Technology can be a mixed blessing in the advancement of liberty. So far, drones are more a plus for evil government, as drones are often used by the US government to kill individuals, without trials, never mind convictions.
Although there are some in the libertarian community who hail Bitcoins as a move toward the advancement of liberty, I don't see bitcoins that way. Bitcoin use is extremely trackable and widespread adoption will just lead to a further ability of government to track us with more detail and more easily.
And the eaves dropping technologies of the NSA are certainly a horror.
But not all technological advances are in favor of the government.
I would rank among the top technologies advancing liberty over the last 30 years, as the internet, social media and cell phone video recording capabilities.
The internet broke the back of the establishment control of news dissemination. Now, anyone can sit at a computer and find multiple views on any topic under the sun.
The great Mises Institute has grown exponentially since it became an early adopter of the internet as a way to disseminate free market economics information. LewRockwell.com has a spectacular reach compared to the printed and mailed earlier Rothbard-Rockwell Report.
Social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, which is mostly a subset of the internet, deserves it's own category and ranking as a great technology and advancer of liberty because it allows individuals to quickly and efficiently find and communicate with other like minded individuals about liberty. The awareness to all of the vast number of people interested in liberty was not possible before social media.
Finally, the video recording capabilities of cell phones are a great advancement in the recording of horrific acts by police. It is impossible now to pass by someone being arrested where their are not at least two or three people recording the event. This has to send a message of caution to police everywhere. The people are watching and the police must watch their back to a degree that never happened in the pre-video cell phone era.
-RW
Robert, if you have time please tell us how to simultaneously record and upload live video so that the cops can't delete the video or remove the memory card.
ReplyDeleteI somewhat agree.
ReplyDeleteI am less worried about BitCoin since it was merely a first revision in non-government computer currency. First revisions are never perfect. Obviously the people working on BitCoin and its competitors are highly motivated to make transactions private, and will succeed in time.
I haven't found much personal use for social media.
Drones are going to become wide spread among the people. "Those who drone, will be droned." In the long run, drones will be a bad deal for the ruling class.
The most important pro-freedom technology is the spread of battle rifles and battle carbines, unintentionally popularized first by Bill Clinton. The more these filter through society, the less crap from the ruling class we have to put up with. It becomes difficult to mess with armed peasants...
I think personal cams, always running and always uploading to an encrypted file controlled by the user, and going to be another future liberty technology. Tyranny depends on the ability to assault the peons who are getting uppity (and get away with it). This will become difficult as personal cams become widespread.
One pro-freedom technology that deserves your serious consideration, if the rule of law is a principle to live by, is the computer digitation of the written controlling law called the codes. This process, which was more or less completed by the turn of the century, allowed for the search of terms of art, unique legislatively defined terms, which control the purpose and scope of the law within the very limited jurisdiction of the Constitutionally confined federal government.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the most liberating results are those that come from the analysis of 26 USC - the Internal Revenue Code - using this process. What researchers have found, starting thirteen years ago, is that the income tax is a fully constitutional, benign and very limited, as in very specific in its target subject matter, kind of tax. But that by using words of everyday use, like "wages", "employee", "trade or business", which actually have a very limited definition within the code but are not so easily found, the Bismarkian socialists that had taken over academia, especially in the field of public finance, were able to convince a war ravaged and increasingly nationalistic general public that the words applied to everyone. Their supposed authority for this change from very limited application to universal was the 16th Amendment. Turns out that the Supreme Court had dispatched this ridiculous assertion back in 1916 and continuously thereafter, but that was not enough to prevent its resurrection by the new taxation experts, the faculty tax promoters, and big government lovers in general, that realized all to well, that with the income tax perceived as an excise, big intrusive government (with them at the helm or reaping its rewards) would be impossible.
That's right, the income tax is actually an excise or privilege tax on the exercise of federal government privilege, measured by the "income" that that taxable activity produced. It is a tax, excise or duty actually, that has been around for a long time. Blackstone lists it among his discussion of the indirect taxes that the British classical liberals used to finance limited government. It was suggested by Secretary Dallas back in 1815 to help finance the War of 1812. It was used by the Lincoln administration to help finance the subjugation of the Confederacy starting with the 1861 revenue bill. Blackstone called it popular taxation because it didn't affect those in the private sector, only those in the privileged political class. It is also very easy to collect and typically brings in lots of revenue. It also has a prohibitive effect on the political class, especially with steep graduation. In the classical liberal sense it is the best tax ever devised.
Learn more:
Visit http://losthorizons.com/Documents/The16th.htm and learn the individual-empowering and state-restraining truth about the income tax. Then spread it like your liberty depends on your effort (which it does)!