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U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Meeting and Q&A – February 23, 2019

U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Meeting and Q&A – February 23, 2019

Gennady Stolyarov II
Denisa Rensen
Palak Madan
Pam Keefe
Dinorah Delfin
Arin Vahanian
Tom Ross
B.J. Murphy


On February 23, 2019, the U.S. Transhumanist Party invited many of its Officers and Ambassadors to discuss recent activities and plans for 2019, including the upcoming Presidential nomination process. The meeting included a public chat and portions where inquiries from members and the general public were addressed. Find the video recording of the meeting and the accompanying YouTube Live chat here.

Agenda
– Gennady Stolyarov II: Overview of 2019 Transhumanist Presidential Nomination/Debate/Primary Process
– Ambassadors – Denisa Rensen, Palak Madan, Pam Keefe: Discussions on Transhumanist Sentiment / Attitudinal Environment in Japan, India, and Hong Kong
– Denisa Rensen: Report on TransVision 2018 in Madrid
– Gennady Stolyarov II: Integration with the Transhuman Party / Dissolution of the TNC
– Dinorah Delfin: Discussion of Forthcoming Article in The Transhumanism Handbook: “An Artist’s Creative Process: A Model of Conscious Evolution”
– Arin Vahanian: Report on Premiere of “Immortality or Bust” Documentary
– Group Discussion: How to Reach 10,000 Members? (What demographics have yet to be exposed to transhumanist ideas and the existence of the USTP? How can we be more effective in getting people “in the door” to even be aware of our existence and content?)
   Potential Ideas
– Social-Media Digital Poster Contest (Suggestion by Tom Ross)
– Incentives for Members to Recruit Other Members (Suggestion by Tom Ross)
– Appeal to Subcultures – e.g., Steampunk, Cyborg Communities (Suggestion by Tom Ross)
– Question for Discussion: Should we engage with conspiracy theorists (e.g., attempt to rebut them) or distance ourselves from them as much as possible?
– Any questions from the audience

Note: The meeting livestream terminated slightly prematurely due to an Internet disconnection. However, the meeting did proceed over the course of the planned two-hour timeframe, and the vast majority of the intended subjects were covered.

Become a member of the U.S. Transhumanist Party for free, no matter where you reside. Fill out our Membership Application Form.

Become a Foreign Ambassador for the U.S. Transhumanist Party. Fill out the application form here.

Speaking Truth to Power: Jimmy Lai – Article by Lawrence W. Reed

Speaking Truth to Power: Jimmy Lai – Article by Lawrence W. Reed

The New Renaissance Hat
Lawrence W. Reed
May 4, 2015
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For years, a bust of John James Cowperthwaite sat prominently in the foyer of Jimmy Lai’s Next Media office in Hong Kong, along with others of economists F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman. If that’s all you ever knew about Jimmy Lai, you could at least surmise that he loves liberty and free markets.

Cowperthwaite had been the architect of Hong Kong’s free-market miracle. He started with a destitute rock and turned it into one of the world’s freest and most prosperous economies. (Indeed, I’ve suggested that he deserves to be recognized annually and everywhere with a Cowperthwaite Day on the anniversary of his birthdate, April 25.) Jimmy Lai is precisely the sort of individual that Cowperthwaite had in mind when he decided that entrepreneurs, not central planners, should drive an economy. Because of what Cowperthwaite had done, Jimmy Lai found a hero himself. And Lai, too, would go on to do great things.

Of the characteristics most often identified with successful entrepreneurship, Jimmy Lai possesses them all in abundance. He is a self-starter who takes initiative (and risk) with enthusiasm. He’s creative and intuitive. He’s passionate and tenacious. Where others see problems, he sees opportunity. He’s a visionary, both in business endeavors and for society at large. He doesn’t hesitate to defy conventional wisdom when it points to a dead end. Whatever he undertakes, he musters the courage to act. He puts his all — money, time, and energy — where his mouth is (and where his convictions are).

On paper, Lai’s early life would seem unlikely to produce a “real hero.” He was born in China the year before it fell under Mao Zedong’s dictatorial rule. Lai was smuggled out of the country and into Hong Kong at age 12. In the absence of child-labor laws, which would have ensured his deprivation there, too, Lai went to work in a garment factory for $8 a month. Fifteen years later, he bought his own garment factory and built it into the giant known as Giordano, now a leading international retailer. Lai’s boundless entrepreneurial zeal, free to operate within Hong Kong’s laissez-faire business environment, yielded jobs for thousands and consumer goods for millions.

But in 1989, Beijing’s infamous Tiananmen Square massacre set Jimmy Lai on a new course. With Hong Kong scheduled to be transferred from British to Chinese rule in just eight years, Lai knew that maintaining traditional freedoms under Beijing’s rule would be a challenge. So he ventured into media, creating what soon became the territory’s largest-circulation magazines, Sudden Weekly and Next. In spite of Beijing’s coercion of advertisers, Jimmy Lai’s tabloid-style newspaper, Apple Daily, is still the premier voice in Asia for the freedoms of speech, press, and enterprise.

Jimmy Lai does not shrink from controversy. The Communist Party of China, he wrote in a 1994 column, is “a monopoly that charges a premium for a lousy service.” He defended the student demonstrators when they went into the streets by the hundreds of thousands in late 2014 in defense of democracy. He routinely exposed corruption in both government and business, including the especially toxic brand of corruption that arises when the two get in bed together. He sold Giordano, the apparel firm he founded, to save it from Beijing’s intense pressure, but he refuses to this day to renounce his principles.

In December 2014, he revealed that he was stepping down as publisher of Apple Daily and chairman of Next Media to devote more time to family and personal interests. A month later, and for the second time, unknown assailants firebombed his home. He remains under intense scrutiny from Beijing, which regularly employs ugly rumors, threats of litigation, and other nefarious means to undermine his influence.

Earlier this year, Lai told the New York Times that he never planned to make his media empire into a family dynasty. His six children (ages 8 to 37) are not in line as heirs to that business or its leadership positions. “I don’t think I should ask my kids to inherit my business, because they can’t start where I did,” he said. “I was from the street. I’m a very different make of person. I’ve been a fighter all my life.”

Whatever the future holds for Jimmy Lai, friends of liberty everywhere can count him as one very brave man.

For additional information:

In the Freeman:

Lawrence W. (“Larry”) Reed became president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in 2008. Prior to that, he was a founder and president for twenty years of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Michigan. He also taught Economics full-time and chaired the Department of Economics at Northwood University in Michigan from 1977 to 1984.

He holds a B.A. degree in Economics from Grove City College (1975) and an M.A. degree in History from Slippery Rock State University (1978), both in Pennsylvania. He holds two honorary doctorates, one from Central Michigan University (Public Administration—1993) and Northwood University (Laws—2008).

This article was originally published by The Foundation for Economic Education and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which requires that credit be given to the author.
What People Mean When They Talk About Freedom – Article by Bradley Doucet

What People Mean When They Talk About Freedom – Article by Bradley Doucet

The New Renaissance Hat
Bradley Doucet
April 11, 2012
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Most people I talk to believe that freedom is important. They generally want to be free, and they want others to be free as well. The disagreements only begin when we start discussing what, exactly, we mean by “free.” These disagreements over the meaning of liberty underlie a good part of the much-hyped polarization of politics in the western world.

One meaning, or set of meanings, is reflected in Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World survey, whose findings for 2009 are available here. Freedom, according to this survey, is “the opportunity to act spontaneously in a variety of fields outside the control of the government and other centers of potential domination.” If that seems a little vague, the organization’s website gets more specific, breaking freedom down into two broad categories: political rights and civil liberties. Political rights allow people to “vote freely for distinct alternatives in legitimate elections, compete for public office, join political parties and organizations, and elect representatives who have a decisive impact on public policies and are accountable to the electorate.” Civil liberties include “freedoms of expression and belief, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, and personal autonomy without interference from the state.”

In the latest survey, fully 47 countries, ranging from Canada to Barbados, from the United States to Uruguay, get a perfect score of 1 for political rights and a perfect score of 1 for civil liberties. Only nine countries, including North Korea, Somalia, and Sudan, get the worst possible score of 7 on both counts. To get a sense of the spread, Argentina gets a pair of 2s, Turkey gets 3s, Kenya gets 4s, Ethiopia 5s, and Iran and Zimbabwe 6s.

Setting the Bar Too Low

This survey, however well-intentioned, suffers from two glaring deficiencies. First, it sets the bar way too low. By no stretch of the imagination are there 47 countries in the world that deserve perfect scores for freedom, even if we accept Freedom House’s criteria. Are civil liberties really perfectly safe in England, with surveillance cameras on every other street corner? Should the American Civil Liberties Union close up shop in an age of warrantless wiretaps, enhanced interrogation techniques, and jail time for smoking a joint? And here at home, how many Canadians really imagine that our proroguing Prime Minister is fully accountable to the public? I’m not saying I’d rather live in Zimbabwe—or Argentina, for that matter—but even in these relatively free countries of the Anglosphere, there remains plenty of room for improvement.

The other glaring defect in Freedom House’s survey is that it completely ignores economic freedom. There is no mention, for instance, of red tape, which costs small- to medium-sized Canadian businesses over $30 billion a year. No mention, either, of the eminent domain abuse that is rampant in the United States, robbing small property owners of their homes and shops in order to help some developer with deep pockets.

The Economic Freedom Network—with members in over 70 nations around the globe, including Canada’s own Fraser Institute—provides a picture of economic freedom in the world with its annual report. By its definition, economic freedom exists when property acquired “without the use of force, fraud, or theft is protected from physical invasions by others” and when individuals “are free to use, exchange, or give their property as long as their actions do not violate the identical rights of others.” More specifically, according to its latest report, to have high economic freedom, a country has to protect private property, enforce contracts, and have a stable monetary environment. “It also must keep taxes low, refrain from creating barriers to both domestic and international trade, and rely more fully on markets rather than the political process to allocate goods and resources.”

Compare and Contrast

Many of the countries that score highest in economic freedom are also at the top of the list in Freedom House’s survey of political rights and civil liberties, and conversely, most of the least free score dismally on both surveys. In fact, a graph in the Economic Freedom Network’s report shows this strong positive correlation. But there are some notable exceptions. Hong Kong and Singapore, first and second respectively for economic freedom with scores of 8.97 and 8.66 out of a possible 10, are only middling according to the Freedom House survey; and the United Arab Emirates (7.58) and Bahrain (7.56), 19th and 20th for economic freedom, are quite repressive on other counts, both scoring 5.5 according to Freedom House (with 7 being the worst possible combined average score).

Would I rather live in Singapore than in Canada, which placed 8th for economic freedom with a respectable score of 7.91? The trade-off in terms of civil liberties would probably be too high. But I would gain something in exchange for my loss. According to the Economic Freedom Network’s report, countries with higher economic freedom have substantially higher per capita incomes, higher growth rates, longer life expectancies, better environmental performance, and less corruption. The poor are also better off in absolute terms in countries with higher economic freedom, and no worse off in relative terms.

As a libertarian, I value both civil and economic liberty. I fault the authoritarian segment of the political right for running roughshod over the former, but I also fault an equally authoritarian segment of the political left for trampling the latter. But beyond this, I fault both sides of the spectrum for fetishizing political rights. Democracy is a tool, and it can be a useful one, but what good are elections if our representatives are not checked by a strict constitution from taking away our civil and economic freedoms? What good is accountability if the people don’t know or appreciate what is being taken away from them? Looking at it from the opposite perspective, if we cared enough and were wise enough to guard our civil and economic freedoms properly, would it matter very much anymore who administered the machinery of government? Yet without constitutional limits and the will to enforce them, political rights amount to the “freedom” to force others to do what we want—a power that interest groups will fight tooth and nail to wield.

As I am regularly reminded when I discuss libertarianism with my fellow Canadians, this is a pretty good place to live. Canada scores better than or as good as most places on the planet in terms of political rights, civil liberties, and economic freedom. This is a fact, and I am grateful for it. But does that mean we shouldn’t try to make life even better? Why are we so complacent, so ready to accept “pretty good” as good enough? Why are so many intelligent, educated people uninterested in even exploring what history’s great thinkers have had to say about liberty? Few Canadians, I wager, have even heard of Benjamin Constant, for instance. A champion of individual freedom two centuries ago, he viewed political rights as a collective kind of freedom, present in the ancient world, which was “compatible with… the complete subjection of the individual to the authority of the community.” Yes, Canada is a pretty good place to live, all things considered. When individuals are no longer subjected to the dictates of their fellows, free to live as they see fit and responsible for the consequences of their own actions, it will be a great place to live.

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. He also writes for The New Individualist, an Objectivist magazine published by The Atlas Society, and sings.