacles placed in their way. All libertarians should become familiar with both the technical feasibility and the philosophical desirability of a dramatic, hopefully indefinite, extension of human life expectancies. My compilation of Resources on Indefinite Life Extension (RILE) is a good starting point for studying this subject by engaging with a wide variety of sources, perspectives, and ongoing developments in science, technology, and activism.

            We have only this one life to live. If we fail to accomplish our most cherished goals and our irreplaceable individual universes disappear into oblivion, then, to us, it will be as if those goals were never accomplished. If we want liberty, we should strive to attain it in our lifetimes. We should therefore want those lifetimes to be lengthened beyond any set limit, not just for the sake of experiencing a far more complete liberty, but also for the sake of life itself and all of the opportunities it opens before us.

The Myth of Crumbling Highways – Article by David Hartgen

The Myth of Crumbling Highways – Article by David Hartgen

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David Hartgen
April 2, 2013
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Crumbling infrastructure has a direct impact on our personal and economic health, and the nation’s infrastructure crisis is endangering our future prosperity.

—D. Wayne Klotz, former president of the Society of Civil Engineers

Ah, spring. The snow melts and orange barrels return to the nation’s roads. We hear the usual calls for repairs of “crumbling infrastructure.” Authors of several national studies cite overwhelming needs. President Obama calls for fixing structurally deficient bridges. There are tales of woe in nearly all of these plaintive accounts of America’s highways, and most are used to justify yet more government stimulus spending.

So we decided to look.

Far from crumbling highways, our new Reason Foundation report finds that America’s state-owned highways have actually improved on key measures of road performance. There’s no doubt state governments can do better. In many ways, they’re inefficient, and state transportation dollars are a trough for cronies. But the crumbling-infrastructure meme is just a myth.

The Reason study tracks seven measures: urban and rural interstate condition, deficient bridges, congestion, fatalities, rural primary road condition, and narrow rural roads. We compile data from the states’ reports to the federal government from 1989 through 2008 (the last year available). We also track spending and compare each state with national averages.

Perhaps surprisingly, the U.S. highway system actually improved on all seven measures over the last two decades:

  • The percentage of rural interstates rated “poor” declined by two-thirds, from 6.6 percent to 1.9 percent.
  • Urban interstates with poor pavement dropped from 6.6 percent to 5.4 percent.
  • Rural primary poor pavement improved from 2.8 percent to 0.5 percent.
  • Deficient bridges improved from 37.8 percent to 23.7 percent.
  • Fatality rates improved from 2.16 to 1.25 per 100 million miles driven.

Even urban interstate congestion declined, from 52.6 percent to 48.6 percent, although some of that may be recession-related. During the same period, expenditures for state-owned highways increased by more than 181 percent. Spending per mile increased 177 percent in nominal terms and 60 percent adjusted for inflation.

State-Owned Highways

Most states saw substantial improvements.

All 50 states lowered their highway fatality rates between 1989 and 2008, saving about 150,000 lives. New Mexico, Nevada, and Mississippi saw the biggest decreases in fatality rates. Even if you don’t like the idea of government funding road construction, this fact should be celebrated.

Overall, 40 states reduced their number of deficient bridges from 1989 to 2008. In 1989, over half of Mississippi’s bridges were deficient, but by 2008 only 24.7 percent were rated deficient. Nebraska went from 55.1 percent deficient to 23.6 percent deficient. The numbers rose in 10 states: Hawaii, Alaska, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Idaho, Arizona, Utah, Ohio, South Carolina, and Oregon.

Thirty-seven states improved the condition of rural interstates, but that progress was made mostly in the 1990s and has slowed since then. Five states (Missouri, Rhode Island, Idaho, Nevada, and Wisconsin) reduced their percentage of poor rural interstates from over 20 percent to near zero. But two states, New York and California, reported rural interstate condition worsening by more than five percentage points.

Twenty-seven states improved the condition of urban interstates—indeed, Nevada and Missouri made remarkable turnarounds. In 1989, 47.8 percent of Nevada’s urban interstates were in poor condition, but by 2008, it was just 1.6 percent. Missouri’s urban interstate mileage in poor condition decreased from 46.7 percent in 1989 to 1.3 percent in 2008.

Seven states, however, reported more than 10 percent of their urban interstates in poor condition in 2008. A quarter of Hawaii’s interstates rated poor. In 1989, just 4.1 percent of California’s urban interstates were in poor condition, but by 2008 that number had ballooned to 24.7 percent. Vermont went from 2.9 percent of urban interstates in poor condition in 1989 to 17.5 percent in 2008. New Jersey, Oklahoma, New York, and Louisiana also reported more than 10 percent of urban interstates in poor condition in 2008.

Overall, twenty-nine states reduced urban interstate congestion between 1989 and 2008. Six states—Delaware, Massachusetts, Virginia, Alaska, Missouri, and South Carolina—reported improvements greater than 20 percentage points. But 18 states reported a worsening of urban interstate congestion. The greatest increase in congestion, 36.2 percentage points, was in Minnesota.

Overall, 11 states—North Dakota, Virginia, Missouri, Nebraska, Maine, Montana, Tennessee, Kansas, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Florida—improved on all seven performance measures. Eleven more improved on six measures and 15 improved on five measures. So, 37 states improved in at least five of the seven metrics.

Disbursements_per_mile

In another surprising finding, the study notes road spending seems to be only loosely related to performance.

Of the 22 states that improved on six or seven measures, only one (Florida) spent more than the U.S. average per mile, and several large states (notably Virginia, Missouri, Oregon, Minnesota, and Texas) spent less than half the national average. The study suggests a widening gap between most states making progress and a few spending much more but still performing poorly. It also suggests that the higher road systems, particularly the interstates, are performing better than lower-level systems that are locally owned.

So, if resources are not the problem, what is?

Some of the poor performers have older systems, lots of traffic, and hard winters, but so do some good performers. More likely, the cause is high unit costs—policies that push funds to low-priority projects and “ribbon cuts,” draw attention away from maintenance, and use available revenues inefficiently.

So there are still plenty of problems to fix, but our roads and bridges aren’t crumbling. The overall condition of most state-owned road systems is actually getting better, and you could make a case that they have never been in better shape. The key is to target spending where it will do the most good. If your state is not on our “Top 22” list or is spending more than the U.S. average, ask why.

David T. Hartgen is Emeritus Professor of Transportation at UNC Charlotte, president of The Hartgen Group, and adjunct scholar at the Reason Foundation. This study was sponsored by the Reason Foundation and is available at www.reason.org.

This article was published by The Foundation for Economic Education and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution United States License, which requires that credit be given to the author.

Cyprus and the Unraveling of Fractional-Reserve Banking – Article by Joseph T. Salerno

Cyprus and the Unraveling of Fractional-Reserve Banking – Article by Joseph T. Salerno

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Joseph T. Salerno
March 30, 2013
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[Originally posted on Circle Bastiat, the faculty blog of the Mises Institute. Read Circle Bastiat for Austrian analysis of current economic events from today’s top Misesian and Rothbardian economists.]

The “Cyprus deal” as it has been widely referred to in the media may mark the next to last act in the the slow motion collapse of fractional-reserve banking that began with the implosion of the savings-and-loan industry in the U.S. in the late 1980s.

This trend continued with the currency crises in Russia, Mexico, East Asia, and Argentina in the 1990s in which fractional-reserve banking played a decisive role. The unraveling of fractional-reserve banking became visible even to the average depositor during the financial meltdown of 2008 that ignited bank runs on some of the largest and most venerable financial institutions in the world. The final collapse was only averted by the multi-trillion dollar bailout of U.S. and foreign banks by the Federal Reserve.

Even more than the unprecedented financial crisis of 2008, however, recent events in Cyprus may have struck the mortal blow to fractional-reserve banking. For fractional-reserve banking can only exist for as long as the depositors have complete confidence that regardless of the financial woes that befall the bank entrusted with their “deposits,” they will always be able to withdraw them on demand at par in currency, the ultimate cash of any banking system.

Ever since World War Two governmental deposit insurance, backed up by the money-creating powers of the central bank, was seen as the unshakable guarantee that warranted such confidence. In effect, fractional-reserve banking was perceived as 100-percent banking by depositors, who acted as if their money was always “in the bank” thanks to the ability of central banks to conjure up money out of thin air (or in cyberspace).

Perversely the various crises involving fractional-reserve banking that struck time and again since the late 1980s only reinforced this belief among depositors, because troubled banks and thrift institutions were always bailed out with alacrity—especially the largest and least stable. Thus arose the “too-big-to-fail doctrine.” Under this doctrine, uninsured bank depositors and bondholders were generally made whole when large banks failed, because it was widely understood that the confidence in the entire banking system was a frail and evanescent thing that would break and completely dissipate as a result of the failure of even a single large institution.

Getting back to the Cyprus deal, admittedly it is hardly ideal from a free-market point of view. The solution in accord with free markets would not involve restricting deposit withdrawals, imposing fascistic capital controls on domestic residents and foreign investors, and dragooning taxpayers in the rest of the Eurozone into contributing to the bailout to the tune of 10 billion euros.

Nonetheless, the deal does convey a salutary message to bank depositors and creditors the world over. It does so by forcing previously untouchable senior bondholders and uninsured depositors in the Cypriot banks to bear part of the cost of the bailout. The bondholders of the two largest banks will be wiped out and it is reported that large depositors (i.e., those holding uninsured accounts exceeding 100,000 euros) at the Laiki Bank may also be completely wiped out, losing up to 4.2 billion euros, while large depositors at the Bank of Cyprus will lose between 30 and 60 percent of their deposits. Small depositors in both banks, who hold insured accounts of up to 100,000 euros, would retain the full value of their deposits.

The happy result will be that depositors, both insured and uninsured, in Europe and throughout the world will become much more cautious or even suspicious in dealing with fractional-reserve banks. They will be poised to grab their money and run at the slightest sign or rumor of instability. This will induce banks to radically alter the sources of the funds they raise to finance loans and investments, moving away from deposit and toward equity and bond financing. As was reported Tuesday, March 26, this is already expected by many analysts:

One potential spillover from the March 26 agreement is the knock-on effects for bank funding, analysts said. Banks typically fund themselves with some combination of deposits, equity, senior and subordinate notes and covered bonds, which are backed by a pool of high-quality assets that stay on the lender’s balance sheet.

The consequences of the Cyprus bailout could be that banks will be more likely to use contingent convertible bonds—known as CoCos—to raise money as their ability to encumber assets by issuing covered bonds reaches regulatory limits, said Chris Bowie at Ignis Asset Management Ltd. in London.

“We’d expect to see some deposit flight and a shift in funding towards a combination of covered bonds, real equity and quasi-equity,” said Bowie, who is head of credit portfolio management at Ignis, which oversees about $110 billion.

If this indeed occurs it will be a significant move toward a free-market financial system in which the radical mismatching of the maturities of assets and liabilities in the case of demand deposits is eliminated once and for all. A few more banking crises in the Eurozone—especially one in which insured depositors are made to participate in the so-called “bail-in”—will likely cause the faith in government deposit insurance to completely evaporate and with it confidence in the fractional-reserve banking system.

There may then naturally arise on the market a system in which equity, bonds, and genuine time deposits that cannot be redeemed before maturity become the exclusive sources of finance for bank loans and investments. Demand deposits, whether checkable or not, would be segregated in actual deposit banks which maintain 100-percent reserves and provide a range of payments systems from ATMs to debit cards.

While this conjecture may be overly optimistic, we are certainly a good deal closer to such an outcome today than we were before the “Cyprus deal” was struck. Of course we would be closer still if there were no bailout and the full brunt of the bank failures were borne solely by the creditors and depositors of the failed banks rather than partly by taxpayers. The latter solution would have completely and definitively exposed the true nature of fractional-reserve banking for all to see.

Joseph Salerno is academic vice president of the Mises Institute, professor of economics at Pace University, and editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. He has been interviewed in the Austrian Economics Newsletter and on Mises.org. Send him mail. See Joseph T. Salerno’s article archives.

Neo-Con War Addiction Threatens Our Future – Article by Ron Paul

Neo-Con War Addiction Threatens Our Future – Article by Ron Paul

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Ron Paul
March 29, 2013
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William Kristol knows what is wrong with the United States. As he wrote recently in the flagship magazine of the neo-conservatives, the Weekly Standard, the problem with the US is that we seem to have lost our appetite for war. According to Kristol, the troubles that have befallen us in the 20th century have all been the result of these periodic bouts of war-weariness, a kind of virus that we catch from time to time.

He claims because of the US “drawdown” in Europe after World War II, Stalin subjugated Eastern Europe. Because of war weariness the United States stopped bombing Southeast Asia in the 1970s, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. War weariness through the 1990s led to Rwanda, Milosevic, and the rise of the Taliban. It was our fault for not fighting on! According to Kristol, our failure to act as the policeman of the world is why we were attacked on September 11, 2001. Of the 1990s, he wrote, “[t]hat decade of not policing the world ended with 9/11.”

That revisionism is too much even for fellow neo-conservatives like Paul Wolfowitz to swallow. In a 2003 interview, Wolfowitz admitted that it was the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia that led to the growth of al-Qaeda:

“(W)e can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia. Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government. It’s been a huge recruiting device for al Qaeda. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so-called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina.”

But for Kristol and his allies there is never enough war. According to a new study by Brown University, the US invasion of Iraq cost some 190,000 lives, most of them non-combatants. It has cost more than $1.7 trillion, and when all is said and done including interest the cost may well be $6 trillion. Some $212 billion was spent on Iraqi reconstruction with nothing to show for it. Total deaths from US war on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan have been at least 329, 000. None of this is enough for Kristol.

The neo-con ideology promotes endless war, but neo-cons fight their battles with the blood of others. From the comfortable, subsidized offices of magazines like the Weekly Standard, the neo-conservatives urge the United States to engage in endless war – to be fought by the victims of the “poverty draft” from states where there are few jobs. Ironically, these young people cannot find more productive work because the Federal Reserve’s endless money printing to keep the war machine turning has destroyed our economy. The six trillion dollars that will be spent on the Iraq war are merely pieces of printed paper that further erode the dollar’s purchasing power now and well into the future. It is the inflation tax, which is the most regressive and cruel of all.

Yes, Americans are war weary, concedes Kristol. But he does not blame the average American. The real problem is that the president has dropped the ball on terrifying Americans with the lies and imaginary threats that led to the invasion of Iraq. Writes Kristol: “One can’t, for example, be surprised at the ebbing support of the American public for the war in Afghanistan years after the president stopped trying to mobilize their support, stopped heralding the successes of the troops he’d sent there, and stopped explaining the importance of their mission.”

If only we had more war propaganda from the highest levels of government we could be cured of this war-weariness. Ten years ago the US invaded Iraq under the influence of neo-conservative lies. Those lies continued to promote US military action in places like Libya, and next on their agenda is Syria and then on to Iran. It is time for the American people to shout “enough!”

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article has been released by Dr. Paul into the public domain and may be republished by anyone in any manner.

Private or Governmental Funding for Indefinite Life Extension? – Post by G. Stolyarov II

Private or Governmental Funding for Indefinite Life Extension? – Post by G. Stolyarov II

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G. Stolyarov II
March 27, 2013
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I was recently asked to comment on an Immortal Life debate/discussion thread about whether governmental or private approaches to funding and motivating research on indefinite life extension are best.

Mine is definitely a libertarian view. I do not support advocating for government funding for life extension, unless the funding is combined with larger reductions in military spending or other destructive government spending. I discuss this issue in two of my videos:

– Eliminating Death – Part 18 – Never Seek Government Funding

– Libertarian Life-Extension Reforms – #6 – Medical Research Instead of Military Spending

The danger of government funding of life extension is that it comes with many political strings attached, and may lead life-extension research itself to be shackled by politically influential opponents of technological progress.

The great weakness of politics as a strategy is that it requires consensus among elites and some connection to majority approval, as well as the overcoming of numerous bureaucratic hurdles and obsolete habits. Private action, as long as it is lawful, can simply be pursued irrespective of how many people agree. There is thus much more flexibility and potential for quick deployment with private approaches toward radical life extension.

Private investment into life-extension research can occur in many ways, both for-profit and non-profit, both direct and indirect. Seasteading is indeed a highly promising approach for experimenting with novel medicines and therapies that might take over a decade to be approved by the FDA in the United States or similar “screening” agencies in other countries.

At the same time, Tom Mooney is correct about the need for a grassroots education campaign. By the time radical life extension begins to become a reality, there needs to be a strong current of public opinion supporting it. Otherwise, the “bioconservatives” might just manage to obtain enough support for their agenda to thwart this vital progress.

We Already Live in a Gerontocracy – Article by Reason

We Already Live in a Gerontocracy – Article by Reason

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Reason
March 24, 2013
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Originally published on the Fight Aging! website

Gerontocracy:

Quote:

Government by a council of elders. Government by old people.

Image Source: Bernardino Campi (1522-1591) – “Heads of Old Men, Praying” – Photograph by Giovanni Dall’Orto

There are many knee-jerk reactions to the prospect of greatly increased healthy human life spans, most based on mistaken beliefs regarding the technologies needed, or mistaken beliefs regarding the way the world actually works – economics, human action, incentives. Some people believe that longer lives will result in stagnation, which is actually one of the more ridiculous and improbably outcomes once you start to pick it apart in any detail. Human society is restless and changeable on timescales far shorter than current lifespans, and the reasons why are rooted in day to day human nature. Our ambitions operate on a horizon of a few years, and that wouldn’t change all that much were we to live for centuries. We are driven to influence the world today, now, regardless of the years that lie ahead of us. So the fashions of this year are gone by the next. The idols of popular culture rise and fall with rapidity. The political and business leaders of this decade are gone in the next, displaced by peers. Even corruption and revolution on a grand scale are usually only a matter of a few decades, not lifetimes.

Nonetheless, rationality rarely prevails in knee-jerk reactions – so folk think of stagnation, even in the midst of this boundlessly energetic society we live in, packed wall to wall with constant, ongoing change. A subset of these beliefs on human longevity and stagnation involve the nebulous fear of a future gerontocracy, the rise of a self-perpetuating ruling elite of ageless individuals. Funnily, this is often voiced by people who are, unlike myself, perfectly comfortable with today’s Western governments. I say funnily because I have to ask: are not our present societies already gerontocracies? Isn’t any civilized society a gerontocracy? Who has had the most time to gather connections, a network, and make good use of them? The old. Who has had the most time to gather resources and invest them? The old. Who has had to most time to become truly talented and sought after? The old. Who has had the most time to work their way through a social hierarchy to challenge its existing leaders? The old. Where then will the elite and the leaders tend to arise? From the old.

Take a look at who just runs and influences companies, governments, knitting circles, successful non-profit initiatives, extended families, and so on and so forth for every human endeavor. Young leaders exist, but they are a minority among the ranks of the old. This is the natural state of affairs for any society that possesses enough technology to make thought and craft more important than strength and vigor.

All that is terrible in our present societies lies in the growing centralization of power, not the chronological age of those eagerly engaged in furthering the road to serfdom and empire. Even as power is centralized, there is still a year by year turnover of figures – even in the most defensible and corruptly secure positions of power and influence. They are largely kicked out by some combination of their peers and the mob in the sort of political anarchy that exists at the top, above the laws made for the little people. It is the rare individual who can stick it out long enough to be removed by the infirmities of age, even now, in this age of human lives that are all too brief in comparison to what is to come.

But back to the point. We live in a gerontocracy, and so did most of our ancestors. Yet change still happens just as rapidly as in past centuries when fewer people lived into later life in the sort of good shape they can manage today. Fear of some sort of comic-book gerontocracy emerging in the future seems, frankly, somewhat silly. But here is an article on the topic that treats such fears with a little more respect than I’m inclined to deploy.

Quote:

The human lifespan is set to get increasingly longer and longer. And it’s more than just extending life – it’s about extending healthy life. If we assume that the aging process can be dramatically slowed down, or even halted, it’s more than likely that the older generations will continue to serve as vibrant and active members of our society. And given that seniors tend to hold positions of power and influence in our society, it’s conceivable that they’ll refuse to be forced into retirement on the grounds that such an imposition would violate their human rights (and they’d be correct in that assessment).

In turn, seniors will continue to lead their corporations as CEOs and CFOs. They’ll hold onto their wealth and political seats, kept in power by highly sympathetic and demographically significant elderly populations. And they’ll occupy positions of influence at universities and other institutions.

So I asked James Hughes how society could be hurt if an undying generation refuses to relinquish their hold on power and capital. “Again, the question should be, how is society hurt when small unaccountable elites control the vast majority of wealth?,” he responded. The age of super-wealthy is pretty immaterial, he says, especially when most of the people in their age bracket will be as poor and powerless as younger cohorts.

Hughes also doesn’t buy into the argument that radical life extension will result in the stagnation of society. If anything, he thinks these claims, such as risk-aversion and inflexibility, smack of ageism and simple-minded futurism. “Seniors’ brains continue to make stem cells,” says Hughes, “and when we are able to boost neural stem cell generation in order to forestall the neurodegeneration of aging, older people will become as cognitively flexible as younger people.”

As noted in my comments above, the historical record shows that people at the top are not all that good at staying at the top for extended periods of time. There are always outliers, but they are rare in comparison to the vast majority of leaders and the famous who are just part of the churn, coming and going, displaced and quickly forgotten once their few years are done. The top of a pyramid is a challenging place to stand.

Reason is the founder of The Longevity Meme (now Fight Aging!). He saw the need for The Longevity Meme in late 2000, after spending a number of years searching for the most useful contribution he could make to the future of healthy life extension. When not advancing the Longevity Meme or Fight Aging!, Reason works as a technologist in a variety of industries.  

This work is reproduced here in accord with a Creative Commons Attribution license.  It was originally published on FightAging.org.

Dynamists vs. Stasists: Virginia Postrel’s “The Future and Its Enemies”, 15 Years Later – Article by Bradley Doucet

Dynamists vs. Stasists: Virginia Postrel’s “The Future and Its Enemies”, 15 Years Later – Article by Bradley Doucet

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The New Renaissance Hat
Bradley Doucet
February 18, 2013
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This article was originally published as part of the 15th anniversary issue of Le Québécois Libre.
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Fifteen years ago, in 1998, Le Québécois Libre was launched by Martin Masse and Gilles Guénette. I did not know them at the time. I was finishing up my bachelor’s degree that year, and only met them seven years later, in 2005, shortly after submitting my first article to them. I quickly became a regular contributor, and three years after that, in 2008, English Editor. To date, I have written 64 articles and reviews for the QL, along with 34 shorter Illiberal Beliefs, and a handful of blog entries in French. I’m proud of this work, and proud to have been a part of this web magazine for the past eight years, and I look forward to many more.
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For this 15th anniversary edition, then, I thought I would look back at a book that was published way back in 1998. I did a little sleuthing and found an excellent one in my library, one that appropriately enough has its gaze firmly fixed forward: Virginia Postrel’s The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress. On one level, Postrel’s book is a celebration of the technological wonders of the modern world. She writes eloquently about the benefits of everything from biotechnology to computers, from tampons to contact lenses. But on a deeper level, she is celebrating the creativity and enterprise that generate open-ended, unpredictable progress—and warning us against those who would stifle it or stop it altogether.

Pro vs. Con

Postrel refers to those who embrace the idea of an open-ended future as “dynamists.” Although they are a diverse group and certainly not a proper coalition, dynamists “share beliefs in spontaneous order, in experiments and feedback, in evolved solutions to complex problems, in the limits of centralized knowledge, and in the possibilities of progress.” While many libertarians will recognize themselves in such attitudes (Postrel herself was the editor of the libertarian Reason magazine from July 1989 to January 2000), so will others who consider themselves progressives, liberals, or conservatives, or who are frankly apolitical. Dynamism is a broad category, and it cuts across party lines.

So, too, is its opposite. People who are opposed to the idea of an open-ended future, Postrel dubs “stasists,” and they in turn fall into two broad subcategories: “reactionaries, whose central value is stability, and technocrats, whose central value is control.” Certain types of conservatives who long for the way they imagine the world to have been in the 1950s (or the 1850s) are examples of reactionaries, but so are certain environmentalists who long for the way they imagine the world to have been before the Industrial Revolution, or before agriculture, or before man. Technocrats, for their part, do not want to stop or reverse change; they just want to tame it, to bring it under centralized, expert control by subsidizing and regulating businesses, controlling international trade and immigration, and requiring their stamp of approval before anything new can be allowed to flourish.

In countering reactionaries, dynamists need to emphasize the great benefits that have accrued to humankind from things like penicillin, modern dentistry, and electric motors, which have eliminated many early deaths and much pain and backbreaking toil. In responding to the siren call of technocrats, dynamists need to explain why the future cannot be effectively controlled without crippling it, that in order for there to be much technological innovation and material progress, people need the freedom to experiment.

Reactionaries, says Postrel, used to be opposed to technocrats, but now “they attack dynamism, often in alliance with their former adversaries.” In response, one of her tacks is to celebrate dynamism as being, in fact, more truly natural than either stability or centralized control. She also cleverly counters the charge that people who value freedom are “atomistic” by pointing out that atoms are rarely found alone in nature; they form molecular bonds, and free people form social bonds without having to be coerced into doing so. In closing, she calls on dynamists to start seeing themselves as a real coalition, a coalition not based primarily on fear or self-interest, but rather “bound by love: love of knowledge, love of exploration, love of adventure, and, just as much, love of small dreams, of the textures of life.”

The World Today

A lot can change in fifteen years. In celebrating the gradual development of contact lenses through the messy, undirected process of trial and error, Postrel imagines what the future of this technology might be: “Someday we may expect our contact lenses to function as computer screens and navigation guides, to see infrared or enhance night vision. Or we may displace them altogether with laser surgery or other procedures, as yet undiscovered.” Laser eye surgery, which was still very new in 1998, has more than come into its own in 2013, as my friend and QL colleague Adam Allouba personally experienced just recently.

But if technology has not stopped evolving, the dynamist coalition Postrel envisioned to defend the future does not yet appear to have become a significant player on the political scene. Part of the reason is surely the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Centre in New York, which breathed new life into old Cold War, hawk-dove political divisions that had up until then been fading, and thereby forestalled any restructuring along dynamist-stasist lines. It also gave technocratic peddlers of fear on the right another excuse to exert more centralized control, as the 2008 financial crisis did for technocratic peddlers of fear on the left.

Part of the challenge for libertarians has been to show that both of these traumatic events were failures of rigid, centralized, bureaucratic control—and that flexible, spontaneous order can do better. Hopefully, given the work we do here at Le Québécois Libre, and the work done by Postrel and many others around the world, in another fifteen years, the kinds of lessons contained in The Future and Its Enemies will be more widely appreciated, and that dynamist coalition for an open-ended future will be a burgeoning reality.

Bradley Doucet is Le Quebecois Libré‘s English Editor. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness.