TLS Podcast Picks: Stefan Molyneux on Language and the State and the Motorhome Diaries

Anti-Statism, IP Law, Podcast Picks
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Recommended podcasts:

  • FDR #1688: Stefan Molyneux’s opening speech at Porcupine Freedom Festival (PorcFest) on “Language as the Ultimate Government Program” (June 26 2010; video below). It’s a fascinating, audience-participation talk about how the state uses euphemistic language to disguise and cover up the evil that it does–and how we can fight it. Also interesting–listen to crowd cheer at about 1:00 to the introductory speaker explaining that Molyneux does not use intellectual property for his books etc.–awareness of the evil and statism of IP is growing in our movement, even among the political type/activist type libertarians. This is quite something (Molyneux and I had a good conversation about IP a few months back here.) Also interesting: at about 43:00 he talks about why it’s futile to waste time evading the census; and at about 56:00 he’s asked, regarding, say, civil asset forfeiture laws, whether it’s time to shoot the police. Molyneux answers that it cannot be said that it’s immoral to shoot men in blue uniforms who are commiting crimes against you–but that in today’s situation, it’s suicide and futile; that our battle has to be one of ideas. Also funny is at 45:00 where he discusses libertarian Jan Helfland, who while he is good in interviewing politicians and catching them in inconsistency and hypocrisy, still believes in the state and apparently told Molyneux in a debate that anarchists should be driven into the sea with tanks.
  • FDR #1509: Stefan Molyneux’s interview with the guys behind The Motorhome Diaries–Pete Eyre, Jason Talley and Adam Meuller, who who spent seven months in a bus looking for freedom in America. Fascinating interview–at around 42:00 they say that around the country, in addition to Molyneux’s program, the biggest influences they heard people talk about were FreeTalkLive, LewRockwell.com, and Mises.org. Also: at around 33:00 they discuss the book they have planned, and explicitly say that they do not believe in intellectual property and will release a free version online. They also give a fascinating account of their arrest in Jones County, Mississippi, based on trumped up charges by the local pigs.
  • Episode 185 of AppJudgment, discussing the new Hulu Plus app for iPad, its new business model and how this will play out and affect other TV distribution models.

As an aside, I have to say, I’ve been a bit negative in the past about libertarian activism (see my The Trouble with Libertarian Activism). But cases like the Motorhome Diaries guys and Molyneux’s heroic activism for liberty and his reception at the PorcFest event are inspiring and give me a smidgen of hope. And it seems like we are reaching a point where most libertarians are recognizing IP as the statist evil that it is. This must be driving the Randian libertarians nuts. I think we just need 10-15 years of generational change to wash out these holdovers and relics in a Kuhnian revolution in libertarian consciousness…

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Socialism not working for Hugo Chavez either

(Austrian) Economics, Anti-Statism, Statism, The Left
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With the central government now directly controlling some 20-30% of staple food production, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is certainly striving to put other people’s money where his mouth is. According to CNBC:

Hugo Chavez in 2006, after meeting with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil, and Néstor Kirchner, then president of Argentina.

Mountains of rotting food found at a government warehouse, soaring prices and soldiers raiding wholesalers accused of hoarding: Food supply is the latest battle in President Hugo Chavez’s socialist revolution.

Venezuelan army soldiers swept through the working class, pro-Chavez neighborhood of Catia in Caracas last week, seizing 120 tons of rice along with coffee and powdered milk that officials said was to be sold above regulated prices.

“The battle for food is a matter of national security,” said a red-shirted official from the Food Ministry, resting his arm on a pallet laden with bags of coffee.

Centrally planned economies fail because they can’t calculate. Venezuela is just another tragic example. No matter how many grocers Hugo Chavez terrorizes, he won’t be able to fix the flaws inherent in any command economy.

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Great Moments in Presidential History

Anti-Statism, Humor, Vulgar Politics
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In an earlier post, I mentioned how important it is that we stop treating presidents like gods and recognize they’re just ordinary jerks.

In that spirit, here’s a transcript (and audio) of LBJ ordering some pants, belching, and talking about his “nuts” and “bunghole.”

It’s not as good, though, as the incident Gene Healy recounts in The Cult of the Presidency, in which “asked by a reporter why America was in Vietnam, LBJ unzipped his fly, wagged his member at the audience and exclaimed, ‘this is why!'”

Healy suggests LBJ’s behavior there was the result of being intoxicated by power, but maybe it was just those uncomfortable pants.

In any event, perhaps it says something encouraging about the present times that the press would no longer suppress such a story.  (Would they?)

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How to Mirror a Censored WordPress Blog

Anti-Statism, Police Statism, Technology
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A couple of days ago David mentioned that the Mises Institute providing its entire online media and literature library as a set of free torrents can be seen as part of a distributed or grassroots intellectual guerrilla resistance against the state.

This is just one aspect of the Mises Institute’s effort to be completely open source. All of the intellectual eggs of the Austro-Libertarian movement are no longer being kept in one basket. The more people who seed those torrents, the easier the burden on the Mises Institute. But more importantly, should statist or natural disaster strike, the world won’t lose the vast wealth of information hosted by the Mises Institute. Indeed, not only will the information not be lost, but there will be no downtime in its worldwide online distribution. Should states decide to actively move against us, they’ll be in for one hell of a game of ‘whack-a-mole’. They’ll face the same problems the RIAA, Hollywood, and others are facing in their War on Piracy Copying.

Austro-Libertarianism has gone viral, folks.

All this is to set the context for another example of open source anti-state resistance that I recently discovered.

WordPress is an open source website and blogging platform. It’s an easy to use, yet powerful, tool for getting our ideas online where people around the world can access them. It’s free, as in speech and beer. This site is powered by it. My site is powered by it. The Mises Institute’s site is powered by it.

But some countries like China and Australia censor the internet, blocking access to unapproved sites like YouTube and Twitter, filtering or blocking or shutting down or otherwise regulating websites and blogs.

There are ways to get around this censorship, however. Here’s one: The good folks at Global Voices Advocacy, an organization defending free speech online, have heroically created a guide to mirroring a censored WordPress blog. It’s covered by a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, just like The Libertarian Standard. Get it. Share it. Even if you don’t need it yet, someday you might. Others already do. In the spirit of the Mises Institute’s torrented online library, we’re hosting the guide here as well.

Update: Via The Register, Google has put together an online interactive Transparency Report detailing how governments around the world are censoring the internet and Google services. Google also provides a Government Requests map detailing government “requests” that Google provide data on its users.

~*~

Cross-posted at Is-Ought GAP.

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