My entrepreneurial skills are more rewarded outside of America, so I'll go where my hard work is appreciated. I am not a follower of either of the two parties that run the US government. They are both war parties, they both believe in spying on their citizens, they both believe that the capital of its people is better in government hands than to be utilized by the people. My contribution to society in creating jobs and building businesses no longer goes to the US. In my free market paradigm, I choose to be productive elsewhere.
You are born with a citizenship based on that of your parents and where you were born. You have no choice in the matter. With that citizenship, you are practically forced into the system of that country. You must submit yourself to pledging allegiance to a particular flag, are forced to pay the state or be jailed, and worst of all, are brainwashed with the beliefs prescribed by the media. The loss of freedom is immediate upon birth. Only when you finish the determined schedule of schooling you are forced into do you get to make choices about your life.
I don't feel that the US deserves my presence. The laws are increasing in number and are suffocating fundamental freedoms more and more. NYC mayor Bloomberg used his office to attempt to ban people from buying sodas larger than 16oz. Of course, this is completely ridiculous. Even though this new law cannot pass, the discussion and litigation that it caused brings the idea into the public eye and gives rise to new proposals to take away personal freedoms.
Once you are banned from buying too large a soda, the next thing to be banned is ice cream, then a kid has an allergic reaction to peanuts and peanut butter becomes illegal. As laws become more ridiculous, people will choose to ignore the laws as they do in the case of prohibition of drugs.
The direction that the current administration is going, after a large soda ban, the government would allocate a huge amount of taxpayer money and police officers into cracking down on restaurants and large soda sellers. This makes unproductive governments grow while productive businesses shrink. This decreases the size of the economy and everyone suffers.
The cause of this trend is shortsightedness on the part of politicians and voters who don't think about the result of new laws. They take a moral superiority standpoint and believe that they are helping others, but in reality, they shoot themselves in the foot by slowing economic growth and setting the precedent for their own decreasing freedom.
More important than individual law changes are the effects they have on popular opinion. One day, large sodas are banned, the next day we're told how many children to have. After that, they tell us who we must marry, where we are allowed to go, when we can leave our houses, and what we are allowed to say.
Freedom is your right as a human. You don't like it when someone steals from you, why are you letting your government do it?
There is, of course, a strong libertarian movement in America now, represented in the U.S. Senate by Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. The western states (other than the Pacific states) and Texas have long had a libertarian culture. A libertarian might well feel comfortable in Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Arizona or Alaska. If he or she does not, there are countries that have adopted free market principles, such as Singapore, Thailand and Chile. However I am skeptical of whether those countries have libertarian principles in their culture, or have just adopted free market principles for utilitarian purposes. Pinochet asked Milton Friedman how to impose free market principles in Chile as a utilitarian matter, not out of any love for freedom, for which he demonstrated by other actions that he had none.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of libertarianism in culture vs. using it for utilitarian purposes needs clarity. We always need to specify between social freedom and economic freedom. Singapore and Chile seem more free economically than socially, whereas Thailand is socially one of the freest places on Earth.
ReplyDeleteSingapore allows personal expression only on Facebook. In real life, if you protest against the government in public, you may lose your job and the ability to get another job in Singapore. That said, business is put on a pedestal and the free market reigns. The result is high quality and 17% of Singaporeans families are millionaires. In Thailand, people let others do absolutely anything they like as long as it doesn't hurt others. Political protest is alive and well, and is incredibly organized. I am inspired by Chile's system of private water rights which is crucial in a future of water scarcity. With Chile's Unidad de Fomento, purchasing power always remains constant. It is a unit of account that Chileans can hold their wealth in to prevent to destruction of purchasing power through inflation. This is method for citizens to protect themselves from government-created inflation.
No matter the intention of freedom, it is good.