It starts out with a civilization 1000 years more advanced than we are. An ancap society that is more educated, intelligent, enlightened, prosperous, beautiful and happy than anything we have ever seen. Then the thought leaders at the time decide that they wanted to implement "true socialism". While pursuing this "utopia" the society destroys itself at every level, and rips itself to shreds.

By time it's all over, all that's left behind is a bunch of primitive hunter gatherers that we know of today as historical Africa.

The reason why I wanted to talk about this, is because recently there seems to be this emerging narrative that libertarianism is all about greed and hedonism, and will never give us the depth that needed feeling of belonging, that culture, that history, heritage, and community will. From this I hear statements like, "the culture has put a lot into you to build you up to who you are, if you want to partake of the benefits of the culture, like retirement help, you need to cultivate your duty to the culture as well and give into the culture that gives to you". That's bullshit, why not just say, "social security" is a Ponzi scheme, and kill it. Ironically, things like this will kill culture, and just turn it into a club to beat people with. Also, things like the central bank flooding the system with printed up debt and corporations jumping in bed with the government are completely in opposition to libertarian philosophy, and happened precisely because people rejected libertarian ideas.

When Ludwig Von Mises wrote his famous book "Human Action", it didn't talk about how or why humans purposefully act, it just presupposed that they did (even if it was imperfect), and made logical conclusions from there the proved that the optimum outcome always comes from optimum freedom and more specifically free market capitalism. However, for a lot of religious people, there already is a very natural explanation as to why people act. God has a certain nature, and one of the ways that that nature shows up in humanity is in the form of free will. From there, human action, and all the freedom and liberty that it implies is a foregone conclusion.

In sum, libertarian philosophy isn't just about a bunch of "greedy" assholes doing what they want, but is a sacred manifestation of God's nature showing up in human organization and social structure. It's the definition of moral depth and the foundation of all true community.

God has a certain nature, and part of that nature shows up in humanity in the form of free will. Because we have free will, we can choose beliefs, and preferences, and habits. Sine people tend to have a sociable nature, people of like beliefs, preferences, and habits tend to come together in groups that share those beliefs. That's what culture is about, and humanity has naturally evolved to be very comfortable in it's cultures. Some parts of culture is and must evolve to be universal by it's nature, and the test of time. For example, a culture that despises freedom and property rights will eventually destroy itself and rip itself apart while one that loves freedom and property rights will last and endure and be prosperous. Other parts of culture can be highly local, but lasting, for example my culture may love spicy foods, while yours doesn't. Nothing about those differences needs to change ever, our cultures can live side by side for a 1000 years in peace and harmony. In fact, the variety is probably preferable. Some parts of culture, we are raised in, like our language, others we choose.

For decades the left has tried to ruthlessly mold and manipulate culture, take interests we share like say "a nice clean environment", or a pretty sounding music, and use that like a bludgeon instrument to beat and coral us into cultures that destroy themselves, like socialism. But now the right is fighting back. To be honest, it's kind of refreshing. The culture of the right is a lot less susceptible to the abuse heaped on us by the left. That because the right tends to be based on cultures that have lasted the test of time, and so is naturally the most destructive socialist tendencies have been weeded out. Also, in the USA, the culture of the right is based on Christianity and the US constitution. Human free will is a tenant of most Christian beliefs, and freedom a tenant of the US constitution. Again,greatly limiting potential damage.

However, it's not what they are doing, but where they seem to be going. In stead of saying things like "social security is a worthless ponzi scheme that needs to be destroyed", I hear things like, "the culture has put a lot into you to build you up to who you are, if you want to partake of the benefits of the culture, like retirement help, you need to cultivate your duty to the culture as well and give into the culture that gives to you". That's bullshit, and it's ripe for abuse and turns culture on its head. In stead of being product of our choices and the wisdom of history, culture once again becomes a tool that bludgeons us into a socialist type agenda. Ironically, ripping apart the very culture that they deem necessary to protect.

So in 1913 the government created the Federal Reserve. That way the system had a means to finance various world wars. But the thing is, how does the middle class protect themselves from the constant ruin of their pay and savings? Well it turns out the middle class found that one good way to protect yourself was to take out a long term mortgage and buy a house. As the government ruined the money, that house would gain dollar value in proportion.

But why does this work in the USA, and not other countries like say Ecuador? Well, the reason is that that USA had a strong and large middle class, and had a lot of economic liberties, low taxes, and low regulations, and low corruption compared to other countries. So you take the economic liberty of the USA, and add in some zoning laws to limit alternatives, and it turns out people could make a lot of money on their house. This also enabled a lot of people to gain out sized wealth off of real estate, like Trump.

So that's what Trumps agenda is. Kill the bullshit taxes and regulations to make the US economy grow, and re-create the world he grew up in.

But there is just one problem with that. All that fed money printing isn't organic. It creates bubbles. One way or another, those bubbles need to pop, either through ruining the money, or through a big crash. And so, while Trump can solve a huge amount of problems by deregulating, and getting taxes off the backs of the middle class, he can't solve the bubble problem. Those bubbles also create social problems, like wokeness. The free market isn't just about a bunch of assholes throwing around money, it's also a clearing mechanism. It rewards productive behavior, and kills unproductive behavior. It's not a coincidence that workness exploses out of control at the same time that the fed's balance sheet exploded out of control from the bank bailouts.

The future we need to shoot for:

Currently there is the Dems and the RINOs, and everybody else is considered fringe. But I think even MAGA would agree that it would be in all of our best interests that in the future it is MAGA and the Libertarians, and the Dems and RINOs are considered some kind of fringe movement

On the economy:

Like MAGA, the libertarians understand that a healthy economy needs low taxes and regulations, however unlike MAGA libertarians understand that the fed creates constant bubbles and is a constant source of trouble, and simply needs to be ended, as well of kicking the government out of the money business forever.

On education:

Like MAGA, the libertarians understand that woke education is ruining everybody, however, unlike MAGA the libertarians understand that any government in the education sector is always going to be a corrupting infulence, and it's better to kick the state out. Vouchers may be a good start in that direction, but in the end the government needs to be completely kicked the fuck out.

On social security:

MAGA tends to support social security, but libertarians understand that it is a disaster and a scam, the the only lasting and just solution is to abolish it, and maybe do stuff like liquidate government land and parks to compensate the victims of this ponzi scheme.

On health care:

Both MAGA and the libertarians tend to understand that excessive government in the health care sector is making it insanely expensive, however, the libertarians also understand that as long as government is financing health care, it will always be corrupted.

On the debt:

MAGA wants to grow out of the debt, but the libertarian truth is that we would probably be all better off if we just defaulted on the government debt. And yes, interest rates would rocket, and there would be no more financing of government programs. Good.

On taxes:

MAGA wants taxes on programs that "work", but the libertarians understand that the very nature of taxes corrupts. The goal should be to get rid of all taxes, but most especially the income tax and the inflation tax.

On regulations:

Both MAGA and the libertarians seem to understand how bad most of these are for society and the economy. (except for zoning laws, see below)

On immigration:

MAGA wants to control immigration. But the libertarian truth is that the problem isn't the immigrants, but that the immigrants are getting on government programs, heavily encouraged by leftists. There is nothing wrong with immigration, when it comes to hard working family folks, even illegal immigration, it helps the economy. The problem isn't immigration, but that much of the current immigration isn't organic and isn't market driven.

On the police:

MAGA want's police that work for the people. But the truth is, we need market mechanisms to make police work for the people, not political mechanisms. Instead of trying to reform the police, create market orientated reforms like police vouchers, and eventually phase those out too and make the police all private.

On wars and empire:

Both MAGA and the Libertarians seem to understand that all these constant wars are expensive and unproductive, however, unlike MAGA the libertarians seem to understand that the way to have a strong national security isn't through a strong military, but through a strong economy. It's better to free up military resources to the private sector whenever possible.

On housing:

Unlike MAGA, the libertarians seem to understand how destructive land use restrictions, subdivision restrictions, and zoning laws are. They need to be eliminated. People need to focus on how they use their property rights, not what their neighbors do with their property. (see the section on the fed also, because they are a major source of housing bubbles, and the reason people turn to financing real estate to protect their wealth)

On tyrannies and gays and other weird behavior:

MAGA wants to center around family and culture. But the truth is, there was never anything wrong with people having these strange offshoots (other than damage to children). The problem was when they got in bed with the state and state schools to impose their values and go against parents when indoctrinating kids. Some immoral behaviors do have poor social consequences, but those will filter themselves out without state interference.

On the war on drugs:

MAGA seems to know that the war on drugs has problems, but wants to reform it. No, it needs to end and be treated like a public health issue, and not a crime issue.

EDIT: On intellectual property:

Copyright and patent don't work, are very destructive, and just need to be phased out.

So in our current political environment, you have the Republicans, the Democrats, and the Libertarians are some 3rd distant fringe party. But the thing is, our society would be way better off if you had the Republicans, the Libertarians, and the Democrats as some 3rd distant fringe party.

I honestly think that goal is within reach, and I also think that most Republicans would agree with me on this. It might not only be possible for the Libertarians to be pulled into the mainstream, but to have the complete cooperation of the current mainstream Republicans who would also see this as in their strategic best interest.

Just a thought.

Just monetize gold at $100000 per OZ. All of a sudden, all debt becomes payable, all stocks become undervalued. Inflation, after a one time price shock would come to a screeching halt. Prices, contracts, and pay would quickly adjust. Of course, the government would no longer be able to finance reckless spending with printed up money, but oh well.

The thing is, as authoritarian ideologies like fascism and socialism fail (and the lighter form of socialism called social democracy), there has been this new push to focus on culture, to even elevate it to primacy over the individual. In truth, this is a predictable backlash to the "neoliberal globalists", whose great evil was that they were not liberal(libertarian) at all. They used monetary policy and imposed national currencies to steal from the people while using regulations to choke off competition. While they were all for free trade, open borders, and private ownership in the economy, it didn't effectively matter. They were always able to squeeze regular working people out of their assets by ruining their money, and limiting how they can compete. As their system falls apart, they have proven all to willing to crush protesters and online media under their thumb, they have thrown liberalism(libertarianism) into the dumpster.

Unfortunately, as their system falls apart there will also likely be an unhealthy dislike of immigration and free trade, because of how the neoliberal globalists used it as a weapon against us. This is where the value of libertarian philosophy comes in. In many ways, it makes sense right now to side with the "culturalists", because they are attacking the neoliberal globalists, who happen to be our biggest threat and enemy at this time. However, we should be ready for them to take a dark turn once the neoliberal globalists fail and to soundly reject the culturalists as well.

The problem never was immigration, but instead how they were being baited up here with promises of entitlement programs in order to change democratic outcomes. The problem never was free trade, but all the regulations and monetary policy that put us at a disadvantage to China. The problem was never black communities, or people with strange gender and sexuality ideas, but how this was being shoved down our throat while we were forced to finance "woke" education, which was really just stealing capital via taxes from white hetero males for financing hatred towards white hetero males. In effect, they were trying to attack our freedoms by attacking the demographics and societies that were most sympathetic to freedoms, since they couldn't attack our ideas. But if we solve the latter problems, the former ones will solve themselves.

When you have a pharma patent system, it creates a strong incentive to do things like engineer a bio weapon, that only they sell the patented cure for (sound familiar?). Or, push non patented cures and remedies out of the market, via things like import controls and government regulations. Or even worse, try to engineer germs and infections that develop resistance to the current medicines, so they can push new patented ones.

Even if half the world didn't have pharma patents, the pharma patent system incentives behaviors that can cause infections diseases to spread out of control and cause a huge amount of harm.

My thoughts are, there are so many shortages and so many supply chain problems, but it might be because of fed manipulation of futures markets.

In a normal economy, shortages increase demand, and demand causes prices to go up, and higher prices create strong incentive to create supply. When governments put in price controls, it causes immediate shortages (or surpluses of things people don't want) because supply is unable coordinate with demand. But what if the Fed is manipulating futures markets to keep prices from exploding? Well, then that would have the same effect as price controls.

Of course, in a normal society, nobody would do that because they would lose their shirt financially. But the Fed effectively has the power to print up money. They are not interested in profiting from futures markets, they are interested in maintaining a certain economic order.

Unlike many libertarians, I think that big-tech is indeed acting unconstitutionally. That's because, I don't think companies like Facebook are acting independently, but as an agent of the state. It's no different than if the deep-state hired private contractors to intimidate and silence me. The fact that they are private actors is irrelevant.

Also, the left tries to use the fact that they are private actors as a bludgeon instrument to shut us up. But the truth is, even if that is so, we still have a right to call them out as being assholes who deserve to get their ass kicked.

However, unlike many other people, I personally think big tech is doing us a favor. Alternative platforms, and decentralized technologies have sprung up everywhere. All of these entrenched tech companies have the unenviable task of shutting down the free flow of information just as the information age is blowing up out of control. It is not only unworkable, but as decentralized technology improves and the size of the network grows, the cost of trying to impose internet censorship grows exponentially.

Most CEO's today, don't make their money by providing goods and services to the market, they make the bulk of their money from stock buybacks financed (indirectly) by the central bank. The minute they decided to do the 2008 bailout, this was inevitable. The central bank set interest rates to zero for 10 years to "save the system". But the thing is, if your corporation (for example) was earning 7% per year, and the Fed is loaning into the market at 0-1% per year, then this guarantees that an infinite amount of money is going to flood into buying your stock till that value gets maxed out.

None of these corporations are beholden to the market anymore, they are all beholden to the system. Every last one of them is sucking the tit of the government imposed central bank to get their milk. Of course, not even stock buybacks can make your company survive if you can't produce anything of value for the market. But the system has a solution to this too, have the government effectively print up money and bail everybody out all the time. Once again, they have become more beholden to the government than ever.

However, the market is not just about a bunch of assholes throwing around money. The market is also a tool for clearing out behavior and actions that are unproductive for society. When the market isn't allowed to perform that clearing function, then unproductive behavior tends to grow out of control like a cancer, create instability, and overrun society. And behold, now we have woke culture and political insanity everywhere.

It seems the leftists have seized every government institution based on philosophical premises that all government institutions are socialist by their very nature, so all you need to do is push the right buttons and pull the right strings to co-opt those institutions and use them to impose authoritarian leftist views. They have become experts at co-opting any centralized authority, even the Catholic Church. Normally, a market based system balances out their extremes because people who listen to them lose profit, but because of the low interest rates and the constant stock bubbles, not even corporate USA has been able to contain them anymore.

So now the conservatives, after getting a big fat juicy FU during the last election cycle, have finally woken up to that the leftists are not just people with differing opinions, but actual mortal enemies who are at war with them. But I think they are perusing the wrong strategy. Too many think the problem is that to mush liberalism in the culture allowed to much leftism, and if we just weed that out, the culture and the government will fall back into line. They also ironically want to keep the artificially low interest rates, which ironically feed the leftist beast.

But the truth is, as long as the government does our health care, education, retirement, and military ventures, they will not and can not stop always pulling towards extreme leftism. Government inside of these institutions, by it's very nature, removes market accountability and replaces it with political accountability. The leftists are wrong about everything else, but are actually right about the nature of state power. So basically this sets things up to be this constant battle between leftists who are experts at co-opting the state, and conservatives who are trying to do the impossible task of making state power work for them, and libertarians will be stuck right smack in the middle of this battle.

Using the "velocity of money" to measure inflation is dangerous. To illustrate my point, consider somebody at a ski resort measuring the velocity of snow coming down the mountain. So a big snow-storm hits, and the snow sticks, and so the velocity of snow coming down the mountain is very slow. Then another big snow storm hits, and once again, the snow sticks and the velocity of money is very slow. Maybe at this point, the people measuring the velocity of snow are complacent. But then another snow storm hits, and boom, something breaks and you have an avalanche, and everybody in the town at the bottom of the hill is dead.

In a way, this is like the US dollar. The dollar is very familiar, everybody uses it, everybody is in debt with it. Because of that, it sticks. Dollars rain down, and nothing bad happens. Then they do another round, and once again, dollars rain down, and nothing bad happens. But then at time point, the pressure overwhelms the system, and boom, the whole thing goes to hell.

Measuring the velocity of money is like measuring the velocity of snow. It doesn't tell you any useful information, till it does, at which time it is beyond too late. The important measure is not the velocity of money, but the misallocation of capital in the system. The total money supply, and the rate at which it increases is is far more useful and relevant to that measure than the velocity of money.

So I work in an area closely related to the wholesale industry and when the pandemic hit, I expected the factories and wholesalers to massively increase prices on face masks and wipes and such. Well, they did, but they didn't.

Maybe 20-30% per quarter, which is high, but they could have easily increased them 500% to 1000%.

Then it hit me. Many of these factories have close relationships with their wholesalers, and wholesalers close relationships with the retail stores. They negotiate in long term pricing, and they don't want to screw it up. If they massively increased prices to balance out supply and demand, it would kick the door wide open for competitors to jump into the market and undercut them.

The reason they hate price gougers, has nothing to do with them making a massive profit, and everything to do with competitors having a chance to get their foot in the door to compete with them and create new distribution channels. These large companies hate and despise competition, and for the most part can keep it in check by keeping profit margins thin. But occasionally, crazy events come along and threaten to turn over the apple cart.

In sum, I learned that the media hatred of price gouging isn't about greedy sellers, but about large greedy corporations wanting to cling on to distribution and supply monopolies.

Currently the left is using a bunch of entitlement programs to entice millions of immigrants to flood into the system, and overwhelm the voting demographics to become more leftist. But eventually these entitlement programs will go bankrupt, and the only people who will want to come here will be people who are motivated and ambitious and entrepreneurial. Also, culture is a two way street. We saw this with black people, when the left thought that mixing black and white culture would cause the country to become more leftist, they strongly encouraged it. But it turned out that a lot of black people liked having freedom and opportunity, liked being entrepreneurs, liked family, work ethic, and community, and didn't like entitlements and large government. As soon as this happened, the left started trying to do everything they could to isolate blacks from white culture.

I predict that the same is going to eventually happen with immigrants. They will do everything possible to isolate the rest of the world from western culture, they will encourage us to lock out anybody else, and encourage them to not come to the USA and be "oppressed" by white people.

Peter Schiff's dad wrote a book "How an Economy Grows, and Why it Crashes". It is a great and insightful book, and teaches a lot about economics. However, while the economic principles are sound, there is one part where I think there is a tiny flaw. In the book, Albe lends Charlie some fish, and expects to be paid back with twice as many fish as interest. It is a good example, but in the real world things never work that way among small groups of people. In small groups of friends, people keep track in their head. For example, if your GF does the laundry and dishes, she doesn't itemize it and send you a bill to deduct from your pay. Instead it's a give and take, she is responsible for some things, you for others. If you notice that she is stops trying, then at some point you will likely decide to act and try to change the situation.

Another example might be you come to my home one day and have dinner at my expense, than I come to yours another day and have dinner at your expense. We may switch back and forth every few days, and as we do it acts like an economic trade. We could choose to stop at any time, but we don't because like all trade it is mutually beneficial. Maybe I took a risk when I served up the first free dinner, but in truth I was keeping track subconsciously. If you told me to fuck off about dinner at your place, I would never give you a complementary dinner again.

As these economic transactions become more complicated, and maybe new friends come to the table, we may agree to ways to keep track more easily. Like, everybody gives a wooden token to whomever cooks up dinner for them, and then those tokens can be used next time to get dinner from somebody else. As long as we all trust one another, this works fine, we could engage in trade forever, and all would be well.

The problem is, once the group becomes too large, it is just too easy for a person to make up a fake wood token and cheat. There is not an easy way to solve this problem. You can have a trusted person in the community keep track on some kind of a ledger, but this often creates too much temptation for corruption. The only other way is for the token itself to have the real value. If a person gives me gold, I have no need to be concerned about fraud. The gold itself has the value, and can be exchanged for value from somebody else at any time. The gold is money.

Notice, as long as we had trust, we were perfectly capable of engaging in business and commerce without gold money, but when we can't trust, gold itself acts to fill in that trust.

Well, the thing is that crypto currencies solve the trust problem. If a person gives me a crypto coin, I can trust that he just didn't create some bullshit promissory note out of thin air, or maybe he did, and I'm giving him the first freebie for tokens as the benefit of the doubt, just like with that first free dinner. Either way, it's worth the risk because the benefit of mutual and fair trade outweighs the risk of being ripped off, especially for tokens that are in common use. Maybe these tokens will fluctuate in price, but like any market, they will find a floor value and a max value, and from there I can calculate the risks and values of transactions.

So technically speaking Peter Schiff is right, the crypto coins have no value and are not money, just like the initial wooden tokens traded among friends to keep track of the dinners. But in practice they aid greatly in tracking and trade and transactions, and using coins for goods and services is as much a social activity as an economic activity. Just like that small group of trusted friends didn't need gold and commodity money to engage in effective trade and economic activity between them, crypto currencies can be useful even if they have no commodity value.

It seems to me that wishing for an ancap society is like wishing for a society that is crime free. Since people have their own wills and agendas, we will probably never have an ancap society for the same reasons that we will never have a society free of all crime.

But that doesn't matter. Working to have a society that is free of crime is a noble, worthy, and productive goal and activity even if we never achieve it, and the same is true with an ancap society.

Also, being ancap has lots of benefits even if we never fully get there. One for me was my ancap understanding that copyrights were a fake and immoral property right, that lead me in the direction of open source software, and had a very positive role in my career. Another, is ancap wisdom has caused me to avoid US treasuries as an investment, and to be attracted to technologies like crypto currencies, which has also had a very positive outcome for me. Also, I avoided getting killed with the housing bubble (austrian economics) that crushed many of my friends. Another one was taking my kids out of government schools, and educating them myself. Their education isn't perfect, but they avoided a lot of the problems their friends and peers did.

Anyhow, the point that ancap is a valuable goal, even if we never do reach the perfect ancap destination.

Mises always made the case that no matter if you are philosophical about liberty, or if you are just pure utilitarian about it, that both ended up in the same place. Libertarian is optimal for social interaction, and economic prosperity.

The thing is that Trump is not libertarian at all, but he was very utilitarian, and pragmatic at problem solving. It was facilitating to watch how it seemed to want to converge onto libertarianism in several cases.

The first thing was his hires. They were shit, but looking back this makes sense. In the private sector, you want to hire people who are skilled and have a reputation in their field, because the market tends to ween out the unproductive people over time. However, in the government sector, the people who are the most parasitic tend to rise to the top. It was fascinating to watch Trump hire people with high level government reputations, like Bolton, only to slowly figure out over time that they were shit and cycle them out. Same with Fauci, who wasn't fired, but in the last year was effectively sidelined.

The second thing was all the wars. In the private sector, no actor no matter how shitty is dealt with using personal violence. It was fascinating for Trump to be under high pressures to always get into wars and conflicts only to opt out at most every chance, almost as if he was guided by his business instinct. Also, when he did use violence it was carefully minimized, like an unpopulated irrelevant Syrian target that had warning ahead of time. Or like the highly targeted assignation of Salimani, instead of a military strike on Iran. Also, when he couldn't solve conflicts like the Palestinians, he instead focused on the potential for a bunch of edge regional conflicts, and incentive cooperation via economics. It was also fascinating to watch him talk like he was escalating with North Korea, while he was really deescalating.

Another interesting thing was the pharma and medical industry. The pharma patent cartels are a disaster, and he got around this by negotiating pricing based off their lowest priced customers. It didn't get rid of the patents, but eliminated the targeted pricing power patents impose having a similar effect. Also, for years I had been saying that the government shouldn't be in health care, but if they just deregulated it, market forces alone would drive down prices anyhow and make it within reach of most everybody, just like it did for the cell phone. Well, that is exactly what he tried to do. Also, it used to be that the FDA forbid advertising on price, that was later struck down by the supreme court, but everybody in health care knew that the FDA would make their life unhappy if they did. Well, Trump got around that by requiring hospitals to make their pricing publicly available. Once again, not freedom, but very pragmatic and similar with results.

It was also interesting to watch Trump with the tariffs. Early on, Trump cut 100 billion dollars worth of income taxes, and added 100 billion dollars worth of tariffs. The libertarians were right to decry all the damage caused by tariffs on the economy, and in fact our trade deficit is not better, but the thing is tariffs are harmful and destructive, but not as harmful and destructive as income taxes.

Another thing that was interesting to me, was immigration. For all the noise about the wall, and the countries he cut off, immigration overall remained strong. A lot of the people who thought he was going to lock out the latinos, ended up disillusioned.

One part where Trump failed in a big way though was the debt and the deficit, and I think this rings to the fact that in the real estate business, low interest rates and easy debt financing are seen as beneficial, but for the economy as a whole they are a disaster.

Trump also had a lot of failures, like shutting off the USA like he might shut out one of his private companies during the pandemic. Things that make sense for a private company, can be a disaster for a nation. The point is though, not that Trump was great at liberty, but that watching somebody who was results driven run a government was just plain interesting from a utilitarian perspective.

For so many years, we have lived in this "new deal" paradigm, where people got the government to do all these things for us (to us) from "education", to social "security", and so that has trained libertarians to be very cynical of populism. The great example is a sheep and 4 wolves voting on what to have for dinner.

But maybe populism isn't so bad after all. This recent bout has taught me that while populism has it's flaws, the elitists want us to have less freedom than the populists. Also, did populism fail in the new deal because the people wanted to steal from each other, or did it fail because the elite and the state have heavy influence on the media?

Most people want personal freedom and economic prosperity, and freedom delivers that, and in a non centrally controlled media, we can make the case for it. Also the mass popularity of Ron Paul, and the popularity of Donald Trump. Donald Trump obviously wasn't libertarian, bit in the great tug-o-war between freedom and non freedom, it seemed like he was pulling more toward the freedom side, especially in the sense of backing down on the wars, and the regulations. As libertarians, Trump has a lot of flaws, but it was the direction he seemed to pull.

Also, while the left is going crazy playing black against white, man against woman, rich against poor, the simple fact is that most people were not into that. They just wanted jobs and opportunity, and personal freedom to do what they wanted. Most people at the big rallies were not interested in stealing from other Americans or going to war, they just wanted opportunity for themselves.

Also, the social media platforms didn't ban libertarians left and right because we were unpopular, but because to their owners we were too popular.

So it got me thinking that maybe populism in the information age, the age of decentralized media, is naturally pro libertarian.