On Self-Sufficiency

The Practical Libertarian knows that a reduction in governance is only as effective as the populace's ability to be self-sufficient. This is why it is the role of taxes is to encourage self-sufficiency in the form that deductions encourage the lower classes to invest in themselves and the upper classes to invest in the things that the lower classes cannot afford.

But there is also one government agency which can achieve self-sufficiency without reliance on outside assistance: the prison system.

The Practical Libertarian realizes that prisons are full of potential workers who don't require minimum wage since they should be paying for their room and board. It is a win-win situation in the making. Just as the plantation system worked because of the use of slaves, the prison system can use free labor to supply itself with what it needs, and maybe even make a profit. And in the process, they'll be teaching prisoners valuable skills that they can take away when they get out of jail.

These programs already exist, but they are vastly under-scaled. You know that prisoners make the license plates and train puppies to be guide dogs and in some areas work small farms to suppliment their diet. There are also work programs where they leave the prison to pick up trash on the highways and mow public spaces. All of these are great, but they could easily be expanded to include everyone, for more hours of the day. Even the most violent criminals could be given access to a plot of garden to weed and water while still being separated from their fellows. No one should spend 23 hours a day locked in a 3x5 cell, only allowed outside for 45 minutes of excercise and a 15 minute shower. And a garden is one manufacturing job that doesn't involve a group of people.

And whatever the prison manufactures over the amount that they need can be sold to pay for guards, electricity, and every other expense.While there will be some necessary initial investment, it would be worth it. 

On Spending

This is where a lot of compromise has to come into play. Let's face it, we like our amenities (I'm watching a very upper-class episode of House Hunters as I write this). So. What does the Practical Libertarian think are important government expenditures? Here are the major expenditures our government makes.

*Social Security for the elderly--let's face it, this was the best idea ever. It was supposed to be a self-sustaining program meant to make sure that the elderly could afford to retire (and let younger workers take their place in the workforce). So that's what we need to strive for again. I think that with money we can save on some other things, we coul get the Social Security and Medicare funds to where they belong so that it's sustainable once again.

*Welfare. Well, I know that this is a touchy subject, but it's something that we need to work on. This includes everything directed towards the poor (food stamps, medicaid, rent assistance, etc). Honestly, these services should be cared for by the private sector. And here's where you run over to the article on taxes to see how I believe that we need to use taxes now to encourage those who can afford to to donate to the programs which cover these issues. I think that the private sector can spend the time and effort to really help people while the government tends to get spread too thin. So, we need to not cut funding, but shift funding to the private sector. We can save money by removing the government officials in this area and let them be hired by private non-profits.

*Military. We need to have a strong military, and can't be isolationist, but we can't spend 50% of taxes on guns and ammunition. So we need to really look at what we're spending on the military and see if it's really necessary.

*Health Care Ideally, government shouldn't be paying for individual's health care. Because, everyone should have health insurance. I know, I know. I'm breaking some kind of Libertarian code when I say that we need to mandate health insurance, but the alternative, which I also support, is that if you don't YOU. WILL. DIE. I mean, you're going to die anyway (it's a sexually transmitted, 100% fatal disease), but do you want to die from something that a trip to the doctor early would have given you a decade or two more years of life? We can't allow people to spend their lives not paying for insurance and then waltzing into a hospital demanding treatment because they can. It's stupid to think that no one is paying for the treatment--your insurance premiums and your taxes already are. Money that could be used to keep schools open and keep Social Security solvent. It is, however, government's job to ensure that anyone who wants health insurance can get it, though they should have it from birth since the problem with banishing pre-existing condition clauses is that people will wait until they're ill to get insurance.

The law should be that there is some kind of basic insurance available for those who can't afford anything else. All children are given coverage until age 26 and then the Practical Libertarian says the individual is given a choice, start paying for insurance or lose the option. I think that with these mandates in place the insurance companies can go back to the status quo of today about pre-existing conditions since I'm sure there will be plenty of 30 year olds who for-went their insurance options and who want coverage later in life. Or no. Maybe not since then nothing really would have changed. Yes, I think the "have coverage or die" option would be best. **Unless you can afford un-insured health care, of course. But then I'd expect the hospitals would want proof of payment before they opperate.

*Investments in the Private Sector This is quite debatable. But again, it's dependent on the ability of the wealthy to spend their money on things that benefit everyone and not just themselves. It is the job of government to be pro-active, not re-active. Capitalsm is generally re-active--you didn't see fuel efficient cars start to sell en masse until the price of gas quintupled. There isn't investment until there's a market unless a market can be made and so long as there is oil available, there's not a market for electric cars (hence the reason why they were driven out of business back in the 1930s).

*Education The Practical Libertarian thinks that education is the responsibility of the masses. However, we are all part of the same country and we should have the same standards independent of the state we live in. The Department of Education should exist to set a national curriculum and a national test to make sure that students are meeting that standard. The states can then expand the curriculum to include whatever they want above and beyond the national standards. The goal isn't to mandate the education that children recieve...it's to ensure that students in NC are learning about the same Civil War as the students in PA--I have a cousin who thought Bull Run and Manassas weren't just different battles, but part of different wars back in the '90s when he changed schools. The standards should also be increased every few years since it would be a crime to leave our children in a static education system...a crime we've been forcing on them for years.

All public schools should be publically funded and donations be tax deductible. Ideally the goal would be for the private sector to fund public schools, though a system would be necessary to ensure that poor areas' schools aren't neglected. I should think that state governments could handle this, though beware situations like that in Virginia where NOVA tried to pass a law that school funding would be dependent on the amount the city paid in property taxes.

On Taxes

Taxes should be used for two primary reasons. The first is to pay for those things that the populace have deemed "the general welfare"; the second is to encourage earners to spend their money in a responsible way.

Aha, I see we've reached our first inconsistency--how does a libertarian support government intervention into the way that people spend their money? Easy--I'm talking about the time during the twenty year (minimum, really) journey to independence from government. Look, let's be honest here. There isn't much incentive for the super-rich to hand their money to the masses right now, is there? Look at the Facebook "exec." who is denouncing his American citizenship so that he can take his money to Singapore to pay the smallest amount of taxes on his fortune. That's just one example of how businesses game the system to give as little as possible to the government. While yes, that can be a good thing, we need to look at the system as a whole, especially if we want to remove the government from our lives.

Back in the dark ages before Reagan, the highest tax bracket was more than 80%. Now, Republicans would have you think that that would mean living in a Socialist Dictatorship with high poverty and breadlines...my grandmother would call it the 1950s when you could buy a house big enough for 8 kids for $15,000 (now worth almost $300,000 w/some upgrades). Some of the countries favorite places are the result of high taxes on the wealthy because there was also a deductions list three miles long. Williamsburg, VA was once the capital of the colony of Virginia, but once that was moved to Richmond, it became just another town, even though many of the founders of this country had ties to the College of William and Mary. The history might have been lost except that John D. Rockefeller had money to spend. Chrystler put money out to build museums (we have an art museum and a music hall). Carnagie built a Hall that's kinda famous. Isn't it interesting that all the big barrons of yore spent their money building things that the public could use? I mean, can you picture Romney funding the establishment of a museum? The man paid exactly 10% of his income to charity last year--if you know your church rules, 10% is the recommended tithe. Even the Mormons can't get an extra penny out of him.

Now, I hear you wondering why we should care whether the rich donate to charity and build public spaces. Well, what is an important role of government? To keep people off the streets and to help keep them educated. There are few if any museums that would be able to stay open if we removed government--would we be better off without them? This includes the Smithsonian Institute, the champion of government funded museums. Can you see paying $40 per person to see Archie Bunker's chair? Or the first American Flag? Actually--I'm not sure how much a ticket would cost to visit a museum that doesn't recieve government funding--and of course it would be dependent on how many people attend, so the less popular the museum, the more expensive the price--yeah...those museums will stay open forever. But that's capitalism for you.

So, we have to create a tradition of giving before we can get government out of philanthropy. High taxes for those who make more than $1 Million (or $10 Million. Or whatever number you want to pick, really) with anything under the sun being a deduction encourages them to spend it on things that might make a profit, might not.

And I think that getting government out of philanthropy is a good thing because the people who care enough about a cause to donate are the ones who are best able to make sure that it does the job that it's supposed to. Republicans like to complain about neglectful regulators--this would relieve a lot of the pressure there, allowing them to do a better job in areas that are more important. And museums are an area that real capitalism is actually a good thing (well, except for the pricing). History and science benefit from dialogue and it's a good thing to have alternative views of the same events. So if you have an Evolutionary Museum right next door to the Creationist Museum, the prudent scholar would walk into both before deciding (or well, that's the way it's supposed to work, but we all know better). But I think that we can all agree that as Practical Libertarians, keeping museums like the Smithsonian as they are is a good thing.

My Political Party

...doesn't exist. I'm what I call a "practical libertarian". I'm an economic conservative and a social liberal, so you can imagine my displeasure with both Democrats and Republicans. I'm also not a fan of Ron Paul's libertarianism...as my use of the word practical implies, I don't think that Paul is a feasible alternative to the system we have now.

Essentially, I believe that we have to have twenty years of good government before we can start reducing government. This means that government has to spend those twenty years preparing the country to move into a libertarian system. I'll try to explain how to do that here.