Category Archives: Libertarian

18Jul / 2012

Stimulus vs Austerity 101

Alex Merced discusses Stimulus va Austerity and the pro and cons and blasts through why this debate has been extremely messed up.

Alex Merced on Consumption Patters and Unemployment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCPJkQzEecI

YaHuWaHservant on Austerity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4uKzlrEPFQ

Veronique De Rugy on Austerity:
http://mercatus.org/publication/austerity-numbers
http://mercatus.org/publication/european-austerity-government-expenditures-country
http://mercatus.org/video/austerity-blame-europes-economic-woes

Econtalk episodes about Stimulus:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/09/garett_jones_on_1.html
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/01/fazzari_on_stim.html
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/10/ramey_on_stimul.html
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/01/sumner_on_money.html

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18Jul / 2012

An Immigration Tax

In this video reflecting on a CATO podcast, I talk about the idea of a tax on immigration and the effects it may have on the economy as a whole.

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17Jul / 2012

Explaining Interest Rates and Yield Curves

In this video I help explain the concept of interest rates and yield curves so people can better explain economic concepts.

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17Jul / 2012

Promoting Libertarianism Strategically

In this video I discuss strategic ways to make points that can help get even the most anti-libertarian types a reason to give libertarianism a second look.

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17Jul / 2012

Why Ron Paul is Unique? (Galvanizers and Diplomats)

Ron Paul is a unique figure in libertarianism, able to not only be a diplomat and figure that people outside of libertarianism can empathize with, but also a diehard who can galvanize the most radical of libertarians. It’s very rare a figure like him can exist, and let’s be glad he does.

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12Jul / 2012

Libertarians: Effective Debating

In this video I emphasize knowing your audience, and while arguing principle and rigid dogma is great when selling yourself to the choir, but this same red meat to the libertarian base is the kind of rhetoric that scares away people who otherwise would be open to the message.

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06Jul / 2012

Questioning the Gold Standard

Many libertarians and conservatives are big proponent of the classical gold standard similar to what we had in the late 19th and early 20th century (I don’t think anyone is an advocate of the mid-20th century breton woods gold standard). I personally am a free banking/competing currencies advocate, and in this video I question the idea of an ideal system, and whether what would make an ideal currency is what we usually think it should be.

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06Jul / 2012

Policy Wonkery: Unemployment Taxes

While many of us libertarians arn’t fans of overly complicated policies, it never hurt to think about what might be better that we have now. In this video I dicuss tying tax rates to economic outcomes like unemployment, so as an economy improves it results in automatic tax reflief, and create an incentive for private firms to care about economic outcomes.

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06Jul / 2012

Correlation is not Causation

Many political pundits often confuse correlation with causation, and often when they try to explain how it can plausibly be a causal relationship… it’s not that plausible in my opinion. In this video I discuss how many trends make more sense when you reverse the flow of causation, but again there isn’t any absolute way to ever know.

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06Jul / 2012

Why Libertarians Should Vote, and why it doesn’t violate principle

In the following video I dicuss why I don’t think voting violates libertarian principles or causes, if anything not voting undermines them. If anything, libertarians should vote if just to be counted. Politicians and public opinion are heavily controlled by numbers, and only by displaying our numbers and influence can we build the inertia and momentum to change public opinion. For example, do you think it wouldn’t raise eyebrows if the libertarian party got between 5-10% vote, sure it’s not a win but it sends a clear message to the two party system that their is a substantial portion of the population they must make a play for.

 

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