Made this screwing around on Illustrator. Obama v. Paul. 

I don’t agree with Paul on everything, I’m not a “Constitutionalist” or a conservative, I don’t think he’s a very good public speaker, and I’m sure if he becomes more of a contender he will be relentlessly and viciously attacked.

However I think the chance of his election (or even just the spreading of libertarian ideas on a grand stage) represents real potential for human progress. I can’t help but feel a little hope.

 christopherram asked:

If you could talk with President Obama over a couple of beers, what would be your top priority thing to talk about?

ME: President Obama, would you agree that beliefs have consequences and that very popular beliefs can be wrong?

BARACK: Yes, certainly. You have a particular belief in mind? Geocentric astronomy maybe?

ME: I do, but it’s not the-Earth-is-the-center-of-the-solar-system or anything from antiquity. It’s current.

BARACK: Go on.

ME: Well, in an interview you gave a few years ago, you pointed out that what “effectively sets a nation-state apart from non-government organizations” is that the state has an ideologically legitimate “monopoly on violence.”

BARACK: Sounds correct. We learned that definition of the state in law school. It’s from Max Weber, as I recall.

ME: Right, so since the state is a monopoly on ideologically legitimatized violence, have you ever thought about the question of whether we need a nation-state at all?

BARACK: I have not given that too much thought, no. It seems to me that without such government, there would be anarchy. We need law, security, roads, welfare and healthcare for the poor, and other services. Your nation-state government is there to provide you those things.

ME: Ah, but what if I were to tell you that historically, all those services - law, security, roads, welfare and healthcare for the poor, etc. - were provided and provided more efficiently without a nation-state? For instance, I recently co-authored an economic journal article on the Zomian region of Southeast Asia. This region contained 100 million people who lived statelessly for over 2000 years. They developed mutual aid for the poor, extremely efficient legal systems, security networks, private and communal roads, complex trading economies, etc. And they never needed a state, a “monopoly on ideologically legitimized violence,” to do it. 

BARACK: Well, that’s something to think about. In the United States, though, we have representative democracy. Through elections, the nation-state government represents the people. So really, the government is the people.

ME: As someone who’s seen it up close, I think you know as well as anybody how dirty a game elections are.. and I think you would agree that the incentives and motives for politicians usually have more to do with self-interest than the ‘good of the people.’ Anyway, I realize that’s a sensitive topic. Even if we assume that politicians are entirely interested only in doing for “the good of the people,” the nation-state has a problem.

Politicians and state officials are human beings. Neurobiologically, human beings only evolved a brain neocortex capable of calculating ~150 people. So it’s impossible for them to even comprehend the needs of millions of people. It’s even difficult for most individuals to predict what they are going to need in the next few days! And as the economist Kenneth Arrow won a Nobel for proving, it is impossible to get any kind of collective social choice from voting (even if there were no corruption or incentives conflicts or self-interested politicians).

The complex workings of human society were not designed from the top-down by some monopoly on violence acting in the collective interest. They emerged from the bottom-up, from voluntary individual interaction. And I think you know that’s what life is really about - mutual benefit and individual freedom.

BARACK: Well son, that sounds very nice, but I think it’s a little unrealistic. There will always be proactive violence. It seems that is just human nature.

ME: Indeed, I agree in large part. But as you defined the state, it is an ideologically legitimized monopoly on proactive violence. Proactive violence, especially on a mass scale, is very very expensive unless the people being coerced have the belief that such proactive violence is necessary. This is the belief that is wrong. This is the idea that has negative consequences. When we give a group of people such a subsidized monopoly on violence, it has tragic consequences. We see this in history over and over and over again. War, mass starvation, poverty, corporatism, democide…

Beliefs can change. If we can minimize the ideological legitimization of proactive violence, we make violence more expensive for everyone. If people don’t believe they need the nation-state, they won’t need it.

BARACK: If I even suggested such a thing, my political career would be over. These kind of ideas aren’t really on the table, son.

ME: I know, sir, and that’s the problem.

BARACK: Perhaps once I’m out of politics, I’ll look into them. Cheers.

David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s Senior Advisor (today, August 5, 2010 on MSNBC)

Of course.. this whole “gay marriage debate” would be a complete non-issue if it weren’t for the unnecessary government monopoly on “marriage” contracts in the first place.