Losing my faith

I came from a fairly religious conservative family, so as a young adult I could be counted on to defend certain ideas that you might expect to align with those in that group. (i.e. America is the greatest country founded on freedom and the system is the best even if we sometimes don’t like the outcomes.) — even though I did identify as more libertarian, as long as I knew what it was.

At that age, the faith I thought I needed to lose was the religious part. Instead, it was the “rule of law”, the “experts”, and even “democracy”.

As I discuss in my intro blog post, the Covid-19 response really threw me into disarray. The “experts” were telling us things that were obviously false. As an engineer, I’m looking for evidence. I need to know that the models I build will actually work. And when they don’t, I’m of course expected to make adjustments that comport to reality. None of that was occurring during the pandemic.

The last decade (almost) has been the Donald Trump show. Let me just get it out of the way: I’m not a fan. But I’m not deranged about it, either. I saw media and others just spreading blatant lies, taking things out of context, and creating a narrative that we were in for some uniquely catastrophic situation with him as President. He’s a dope that maybe has some good instincts, sometimes. But none of the dire consequences predicted came true. And, in fact, the things they accused him of doing (or threatening to do) the new regime are now doing themselves.

Libertarian Education

Starting around 2014 my interest really grew in politics. I found the ideas I held didn’t always hold up to scrutiny, or at least I didn’t know how to defend them. I watched a lot of YouTube videos in which conservative pundits “destroyed” their lesser opponents, and that was satisfying for a short time. But that led me to deeper questions, some casual reading, and the discovery of the Mises Institute, among other platforms and podcasts. When the Covid psychosis hit full force, that put me into overdrive.

I learned about Austrian economics.  It should be obvious that shutting down not just one industry but 90% or more of ALL industries would have dire consequences. But still “mainstream” economists like Paul Krugman are running victory laps, claiming we managed to do all this without any problems. We “beat inflation”, but of course only if you ignore all the essentials for living like food, gas, cars, and homes. People are struggling, but these hacks will point the finger back and say we’re just too stupid to realize– inflation is going down!

Bitcoin’s real potential came into focus. I realized we cannot let the ruling elite control our money. It’s what made these mandates, as well as the neverending war machine, possible.

I joined the Libertarian Party and the takeover movement that happened in 2022. I was a delegate in Reno at the convention where the Mises Caucus dominated. And that was something that was difficult for me because I hate to be a ‘joiner’.  I’m still not confident we’ll have any top-down success, but maybe we can get a little more attention and share the message. I haven’t been very active since, but I should be at the convention in 2024.

Flying the Black Flag

I have accepted the label of anarchist. I was hesitant to go all the way for a while. And I still might throw in a caveat, like I’m actually an agorist or voluntaryist, but they’re not incompatible. It is not a synonym for chaos, as many believe. It literally means “without rulers”. The current rulers have proved themselves so utterly incompetent or evil (it’s hard to tell which sometimes, but the consequences are the same) that we would have to be insane to try to hang on to them. And whether it’s on purpose or by accident, the systems we have are destined to elect the worst people, so there’s virtually no hope of voting in the “right guy(s)”.

I used to buy the idea that we could make government “as small as possible” to reduce it to just a few key functions, like national defense and security, and maybe even roads. I knew that government intervention always led to worse outcomes, but I hung on to that contradictory notion that we needed something, someone in charge. And perhaps we’ll never escape it, but I now am quite certain we don’t need that. We will, of course, hire people to provide those basic functions. But if they’re not doing the job they were hired to do, we have the option to fire them. We won’t be stuck with the most unimpressive people, in a bureaucracy that is built to have the absolute worst people on top. 

Trying Something New

I have a career that works for me. I have an engineering degree and an MBA. I don’t need to do this, but I find studying, writing, and sharing information much more satisfying than corporate life. If I can turn this into a full-time gig I would love it!

You don’t need a majority to make a difference. A very loud, vocal minority has made big changes in our country, for good and many times for bad. But for sure if we don’t try, nothing will change and we’ll forever be stuck with the clowns currently running things–screwing things up for the little guy (or the middle guy?). We can do better. It’s going to have to come from all sides.