Making libertarianism work.

Twenty things needed to make libertarianism actually work.

1. The full implementation of bitcoin including its distributed contracts system. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts This makes it impossible to steal and spend bitcoins. It can insure and arbitrate bitcoins and gold coin. Crypto-currency based contracts are proactive - breaching actions rendered impossible or either side can drop out with minimal loss upon counterparty breach. It lowers "transaction costs".
2. Provision for ripple based gold coin currencies interfaced into bitcoin at floating public exchange rates. In shop gold price and testing technologies.
3. The creation of computer chip sets for houses, cars and a few other items that support Smart Property. Where bitcoin transaction mediate access, rental, collateral control, and deeds. (Part of 1.)
4. Buffer Escrowed bitcoin gadgets with touch to do transaction that work in remote locations with out long range communications.
5. Server Sky implementation of orbiting swarm micro satellites that provide ubiquitous communications and computing world wide. Funded by user fees and crowdfunding. http://server-sky.com/
6. A wide range of localised crowdfunding sites to fund Public Goods including: roads, communications, medical, educational, emergency, environment, policing, legal, defence and foreign affairs services.
7. A wide range of crowdfunding sites to create trust funds for people with disabilities and other genuine welfare cases. Crowdfunds for distribution to top-up private provisions where emergency shortfalls occur.
8. Crowdfunding of cost effective anti-ageing treatments to reduce aged care needs and cost to near zero. Ending ageing not aged care. Ending dementia.
9. Crowdfunded cures for the brain damage and other adverse medical effects of all psychoactive drugs and alcohol so that there is no damage or addiction from such Euphoria inducing agents. Make safe then legalise.
10. Freemarket web education tools that allow children to self educate with the help of parents and web mentors. (90% done)
11. Child friendly work places and work practices so parents can work while raising and educating the children. So family and work don't clash.
12. Robotic cars so drunk driving is almost impossible and is far less likely to do harm.
13. Crowdfunding for major disease controls including Sexually transmitted diseases.
14. Basic research identifying the victims of so called victimless crimes and educating people about those effects. Basic moral education emphasising the medical consequences of immorality and why most societies ban: Adultery, Paedophilia, Incest, Sadomasochism, Homosexuality, open and polygamous marriages. Sex education that does not amount to advertising of these things. 
15. Live embryo transplant. The technology of artificial wombs that allow a baby to be removed from a woman that refuses to be a mother and transferred to adopting parents.
16. Non lethal weapons that are effective at long range and are free for all to use. Biometric safety systems, 'gun' cameras and tamper proof data transfer to prevent abuse. Open carry of such weapons.
17. Cheap ubiquitous personal bomb detectors and cheap personal body armour.
18. Jury law with jury nullification, jury independence of the judge and no dismissal of a case without the jury consent. So the judge is just a referee and can't override a jury or a constitution.
19. Travel insurance providers that also provide legal and political protection while in foreign legal zones with the option for armed rescue in the most extreme of cases. [Private ambassadorial aid and foreign affairs. ]
20. A bonded sponsorship immigration policy so that people are free to enter but can not unduly burden native welfare and law. 
    
    The basic take-home is that new tools are available to fund Public Goods, what government claims to do with your money, without using taxes while also making some crimes, laws and red tape obsolete with embedded cryptological security and other innovations.   

Policing in a Libertarian Republic.

I've been "Arguing" with some libertarians over night (Thurs, fri 19, 2013) that are seeing police response in bombing and subsequent man hunt Boston as dictatorial.

I've pointed out that in a libertarian republic it would look the same. Same guns, same flack jackets, same big armoured trucks. Drones and helicopters would still search overhead. Cars will be stopped and searched. Doors would be banged on or kicked in if your not home, there would be no warrants at all! That would be small print in your policing service provider contract: you signed the warrant years ago. People caught up might even be strip searched. You signed for that too.
Its the technology not the politics.
The only differences would be that the badges would say PTY LTD, They would be private companies and voluntary militia. They, like some police today, will be obligated to secure and replace the door they have to kick in at their expense.
Some may desire a private policing agency that does not authorise such things but that would be much more expensive for three reasons.

1. Without the resources of such intelligence and search powers their working blind and since they are not immune to prosecution any accident that happens, strip searching the wrong guy etc, would cost them huge damages in court. 
2. In the private courts of arbitration the arbitrators and juries would have to be told that you've refused to authorise full police intelligence. It would bias the case and cost you greater damages but freedom of speech would mandate such information. In such courts it could not be ruled in admissible. You are hiding something.   
3. They would also have more unsolved cases.

At the press conferences afterwards there would be fewer people called governor or Mayor, there would still be police chiefs, many more than just 6. The policing insurers would have their time at the mic, as would the militia commander, and a dozen security companies like the MIT police and the transit company officers. The press conference would take twice as long. Its all advertising after all. The tea shirts sales and the crowdfunding appeal would follow.
In some cases the guys searching you house will leave notes authorising compensation and advertising the companies services on the back.

There is another way but its equally risky and more invasive.  If everyone was armed and trained in the Militia. Then searching Watertown Boston would have taken three minutes. Check your house and yard. Check three others with your neighbour, then everyone checks granny Smith's place and Bob's house because he's out of town. The key technology needed: guns, light vests, torches, a first aid trauma kit and the neighbours spare keys. Ideally you would add biometric gun safeties so the terrorist, criminals or the grand-kids can't use the gun. A cell phone app so everyone co-ordinates and has personal Id friend or foe. A gun camera so you get training footage, film of the capture to sell to WNN* and evidence for your defence in court if anything goes wrong. And you know things would go wrong!
*Web New Network

Some argue that there would be no terrorists attacking the libertarian republic but Islamic attacks pre-date the modern nation state, they pre-date the monarchy's of Europe, they even pre-date the knights and tribes of the early mediaeval era.

Islam is a theocratic nation state that seeks global domination. Wearing a knee length dress is considered western provocation. Interest on banking, pig farms and synagogues are seen as illegal or immoral and grounds for attacks. Don't even think about bikinis, nudist beaches or XXX web sites.

There are other groups that would be provoked by other things: eating meat, climate change, Abortion, and even private property its self.

A libertarian Republic would be attacked ferociously. Some would see libertarianism as a soft target for conquest because it has no central authority. Some would see it as immorality institutionalised. Some libertarians actually desire that. Some will be hunting down dissidents and apostates from other states that have fled to the free-state seeking peace. Some will be pursuing genuine criminals that have fled to your land thinking it is not illegal here.

They will try to divide, confuse and conquer. They will play games placing evidence leading in all directions. Only very good intelligence defends against such false flag operations. Only surveillance and search tools produces that level of intelligence. A society with perfect privacy, cryptology, and anonymity is a society where no crime can be investigated or prosecuted unless the individual is caught red handed in public with a dozen witnesses.  (Even video would be inadmissible because of privacy)

In its own defence and the defence of its clients the private defence companies will need the same tools of a modern nation state. They may have more drones and fewer bombers. They will share between them the cost of an aircraft carrier or two. They can be hit from anywhere in the world so they must be able to hit first at any attacker. They must pre-empt because if their client can be hit from afar then they don't get paid. In some cases the insurers must pay prompt compensation to any client that are harmed. They must strike first, revenge from the grave is not a viable product line for most.

Thus with a few small details the defence and policing in a Libertarian Republic will not be radically different. It may eventually develop stun guns, micro-uavs and personal civilian body armour, etc but states are funding that research too.

One major difference will be that civilian use of weapons and tasers will be allowed but without a gun camera and biometric lock on the gun your police insurance cost and related security and court insurance will be astronomical. Taser already has both yet its been banned in many countries.

• Is a libertarian republic possible? Yes.
• Is it inevitable. Yes the current system of nation states are dependant on debt, which is dependant on taxation with both growing infinitely towards bankruptcy. Any alternative must have limited public expenditure with people covering the cost of many things in the free market funded by user pays, crowdfunding, charity and other systems that allow free choices. These are what libertarianism really means. Choice.
• Will it work? Some will, some wont and those that will, will buyout those that don't. 
• Will it be all user pays policing and public goods? No there will be crowdfunding, charity and pro bono covering some of the very poor and refugees. 
• Will criminal convicts be executed, exiled or left free broke and uncovered? No most will be able to sign up for protection and arbitration at greater cost and much greater restrictions. Only the most uncontrollable repeat offender will be sedated, exiled or if no other option exists, executed.
• Will it be fundamentally immoral, obscene and thus medically and socially dangerous? Yes. Some parts will but that's true of some nation states and governments. They will die out with VD outbreaks etc.
• Will there be morally restrictive liberation communities in the republic? Yes someone will sell that as a legal and law enforcement service or product. As long as you are free to change service provider at no unreasonable cost or physical punishment it would work. It would stop at property lines or at the horizon (view lines). 
• Will the Libertarian Republic have Mayors, Governors, Presidents and Diplomats? Yes, some and they will have money to use in their jobs but it will be contractual payments, donations, crowdfunding and profits never coerced taxes.     

  A Libertarian Republic is like an ocean liner. It is all private property with a fully private 'government' the captain and crew. You are subject to the laws of the ship you really did sign a contract, its not a social contract that all air and undefined assumptions, its a real document or web file. If a killer was loose on the ship it would be the same, stay locked in your cabins while we search fro stem to stern. Just what we saw at Boston in the search for the terrorist.

In conclusion while there would be some legal differences and it would not be funded the same way, the operations, actions and appearance of policing in such a man hunt would be the same because its technologically limited. There is no other way yet known.



 

Rebuttal of Jon Stewart

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This is an old issue but I find that the questions are good and while others have done good rebuttals here and here more can be said.
Reply to:
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, October 27, 2011
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-october-27-2011/andrew-napolitano

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What would be your best response to these questions and statements:

1. Is government the antithesis of liberty?
   A. It depends on definitions. Today all governments can coerce taxes and conscription from its population; This dominant kind of government is an antithesis to liberty. An entity that ensures just laws and protects the population from another law code that may invade and force obedience, is compatible with liberty. However that can be done privately by businesses and charities of various forms without tax funding. Even IRA and Al Qaeda have waged war without tax funding.
   
2. One of the things that enhances freedoms are roads. Infrastructure enhances freedom. A social safety net enhances freedom.
   A. When a new suburb or town is built the roads are built privately by the developer. Private toll ways and turnpikes pre date tax funded roads. The first railways were private and even the Roman roads were built by private contractors. With modern Assurance Contract systems, like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, funding projects in the millions a new era of private roads may be beginning. The same goes for most other infrastructure and safety nets, charities.
   
3. What should we do with the losers that are picked by the free market?
   

A. The free market does not create loosers. Free trade is a win win system the buyer and the seller gives up something of less value to them for something of more value to them. The only 'loosers' in the free market are those unwilling to work to gain something to trade or those who's education, public, fails to prepare them for work. Rather than charity in this case we prefer work skills. "Give a man a fish he eats for a day; teach a man to fish he eats for the rest of his life."

There are a few disabled people that can not earn any money to participate in the free market. However charities, insurances and mutual societies are all allowed in the free market and freed from the competition from taxes can fund these dependants. The lazy and the envious it will not often fund.  

4. Do we live in a society or don't we? Are we a collective? Everybody's success is predicated on the hard work of all of us; nobody gets there on their own. Why should it be that the people who lose are hung out to dry? For a group that doesn't believe in evolution, it's awfully Darwinian.
   A. Yes the sum-total of past investments in public goods does help people. We are not a mindless collective but a cooperating culture. If the free market were allowed to build these public assets then the same hard work would still be evident and our bridges would not be falling down because government see fit to spend its money (our money) elsewhere.
    Yes there are people who lose and are seemingly hung out to dry for awhile but the free-market allows them to work their way back up. They are not blocked, banned or ruled out of society. If they can not recover there are clearly deficiencies in their education that an entrepreneurial employer or a charity may work to fix. If they are unrepentant criminals both systems may write them off but then even there we see opportunities for both an entrepreneurial employer or a charity.
   The majority of libertarians do believe in evolution, I don't, and the majority of creationists are not libertarians so there is an erroneous association being made. Many creationists are minarchist however.
   
5. In a representative democracy, we are the government. We have work to do, and we have a business to run, and we have children to raise. We elect you as our representatives to look after our interests within a democratic system.
   A. Representative democracy does beat other earlier forms of oligarchy however just as science and technology progresses so must governance tools. Our representatives have bankrupted the governments of the world. They pander to the popular vote and that means an ever increasing debt, inflation and/or taxes as they pay back to their supporters and lobbyists. We have institutionalised the art of bribe giving and taking within our electoral systems. Its legal but not viable or able to go on.
   Jesus said render unto Caesar that which is Caesar and render unto God's that which is God's. But Caesar's face is not on the coin today. The face on the coin changes when a government goes broke. A new change is coming. There are new ways emerging in the free market to delegate lawmaking and security that will free us up to do our work, run our businesses and actually raise our children instead of delegating that to a crowded classroom.
   
6. Is government inherently evil?
   

A. Define government. Is a private arbitration government? Is neighbourhood watch government? Is a private charity hospital government? Yet all three are providing public goods. Any entity that coerces obedience from people that do not and can not consent is opposed by libertarians and minarchists. Most governments are a monopoly on coercion and are thus unwittingly evil. The challenge is to find ways to fund public goods and create laws, enforcement, etc that is contractual or covernental and not coercive.

7. Sometimes to protect the greater liberty you have to do things like form an army, or gather a group together to build a wall or levy.
   A. The Minutemen of American history were unpaid volunteers. Governments and taxes rarely fund the revolutionaries; why should they be needed to fund the public goods of defence. As I have said the IRA, the 18^th centuries communists and today militant islamists like Al Qaeda operate without either a government or tax support. They are charities.
   Governments generally don't fund Civil Defence at all, preferring deterrents (aggressive revenge) and attempting to kill off the rival government. Civil Defence is often left to private charities and private citizens. Mainly because people don't want to be a dead winner they volunteer or fund it. However this often, in a time of great danger, shames government into funding some Civil Defence work. Because public service staff insist on being protected too, publicly funded shelters and other system are usually only found near concentrations of government workers. Everyone else is expendable.
   The first levies in Holland were funded using an early form of Assurance Contract voluntarism.
   
8. As soon as you've built an army, you've now said government isn't always inherently evil because we need it to help us sometimes, so now.. it's that old joke: Would you sleep with me for a million dollars? How about a dollar? -Who do you think I am?- We already decided who you are, now we're just negotiating.
   

A. This is a logical fallacy for several reasons: It assumes the only answer to 6 and 7 is no and yes respectively! It also assumes that once created the provider of public goods, Assurance Contracts in my case, and the enforcer of justice are above the law and have a monopoly so they can't be fired and replaced by another equivalent provider. The free market model of public goods (and all goods and services) includes: no barrier to entry and no immunity to penalty. It necessarily includes a foreclosure procedure on all providers of public goods, law and enforcement that fail or breach people rights. This includes parliaments and the nation itself via the means of secession.

9. You say: government which governs least governments best. But that were the Articles of Confederation. We tried that for 8 years, it didn't work, and went to the Constitution.
   A. It was not a libertarian society or state/ states. The Articles of Confederation were effective in limiting government but they had not figured out how to fund the war and some states were not willing to foot the bill because once the British were concentrating their attack elsewhere they were safe. With modern communications and modern warfare such isolationism within a confederation would be harder and new means of funding things now exist.
   Stewart is also making the mistake common to Americans of confusing American history with the history of liberty. In other countries much smaller governments have been successful.
   
10. You give money to the IRS because you think they're gonna hire a bunch of people, that if your house catches on fire, will come there with water.
    A. Yes that's the theory but what happens if they spend the money on an abortion clinic, public art and million dollar public service pensions and leave the fire service unfunded? This today in a hundred ways is the problem. If the fire service were funded by a charity, community chest fund, trust fund or assurance contract you would still get your fire service in the absence of government and taxes. Many 18^th century fire services were privately funded charities. Australia's rural fire service still is (it gets a few government donations occasionally). The point is you don't control where your tax dollar goes.
    
11. Why is it that libertarians trust a corporation, in certain matters, more than they trust representatives that are accountable to voters? The idea that I would give up my liberty to an insurance company, as opposed to my representative, seems insane.
    A. Some libertarians don't! They point out that corporations are granted immunity to prosecution in a wide range of fields allowing the CEO and many boards to escape the legal and financial consequences of bad decisions. In the absence of government the heads of corporations would not be absented from common law claims on negligence, fraud and pollution. Industries would have to clean up their act.
    A libertarian will also point out that because monopolies are impossible in a true free market, no barriers to entry or government favouritism, there is always the option to buy from someone else. Thus competition means that a corporation that is untrustworthy will quickly go broke as customers move to another competitor.
    
12. Why is it that with competition, we have such difficulty with our health care system? ..and there are choices within the educational system.
    A. The choice that matters is not just the suppler but whether you have medical insurance. You do not have the choice to support truancy and leave you child completely uneducated. The competition in education is the result of a hard fought battle for private and home schooling; a fight against governments and some times resulting in jail for parents and teachers. In the US medical insurance is often not portable across employers and state-lines; this is the product of government regulation not the product of the free market. In the freemarket there are no state lines. The government funded health care creates a moral hazard, many people choose to remain uninsured because the government system is there. CNN once interviewed people on health care: one girl insisted that she could not afford it yet she had thousands of dollars of tattoos.
    The governments have created a shortage of medical services via restrictive licensing and difficult regulation. In the USA it is illegal to prepay your doctor or give them any gifts; The screening of drugs, old herbs and new adult stem cell therapies takes years and millions of dollars yet often the lab work takes only a few days; you can't sign a waver to use an untested treatment and in effect test it. FDA staff and inspectors have gone to jail for bribery. More unreported bribes are rumoured.
    And who says the education system is working? Only the unions. 20-30% of the youth are either unemployed, underemployed or are unemployable. It has failed to give them market ready skills and attitudes.
    
13. Would you go back to 1890?
    

A. Yes in terms of the culture and work ethic but we can not go backwards. The real question for Jon Stewart is do you want to stagnate, starve in a depression ration queue, or match the innovation of the 21^st century with innovations in governance. The status quo leads to either national bankruptcy or hyperinflation followed by national bankruptcy. Greece going global all at once. We are set up for a stagflation crash. You may have money but if its valueless then the shops would quickly empty of useful goods and if you don't have a friend with a good farm even millionaires starve. In 1890 the currency was still gold and silver.

14. If we didn't have government, we'd all be in hovercrafts, and nobody would have cancer, and broccoli would be ice-cream?
    

Yep. Underwriters clears thousands of home appliances a month, declaring the safe or not. The government agencies rarely do a hundred cars and a few dozen pharmaceuticals a year. You have to get separately tested in a dozen countries they can't use the American test in Europe or the Swedish test in Australia. We do actually have the hovercrafts, cures for cancer and liquid nitrogen, broccoli ready, ice-cream makers stuck in testing or stranded at the patent office by red tape. We have flying cars and robot cars working their way through the government licensing systems. In the absence of government another private company like underwriters would screen things in weeks and their results would be viable world wide.

15. Unregulated markets have been tried. The 80’s and the 90’s were the robber baron age. These regulations didn't come out of an interest in restricting liberty. What they did is came out of an interest in helping those that had been victimized by a system that they couldn't fight back against.
    A. No that was Clinton era government sanctioned real-estate and derivatives fraud run by people that are now advising the Obama government. Again the government had created a moral hazard by promising protection it could not guarantee or fund (Bush tried to fix it but was blocked in congress). A free-market system would not have people victimized by a system that they couldn't fight back against because class actions and no win no fee would be allowed in disputes with such corporations. They often are not allowed due to government regulation written by the teachers of the people that created the sub- prime debacle.
    The public education system also contributed another way teaching wrong economics. Austrian school economics is banned from the text books and its the theory system that predicted the result.
    
16. Why do you think workers that worked in the mines unionized?
    A. At the time the first unions formed both unions and strikes were illegal in most countries (they still are in the remaining socialist countries). Often the boss was also the government, I.e. Had a post in government, a seat in parliament, a title or was the local magistrate. Thus the first British, European and east coast unions were actually fighting governments directly. Also governments had long before banned negligence and nuisance common law suits brought by employees against employers.
    Agencies that could provide free-market labor hire services were also developing at the same time. In some industries they are now common providing all that unions provide at a lower fee. In some industries the union fought to get these competing free-market tools banned. Unlike unions such free market alternative are not immune to the consequences of bankrupting the company because it is the employer and they often organize unemployment insurance while unions don't.
    
17. Without the government there are no labor unions, because they would be smashed by Pinkerton agencies or people hired, or even sometimes the government.
    A. Pinkerton Government Services was a government contractor and key people from it went on to become the FBI and the NSA, both full government agencies. Again where the unions are not free to sue such strike smashers then they are bound by government law. Where they are free to assault those that want to work and cross the picket, they are again only free to do so because governments put their legal weight behind the strike. Stewart's or 'even sometimes the government' breaks his own argument. As a Chinese or Cuban unionist knows its always the government thugs.
    
18. Would the free market have desegregated restaurants in the South, or would the free market have done away with miscegenation, if it had been allowed to? Would Marten Luther King have been less effective than the free market? Those laws sprung up out of a majority sense of, in that time, that blacks should not.. The free market there would not have supported integrated lunch counters.
    A. Yes it did the government in many places forced new desegregated businesses to re-segregate even where all the white staff and customers were against segregation. Would Marten Luther King have been less effective than the free market? No because many things he did were free market and he was a republican. In the north of the USA and Canada there was no segregation. There are no state lines in the free market. Where you see a difference across state-lines you know that's government bias in play.
    
19. Government is necessary but must be held accountable for its decisions.
    A. The rule of law and other public goods are necessary but that need not be the same form of government we see today. How is it to be held accountable without the real challenge of an alternative. If its irreplaceable its unaccountable. Its not just a matter of changing politicians. If 51% of congress and the president were libertarian the public service and lobbyists would fight them day and night. A full redesign in the system form top to bottom is needed in a score of countries at once. We have changed the form of government a dozen times since the apostle Paul said we should obey the powers that govern us. Powers are plural in the greek. It assumes competing (free-market) magistrates as was the case in some places at the time.
    A libertarian society would have freely competing entities providing all public goods and dealing with all public matters (res publica= the public thing = republic) Some would be user pays, some would be charities, some would be hybrids and some would be totally new entities using insurance, trust funds, volunteers, etc. None would be tax or tariff funded. It would protect property from theft and lives from injury and death. It would pursue restitution for fraud, negligence and nuisance. It would not be lawless or amoral but you may need to sign off on who provides your law among competing arbitrators.
    

WW2 industral giants

The two men that won World War 2. 

Charles Sorensen and Henry Kaiser the masters of mass production. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_E._Sorensen

Mass production of truck, tanks and aircraft and anything else needed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_J._Kaiser

Invented the liberty ship and invented a way to make factories and steel mills pop-up in mere days.

Without their industry the American giant would not have arisen to face its enemies. 

Who are the men of today that will step up, help us face the threats of today and make the world of tomorrow? 

Intrade fun

Intrade is renowned for its accuracy but the question is does it lead or follow can it be gamed, is it being used as a propaganda tool  and can it be manipulated to be wrong in the end or will it correct at the last minute.

intrade

Here's the action for oct 12 USA 8 to 12 midnight After the Biden/ Ryan debate noise hit and before the news that the BLS Jobs number had been distorted in the previous week by simply leaving out California without mentioning that little fact. [Head may roll at the BLS before the election if congress goes at this. They will definitely roll after January if Romney wins. ]

Notice two things: The two spikes ringed in blue are clearly someone using a lot of money to pull the market back up to 61 form 60 and failing. Even if Obama wins at the current price their money's gone.

Not also the area in dark green. That's a huge number of small trades trying to hold the price up by automated buying at that price anything below it. Again it shows that there are organized players with software driven trading tools in the market. They are trying to keep obama up and Romney down in the hopes that that will influence the vote and demoralise the Romney support base. If anything its having the opposite result on the vote its self. 

 

It could back fire and loose the obama supporters their money by causing the Obama voters aware of intrade  and the other markets to conclude that Obama's a shoe in and can't loose. There is a risk of a lower turn out of Obama supporters thinking they're not needed. 

Like wise those aware of this market and its history may try to push harder where it matters. Spreading the message to their friends via new means and old. 

I am not a gambling man so I don't bet on intrade but it is fascinating to see these people battle with their (or someone else's money).

Making Abortion Obsolete.

Ectogenesis - Saving the millions while ending the Abortion debate forever.

The Abortion and RU-486 debate is being fought as well an can be expected. I commend all those that have fought the battle well, championing our defenceless unborn brothers and sisters. 

The disgrace of abortion will remain while we have only two choices life or death, moral [immoral] liberty or bondage to the ‘dangers and inconveniences’ of parenthood.

To sanction death of the innocent for the convenience of a few who find parenting a burdensome responsibility is unjust. I suspect however this generation will need to suffer the consequences of their folly before they will learn the error of their ways. The abortion challenge has many layers at the federal and state level. The laws themselves are often state laws. Support for education and family support are both federal and state. Many of the pressures to have unprotected sex and have an abortion are cultural challenges.

The western world and Japan are suffering a catastrophic consequence. Population decline and the demographic winter problem where an aging population can't support itself; there are not enough young workers to pay the pensions of the older citizens. There may be not enough young people even to care for the elderly in nursing homes and hostels. 

 

A challenging new solution.

There is a way to break the nexus between life and choice but it will ethically challenging for it raises other ethical questions. It would create a new debate. One where many pro-choice people, opposing us today, would end up on our side of the debate. It is not a quick fix but it may be a path towards. An honourable end to the infant genocide. Live embryo transplantation or ectogenesis.

We are loosing millions of helpless babies slaughtered simply because they are unwanted and unloved by their parents. Or their parents and society is ill prepared to support them. Yet at the same time we have a shortage of babies available for adoption and we have an ageing population that can’t support its long term needs.

How do we move from a pro-death society sanctioning medically enabled and legal infanticide to a prolife society quickly?

In 1924, the British scientist J. B. S. Haldane coined the term "ectogenesis" to describe how human pregnancy would one day give way to artificial wombs. A friend and colleague Aldous Huxley wrote “brave new world”. This turned the worlds eyes away from the benefits to the dangers. Haldane was a socialist and a leading evolutionist in his day. However Haldane was not trying to abolish Gods institution of pregnancy; he was writing in an age of high maternal and infant mortality. That’s what he was trying to end.

The benefits are:

• It can save both lives where the pregnancy would be dangerous to the mother.
• It, in theory, could save premature babies that are far too premature to survive in a humidicrib.

• Many think it will end the abortion debate by allowing both the pro-choice and prolife sides to have their way.

We are approaching the point where we can remove an embryo from the womb alive and keep it alive outside the womb. Around 2001:

• Dr Hung-Ching Liu had cultured a working womb from tissue taken from a womb. American regulations required her to terminate the embryos at two weeks.
• Dr Yoshinori Kuwabara in Tokyo had taken goat kids to full term in a device called a “Uterine tank”.

To summarise the Clinical Ectogenesis process is the technology to remove the baby from the womb alive and place it in an artificial womb and take it to full term. Live embryo transplant goes further and moves to the point where we can take an early embryo unharmed from a woman that doesn’t want it and implant it in a medically prepared mother that does.

It amounts to moving the debate away from mass infanticide to a process of adoption direct from the abortion clinic. In considering the future of the unwanted unborn we can’t ignore this technology, with a little research, it may be available with in three years.

Most think the technology will look like this:

Or this:

But this is the reality: A simple neat tank and a few tubes to the relevant equipment.

It’s not cheap or pretty but it’s a start. 

 

Yes it is unnatural. That is true of all modern medicine.

• So is a feeding tube in the Terri Schiavo case or Pope John Paul’s case.
• So is a heart bypass.
• If we oppose euthanasia of the severely disabled we are often backing unnatural intervention.

If the Lord chooses, he will allow the technology to develop and become safe, cheap and ethical. It will be legally constrained with laws written by Godly people.

If however it comes without our prayer and care.

• It may be done in secret.
• It will probably be neither safe nor cheap.
• It will be the plaything of dictators and unethical people.
• There will either be no rules or red tape that binds justice up in knots.

Take a look at adult stem cells. Many in the church and key politicians championed them over embryonic stem cells and in a few short years great things have happened.

• Paralysed people walk.
• Brain stem cells are being tested. In mice they repair stroke.
• We have dozens of new adult stem cell lines.
• Breast tissue stem cells were announced just in 2006.
• We are growing teeth in the lab.
• The leading Embryonic stem cell researcher in 2006 apologised for scientific fraud and is mired in scandal and law suits.
• I know of no cures that have come from embryonic stem cell work that do not create a cancer risk.

Ectogenesis may seem daunting but look at the alternatives!

If we took on ectogenesis will the Lord also bless it?

Some might baulk and ask are we allowing immorality and irresponsibility to prevail if we take on this technology? Do the pro-choice lobby deserve the choice?

Consider this;

• Aborted babies don’t vote; adopted ones do.
• They will be often raised in Christian or at least pro-family homes.
• Garrett Hardin in the famous “The Tragedy of the Commons” paper (1968) warned that if the pro-lifers were allowed to breed freely they would out breed the population control people and the earth-firsters like him.

Most importantly.

• Roe v Wade reverses from pro to anti abortion if this technology is available in its jurisdiction. That only effects America legally but culturally it will effect the whole world.

The Roe v Wade verdict is predicated on the inability to grant both life and choice. If survival of the baby is possible the wording would imply that ectogenesis would be favoured over the death of the baby.

See: ECTOGENESIS
Development of Articial Wombs Technology's threat to abortion rights

Sacha Zimmerman Sunday, August 24, 2003

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/08/24/IN273768.DTL

• We will end up running some or most of the clinics. If the abortion clinic becomes an adoption clinic; it will not be closed to the prolife people. We who are arrested at the door for protesting would be inside assisting the mothers. Many women would leave the clinic with their own baby still on board having found at last a supporting environment for themselves and their child.

• The camouflage of pro-choice or women’s rights will be removed from the pro-abortion, eugenics and the population control lobbies. Most pro-choice people would be pro-ectogenesis if it were advocated and became safe, convenient and ethical. Those that advocate abortion for other reasons are a small fraction of the millions who are pro-choice. These people are Malthusian in their thinking; seeing the world as overpopulated and doomed. They are often technophobic seeing no solutions in new technologies such as fusion or space colonisation. They are unimpressed by new resource management practices, innovative recycling technologies, sustainable lifestyle services or energy reduction enterprises. Abortion to them is all about population control and little else. Yet such people are very rare indeed within the debate and would never command a majority at the ballet box.

Yes we can fight abortion with Laws, education, evangelism and revival. We might see the issue batted back and forth across the media and parliament endlessly. We could see it lost to an obscure bureaucratic committee. The prolife lobby may even win in 80 to 100 years. That’s arguably how long the last reformation took with its conflicts in many parliaments and on bloody battlefields. 

 

As we fight we lose thousands of little lives per day.

We could be saving them in ten years or less if we tried to get this alternative established. If politics is the art of the possible then we need to think laterally and look for the third path.

We are forewarned and forearmed by Huxley and other science fiction writers. Leading ethicists have considered the risks. The dangers of some idiot trying to clone an army or create subhuman slave species are known. The dangers that some future humanist society may try abandon motherhood altogether are foreseen. They will most probably destroy themselves in the attempt. Unless they out law pregnancy and family or try to exterminate us “breeders”; we can leave them to their folly. Others have tried to abolish family replacing it with institutions of various kinds. It always fails. Perhaps we can rescue a few million disillusioned refugees when it all goes wrong. None of the dangers are as real or as monstrous as the death of the defenceless.

The challenge we face is not to deal with every possible abuse of new technology but to be those that have sought the just applications, to have considered and are prepared for the consequences, to have sought alternatives. If we can’t legislate the dangers away then we can’t legislate anything and we are defeated. 

 

For us there are other things that will be cheaper still than the clone warriors of star wars, the medical clones in the movie “The island” and the human batteries of the matrix. We should remember that a dictator does not need artificial wombs, he has something much cheaper, a women's prison!

If we put ectogenesis on the table, fund it a little, look at its consequences then we have moved the debate forward from today's stand-off. If we ask Gods help and guidance then will he not honour our request with a solution?

Are we ready for the challenge! Dare we seek to save millions. Dare we not!

Wesley Bruce

Crowd funding government.

Would you accept this deal?
Someone on a blog was talking of sacking all public servants.
Its the wrong strategy.

We need to make the public service work like the market. We have emerging tools. Crowd sourcing and insurances can do 80-90% of what governments claim they are there to do.
Our public servant needs to be a social entrepreneurs. Tools need to be set up to make them such entrepreneurs. Its mostly just software as the links below show.
Try these examples.

The bridge needs fixing. A social entrepreneur, Mr Bridger, has $10000 and the connections to get it done at $200000.
He offers the following deal on yourroad.org *
Pay $1 - $10 and get an internet thank-you note.
Pay $11-$100 and you get a sticker to put on your car.
Pay $101 and your name will be embossed on the handrail.
Pay $2000 and you get a table at the bridge opening dinner (max 20 seats be quick).
If $200000 is raised/pledged by November the money comes out of your account and the bridge will be repaired.
If under $200000 is raised by November your money will be refunded (or never collected from your account), You will still get the internet thankyou note and Mr Bridger will pay you $5000/ the number of individual participants.
If more than $200000 is raised; its oversubscribed. Mr Bridger will take a 5% profit, contribute half the remaining surplus to charity (named) and will find another bridge.
Needless to say the thankyou note, sticker and embossed handrail all cost a fraction of the remaining $5000.

This is the most powerful crowd funding contract possible. If the 200000 is raised the bridge gets fixed. If not; those giving up their credit card details 'get their money back' with a tiny profit. The Social Entrepreneur only risks $5000 of his $10000. He may spend some of the rest on advertising in October if he's close.

The first actor problem is solved. Anyone contributing first risks nothing and may even profit if he is the only person tossing into the hat. Digital tracking makes the transactions on the site cheap treading to free. Frauds get dropped from the site. The cost is spread thinly over many people so the free rider feels little financial pressure but a little social pressure "Where's your sticker Bill?" With less than 50% paying tax the free riders are abundant today. With some of that tax being public service staff pay going around and around in the tax system the numbers are often much lower.

How would this finance a pension for a disabled person? These are the true undisputed poor not the lazy.
Its simple, the money goes to a savings account with a gold based inflation hedge (if needed). Part of the interest is compounded part is paid out as a few hundred a week. The best target would be about $500000. At 5% that would pay $235 week; 52 + 1 Christmas bonus. With half compounded until the trust's doubled. If there are exotic medical costs another round of fund-raising would buy extra medical insurance. This person is set for life and never needs to be a government problem ever again. 

How would it do flood rescue? Buys equipment, train people, pays a very poor person to put his house up on stilts.
Can you create a private animal park and put tracking collars on lions? Their already being funded this way.

What would you not fund?
If you think the town drunks not worthy of your money would you throw a dollar in for the chance of the Social entrepreneur's $5000? 
(we need an easier term than Social Entrepreneur, SE)

Social Entrepreneurs replace bureaucracy, treasury and money bills in legislatures. They could fund a money bill in the legislature. Everything with the exception of law and defence could be crowd sourced and they could fund equipment, insurances and research there too.

Is the freerider still riding free? Yes so are all non taxpayers today. Are there positive externalities to others? Yes but so what if Joe from interstate gets to cross the bridge once a year! Are there any externalities that can't be financed this way? I don't think so.
As long as its as easy as posting on facebook, as simple as Kickstarter, its mostly free digits until you hit the target. Then it will fly like this kickstarter project.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-for-iphone-and-android
Kickstarter is 'no dollars down' preorder capitalisation! {Business finance banks are toast.}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract

* yourroad.org is not real, yet.