The US Government, specifically President Joe Biden, has proposed mandating vaccinations for COVID for everyone. Mike is joined by Cason Pratt to discuss this and other liberty related issues.

Welcome back to another episode of Liberty Revealed, the show dedicated to revealing personal liberty to all who listen. I am your host, Mike Mahony, and today I want to talk to you about why I believe you should oppose lockdowns.

As you are no doubt aware, the response to the COVID pandemic has been to lockdown entire countries. In the United States, this has happened on a state by state basis. What started as a “two weeks to flatten the curve” lockdown has now extended into an 8 month-long period of lockdowns of varying severity.

The issue I have, and it is why I say you, too, should oppose lockdowns, is that this response is not based in scientific evidence despite us being told we need to listen to science.

The World Health Organization has come out against lockdowns. They say lockdowns hurt economies (duh) and are not needed. 

Despite the many warnings, California, where I live, is now on lockdown yet again. Some counties have closed up all restaurants. Others have allowed outdoor dining. The problem is there is no logic to any of this.

In Los Angeles County, they’ve insisted all restaurants only be open for takeout, yet restaurants are not in the Top 10 of places they’ve tracked infections to. What’s even more ridiculous is the #4 spot on the list of tracked infections is government offices!

Of the restaurants that have had cases tracked back to them, chains like McDonalds are the only restaurants on the list.

So why are we on lockdown again? Because the government says so and you, the citizens, have allowed it to not only start but to continue in what seems like an indefinite amount of time.

It is times like this that we need to stand up for our rights. Yes, we need to take precautions so we don’t infect the sickly, but that responsibility doesn’t fall solely on our shoulders. Everyone needs to assess the risks and act accordingly. Take the precautions required. Wash your hands. Stay away from close proximity with others. If you must, wear a mask when in public. These are simple things that can help according to the government.

Why aren’t you questioning the government more? Why aren’t you asking “if masks and social distancing work, why is Walmart open and my local burger place has to be closed?” 

It is time we all start questioning the lack of logic behind the actions being taken. We all want to minimize the risks associated with the virus, but not at the cost of our livelihoods. These things are only continuing because we have not held the government’s feet to the fire. Get going! Call out your representatives. Demand logical answers. Don’t let them get away with illogical closures. Stop them from doing illogical things.

Tell me your thoughts on this by leaving a voicemail on the Yogi’s Podcast Network hotline at (657) 529-2218.

That’s it for this episode of Liberty Revealed. .If you like what you’ve heard, please rate us 5 stars on Apple Podcasts and Google Play. If you’d like to learn more about personal liberty, grab your free copy of my book “Liberty Revealed” by heading over to http://yogispodcastnetwork.com/libertyrevealed. Until next time...stay free!

Welcome back to another episode of Liberty Revealed, the show dedicated to revealing personal liberty to all who listen. I am your host, Mike Mahony, and today I want to talk to you about how to handle liberty issues without being selfish.

I recently had an interaction in a Facebook group and it gave rise to what we are about to discuss. It showed me exactly how much the Libertarian party is failing at its messaging. The fact that people still have a completely erroneous idea of what Libertarians stand for is evident by the conversation I am about to share.

The person in question shared an article that described libertarianism as destroying our society. I immediately got intrigued because, to me, for that to happen, libertarian principles have to be prevalent in society and they are not. That’s what initially made me perk up and take notice. Upon reading the article, it was apparent that the author didn’t understand libertarianism at all. The author (and the person I encountered on Facebook) looked at libertarians as being on the far right of the political spectrum. They viewed our stance on personal liberty as selfish. Why?To me, there is just a very poor understanding of personal liberty and how it applies to society and in private. There is a failure to understand that personal liberty does have limitations when in a group.

The phrase “your rights end where my rights begin” needs to be understood in order to remove that “selfish” label.

Yes, we believe we should be allowed to do whatever we want as often as we want in the privacy of our own homes. However, upon leaving our homes, we must respect the boundaries others have. Just because it might be our right to do something a certain way doesn’t mean we have the absolute right to do that in public. As an example, some people like to walk around naked. That would be their right in the privacy of their own home, but not in public. In public, others have the right not to be forced to look at naked people everywhere. Their rights start where our rights end.

This very simple concept clarifies the meaning of personal liberty. When something has no effect on other people, it is our absolute right to handle it how we see fit. And why not? We are not causing harm to anyone else, so why shouldn’t we be allowed to partake in that activity?

It is important to note that everyone chooses what they want to do. Nobody is forced into doing things they do not wish to do. It is always their personal choice. That’s what personal liberty is all about. 

Tell me your thoughts on this by leaving a voicemail on the Yogi’s Podcast Network hotline at (657) 529-2218.

That’s it for this episode of Liberty Revealed. .If you like what you’ve heard, please rate us 5 stars on Apple Podcasts and Google Play. If you’d like to learn more about personal liberty, grab your free copy of my book “Liberty Revealed” by heading over to http://yogispodcastnetwork.com/libertyrevealed. Until next time...stay free!

Welcome back to another episode of Liberty Revealed, the show dedicated to revealing personal liberty to all who listen. I am your host, Mike Mahony, and today I want to talk to you about the importance of continuing the fight for liberty.

The election is over. At least that is what the media has said. Donald Trump clearly has another opinion.

Whatever you think about the outcome of the election, one thing is very clear-- we libertarians need to continue the fight for liberty. We must be diligent and do this starting now. We cannot wait until it is an election year. That just doesn’t give us the time to spread the word.

I am proposing that libertarians start campaigning now for liberty. The democrats have been very successful by taking control of local elections. They do this by having small democrat clubs that help with donations and campaign volunteers when a candidate surfaces for a given office.

Anyone who has run for office as a libertarian will tell you that the sound of crickets is deafening when you ask for volunteers. There is just something about libertarian thinking that creates a selfish attitude. I’ve heard people proclaim that they won’t help because the candidate has no chance of winning. Well, without help, that’s exactly correct.

Running a political campaign takes a lot of time, energy, and money. Want to see libertarians in office? Then do like the two corrupt major parties and work together to make it happen. My plan is very simple and will work if libertarians just embrace the concept that the fight for liberty isn’t just happening during election years.

Local chapters should look up what cities have city council vacancies coming up. They should then seek to find 1 or 2 candidates who would be interested in filling those vacancies. Pay special attention to school board races because they are very winnable and they get our candidate the “incumbent” tag later when it counts.

I am then suggesting that local chapters should form smaller groups throughout their larger geographic areas. These groups can help source potential local candidates. They can help with fundraising. They can be an army of volunteers. This aspect of my plan is huge. Local coordination broken into smaller chunks is going to be more effective.

The big move our chapters need to make is finding businesses that are friendly to our cause. We must ask them to donate to our campaign war chest fund. Rather than wait for individual candidates to run for a given position, let’s recruit donations from liberty-friendly businesses right away. Let’s point to the positions we want to fill and then let’s get some money from them. 

Imagine how much easier it would be to recruit candidates if the recruitment call included the statement “...we will be able to give you $10,000 to fund your campaign right away”? Imagine having the money to put out advertisements for recruiting volunteers? By tackling two of the biggest hurdles a candidate faces, the party is setting the candidates up for success. 

Fundraising is something that should never stop. As an organization, we tend to rely too much on membership dues and small donations. We need to approach small businesses. They are the most affected by strangling regulations. They would welcome the libertarian approach to government and commerce. Let’s show them we are the only party that is completely business-friendly.

To summarize, we need to:

• Identify positions we want to target
• Form small local groups that can help spread the word
• Recruit candidates 
• Approach businesses for donations
• Fundraise all the time

When we can have all of this run like a well-oiled machine, we will be making real progress.

Tell me your thoughts on this by leaving a voicemail on the Yogi’s Podcast Network hotline at (657) 529-2218.

That’s it for this episode of Liberty Revealed. .If you like what you’ve heard, please rate us 5 stars on Apple Podcasts and Google Play. If you’d like to learn more about personal liberty, grab your free copy of my book “Liberty Revealed” by heading over to http://yogispodcastnetwork.com/libertyrevealed. Until next time...stay free!

Welcome back to another episode of Liberty Revealed, the show dedicated to revealing personal liberty to all who listen. I am your host, Mike Mahony, and today I want to talk to you about the importance of voting for the candidate who most resonates with you.

As I record this episode, it is election day in the United States. We have endured a solid year of campaigning and rhetoric. Perhaps, like me, you voted for the Libertarian candidate for President? If so, and you made this known on social media, you’ve no doubt been told that you are wasting your vote or that you are really voting for Trump. Today we are going to discuss these things and we will come to a very solid conclusion.

When someone tells you that you are wasting your vote by voting for a third party candidate, remind them of how selfish their comment is. Help them to understand that we don’t try to vote for the winner, we vote for the person we are most ideologically aligned with and then we hope for them to win. Anyone saying you are wasting your vote has an ulterior motive. They want to amplify their own vote. They want you to vote for their candidate, thereby giving them an extra vote for all intents and purposes.

This selfish attitude permeates American politics. People all over don’t really care what a candidate stands for as long as that candidate belongs to their party. That’s a very low bar to set and one that has lead our country into bedlam. Donald Trump is a result of always voting for the lesser of two evils. The two major parties don’t even attempt to run a principled candidate any longer. They know people are accustomed to voting for the lesser of two evils. The problem is that the lesser of two evils is still evil.

What would be a wasted vote?An unprincipled vote is the only wasted vote. 

The purpose of voting is to tell the state and the country what your vision of government and society really is. 

What happens when you cave and vote in what is called a defensive vote? You sell out your personal beliefs. You become a political prostitute. You are no longer standing up for what you believe in because you’ve caved and voted for the lesser of two evils. 

I don’t know about you, but I do not want to be a political hooker. If you believe the Republican or Democrat candidate really does match your beliefs, go ahead and vote for them. If you don’t believe they match your beliefs, you are helping to preserve the status quo you despite.

As I said, we don’t vote to pick the winner. WE vorte to tell everyone else which choice best represents the direction you want your state to go. You gain a power that a non-voter does not have--the chance to change your state.

Voting for the lesser of two evils is sending the wrong message. It says that you are OK with just a good state, not the best state possible. Please don’t settle for anything less than the best.

Learn from history. Radical ideas come to fruition all the time. That is, as long as you vote in a principled way. 

Remember, the only wasted vote is one for a candidate that doesn’t send the message you intend to send. Also remember that voting for the lesser of two evils is still casting a vote for evil.

I hope that you cast a principled vote today. If you caved in and voted for one of the big two candidates, don’t feel bad. You can fix that by vowing never to do that again. Take a moment and promise yourself that every vote going forward will be a principled vote.

The last thing I want to address is the ridiculous assertion that a vote for a Libertarian is a vote for Donald Trump (or anyone else). These people assume that had you not voted Libertarian you’d have voted AGAINST Donald Trump. That simply doesn’t cut it for me and my group of friends. We would never have voted for a Democrat or a Republican. Thus, our vote is for the candidate that most aligns with our belief system. Simple math will prove these people wrong, but their comment has nothing to do with math. Again, they are attempting to shame you into magnifying their own vote by getting you to vote for their candidate. 

Tell me your thoughts on this by leaving a voicemail on the Yogi’s Podcast Network hotline at (657) 529-2218.

That’s it for this episode of Liberty Revealed. .If you like what you’ve heard, please rate us 5 stars on Apple Podcasts and Google Play. If you’d like to learn more about personal liberty, grab your free copy of my book “Liberty Revealed” by heading over to http://yogispodcastnetwork.com/libertyrevealed. Until next time...stay free!

Welcome back to another episode of Liberty Revealed, the show dedicated to revealing personal liberty to all who listen. I am your host, Mike Mahony, and today I want to talk to you about the lockdowns that have been caused by the pandemic.

First, thank you for bearing with me as it has been several months since an episode has been released. The show will get back to a regular frequency going forward.

On March 13, 2020, life changed as I knew it. That day, in particular, we were moving from one home to another. We got an automated call from my son’s school announcing that in-person instruction was suspended due to the coronavirus. From there, things just got worse.

The California state government installed lockdowns that have crushed the economy and taken away the rights of the people. The government has rushed to find a way to control the spread of the virus. 

Across the world, a range of surveillance technologies are being deployed in an effort to find out more about who is sick. Although a crisis may make increased surveillance more palpable to the billions under some kind of lockdown civil libertarians shouldn’t be shy about highlighting the ineffective nature of many emergency measures and insisting that even those that are effective be strictly time-limited.

Tragedies, panics, and crises tend to result in extremely bad policy decisions. The 9/11 terrorist attacks prompted a wave of unnecessary and ineffective laws and policies. The establishment of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Transportation Security Agency (TSA), the passage of the PATRIOT Act, and the rollout of a wide range of new surveillance programs are among the most notable domestic examples. The effectiveness of these measures should embarrass government officials. Post‐​9/​11 mass surveillance did not thwart large terrorist attacks, with a White House panel finding that one of the most famous mass surveillance programs — the snooping on telephony metadata — was “not essential in preventing attacks.” Meanwhile, the TSA has demonstrated that it’s more efficient at fondling law-abiding citizens and residents than it is at passing its own security tests. Predator drones, often associated with US foreign policy, fly along the northern and southern borders adorned with the Customs and Border Protection logo.

Even when emergency measures are effective they can sometimes stick around longer than necessary. At the beginning of the Second World War, the British government passed a range of policies that infringed on civil liberties, including the introduction of ID cards. In September 1939 First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill gave a speech in which he emphasized that infringements on freedom would be temporary. Churchill said:

“Perhaps it might seem a paradox that a war undertaken in the name of liberty and right should require, as a necessary part of its processes, the surrender for the time being of so many of the dearly valued liberties and rights. In these last few days the House of Commons has been voting dozens of Bills which hand over to the executive our most dearly valued traditional liberties. We are sure that these liberties will be in hands which will not abuse them, which will use them for no class or party interests, which will cherish and guard them, and we look forward to the day, surely and confidently we look forward to the day, when our liberties and rights will be restored to us, and when we shall be able to share them with the peoples to whom such blessings are unknown.”

The surrender of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan did not spell the end of British ID cards. It wasn’t until 1952 that the British government finally scrapped ID cards over the objections of many in law enforcement.

Crisis measures are often ineffective and can survive the crisis they are implemented to counter. We should keep these facts in mind while addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are important differences between the Second World War and the current pandemic. The Second World War had clear victory conditions and the enemy’s territory was geographically defined. It’s unclear what it will take for governments to declare the current pandemic to be over, and the pandemic is a crisis that is indiscriminately affecting countries across the world.

Knowing more information about people is valuable in a pandemic, and some have cited examples around the world of information gathering being effective. Singapore is one of the countries most mentioned in pandemic surveillance discussions. A recent Harvard University study found that if other countries had used Singapore’s methods to detect imported cases of COVID-19 the number of detected imported cases could have been about three times what it is now.

In South Korea, international visitors are required to download an app that helps users check for COVID-19 symptoms. Those in quarantine also have to download an app, which allows officials to track those who break isolation. A handful of European governments (Spanish, Romanian, Slovakian, and Polish) have embraced the South Korean approach and have developed their own app.

The Trump administration is reportedly considering cellphone surveillance as a way to track the spread of COVID-19. However, it’s unlikely that South Korean surveillance methods would be effective in the U.S at this point. As Spencer Ackerman explained in the Daily Beast, pandemic surveillance is not like counter-terrorism surveillance in key regards:

“Coronavirus surveillance isn’t like the kind of surveillance used to track, say, terrorist suspects. Public health officials seeking to arrest an outbreak start with a positive test of a patient and then work outward to find and warn people the patient was in close contact with. Counterterrorism surveillance, in practice, tends to gather everyone’s data first—often without warrants—analyze it for connections to targets of interest (a practice known as contact chaining), and then either purge it or keep it.

[…]

But according to epidemiologists, America is unlikely to replicate South Korea’s success. South Korea (and China) tested extensively for COVID-19 early on. That was the key step for being able to identify and isolate those infected before they spread the disease further. No such thing occurred in the U.S.—and accordingly, domestic pandemic surveillance in late March 2020 would resemble the anticipatory guesswork of counterterrorism surveillance, more intrusive than effective.”

That surveillance tools and methods won’t be effective hardly means they won’t be deployed. Hospitals across the U.S. are set to experience an influx of patients that is beyond their capacity. This will undoubtedly increase criticism of the government. Amid frustration and anxiety, we should expect officials to embrace a more aggressive “do something” approach. The Trump administration already has relationships with companies such as Palantir, which prides itself on building tools ideal for mass surveillance.

American lawmakers and officials haven’t only considered increased surveillance in response to COVID-19. They have told citizens and residents across the country to stay at home, and businesses have been forced to close or make dramatic changes to how they operate.

When local officials announce restrictions on freedom we should be sure to ask them what conditions will justify an end to such restrictions. Earlier this week, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser issued an order requiring all “non‐​essential” businesses to close until April 24, 2020. However, the order notes that the deadline could be “extended, rescinded, superseded, or amended” by another order.

Those of us enduring these imposed periods of isolation deserve to know when the isolation will end. How will officials define the end of this ongoing pandemic? The end of a war is easy to define. The end of a pandemic isn’t. If we are to endure restrictions on our freedoms in the name of public safety the least officials can do is tell us when it will all be over.

Increased surveillance and restrictions on movement need not be the only options officials consider. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, my colleagues have been writing and discussing the numerous policy changes that could have allowed more people to access COVID-19 tests more quickly and allowed for a more efficient response to the pandemic (visit this link to find out more). Among the few silver linings of the current crisis is the possibility that lawmakers and regulators will learn valuable lessons about how to respond to the next pandemic.

Lockdowns, curfews, and increased surveillance are infringements on freedom, but civil libertarians should be prepared to concede that such measures can sometimes be justified, if only in rare and extreme circumstances. But accepting that such measures may be necessary should not make us complacent. We should continue to raise concerns and highlight policy changes that could alleviate the effects of the pandemic. In addition, we should ask lawmakers tough questions about why specific pandemic measures are necessary, why they think such measures will be effective, and when the measures will be abandoned.

Any blind acceptance of the measures being put into place by the government should be reconsidered. The government will take as much of our freedoms away as it can get away with. We must not allow that to happen. Speak up and let your government know that you want an end to the restrictions that are currently in place. Ask them to reopen the economy so that your fellow Americans can begin earning an income again.

This pandemic response has been so disastrous that it is estimated that almost 50% of all businesses will be closed permanently. This cannot be allowed to stand.

Tell me your thoughts on this by leaving a voicemail on the Yogi’s Podcast Network hotline at (657) 529-2218.

That’s it for this episode of Liberty Revealed. .If you like what you’ve heard, please rate us 5 stars on Apple Podcasts and Google Play. If you’d like to learn more about personal liberty, grab your free copy of my book “Liberty Revealed” by heading over to http://yogispodcastnetwork.com/libertyrevealed. Until next time...stay free!

Welcome back to another episode of Liberty Revealed, the show dedicated to revealing personal liberty to all who listen. I am your host, Mike Mahony, and today I want to talk to you about universal basic income.

Universal basic income is so much better than our current system of welfare. If such a program were to be implemented in the United States, the details become extremely important. The main pout is that universal basic income would replace welfare.

Current federal social welfare programs in the United States are an expensive, complicated mess. According to Michael Tanner, the federal government spent more than $668 billion on over one hundred and twenty-six anti-poverty programs in 2012. When you add in the $284 billion spent by state and local governments, that amounts to $20,610 for every poor person in America.

Wouldn’t it be better just to write the poor a check?

Each one of those anti-poverty programs comes with its own bureaucracy and its own Byzantine set of rules. If you want to shrink the size and scope of government, eliminating those departments and replacing them with a program so simple it could virtually be administered by a computer seems like a good place to start. Eliminating bloated bureaucracies means more money in the hands of the poor and lower costs to the taxpayer. That’s what’s known as a Win/Win.

Universal basic income would also be considerably less paternalistic than the current welfare state, which is the bastard child of “conservative judgment and progressive condescension” toward the poor, in Andrea Castillo’s choice words. Conservatives want to help the poor, but only if they can demonstrate that they deserve it by jumping through a series of hoops meant to demonstrate their willingness to work, to stay off drugs, and preferably to settle down into a nice, stable, bourgeois family life. And while progressives generally reject this attempt to impose traditional values on the poor, they have almost always preferred in-kind grants to cash precisely as a way of making sure the poor get the help they “really” need. Shouldn’t we trust poor people to know what they need better than the federal government?

Both Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek advocated for something like universal basic income as a proper function of government, though on somewhat different grounds. Friedman’s argument comes in chapter 9 of his Capitalism and Freedom, and is based on the idea that private attempts at relieving poverty involve what he called “neighborhood effects” or positive externalities. Such externalities, Friedman argues, mean that private charity will be undersupplied by voluntary action.

“[W]e might all of us be willing to contribute to the relief of poverty, provided everyone else did. We might not be willing to contribute the same amount without such assurance.”

And so, Friedman concludes, some “governmental action to alleviate poverty” is justified. Specifically, government is justified in setting “a floor under the standard of life of every person in the community,” a floor that takes the form of his famous “Negative Income Tax” proposal.

Friedrich Hayek’s argument, appearing 17 years later in volume 3 of his Law, Legislation, and Liberty, is even more powerful. Here’s the crucial passage:

“The assurance of a certain minimum income for everyone, or a sort of floor below which nobody need fall even when he is unable to provide for himself, appears not only to be wholly legitimate protection against a risk common to all, but a necessary part of the Great Society in which the individual no longer has specific claims on the members of the particular small group into which he was born.”

To those who know of Hayek only through second-hand caricatures of his argument from The Road to Serfdom, his claim here will no doubt be surprising. Hayek was not opposed to the welfare state as such (not even in the Road to Serfdom). At the very least, he regarded certain aspects of the welfare state as permissible options that states might pursue. But the passage above suggests that he may have had an even stronger idea in mind - that a basic income is not merely a permissible option but a mandatory requirement of democratic legitimacy - a policy that must be instituted in order to justify the coercive power that even a Hayekian state would exercise over its citizens.

Before I close, I want to say at least a little about the different policy options. But there are a lot of different options, and a lot of details to each. So bear in mind that what follows is only a sketch.

Universal basic income involves something like an unconditional grant of income to every citizen. So, on most proposals, everybody gets a check each month. “Unconditional” here means mostly that the check is not conditional on one’s wealth or poverty or willingness to work. But some proposals, like Charles Murray’s, would go only to adult citizens. And almost all proposals are given only to citizens. Most proposals specify that income earned on top of the grant is subject to taxation at progressive rates, but the grant itself is not.

A Negative Income Tax involves issuing a credit to those who fall below the threshold of tax liability, based on how far below the threshold they fall. So the amount of money one receives (the “negative income tax”) decreases as ones earnings push one up to the threshold of tax liability, until it reaches zero, and then as one earns more money one begins to pay the government money (the “positive income tax”).

The Earned Income Tax Credit is the policy we actually have in place currently in the United States. It was inspired by Friedman’s Negative Income Tax proposal, but falls short in that it applies only to persons who are actually working.

The US Basic Income Guarantee Network has a nice and significantly more detailed overview of some of the different policies. You can watch Milton Friedman explain his Negative Income Tax proposal with characteristic clarity to William F. Buckley here. And for an extended and carefully thought out defense of one particular Universal basic income proposal from a libertarian perspective, I highly recommend Charles Murray’s short book, In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State.

Tell me your thoughts on this by leaving a voicemail on the Yogi’s Podcast Network hotline at (657) 529-2218.

That’s it for this episode of Liberty Revealed. .If you like what you’ve heard, please rate us 5 stars on Apple Podcasts and Google Play. If you’d like to learn more about personal liberty, grab your free copy of my book “Liberty Revealed” by heading over to http://yogispodcastnetwork.com/libertyrevealed. Until next time...stay free!

Welcome back to another episode of Liberty Revealed, the show dedicated to revealing personal liberty to all who listen. I am your host, Mike Mahony, and today I want to talk to you about data privacy and how I feel it should be dealt with.

Protecting internet data privacy without hindering innovation requires a dose of legislative humility and strong trust in consumer intelligence. Neither is easy for a Libertarian to swallow.

The recent data breaches at Google and Facebook have amplified the debate around data privacy and the laws governing the same. Commentators seem to feel the US regulatory approach to all of this is akin to the Wild Wild West. They act as though no regulation exists.

Some are calling for the adoption of heavy-handed, European-style controls such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which imposes 45 specific rules on data-driven enterprises. They have applauded new data regulation rules in California, which grants sweeping power to the state’s attorney general to collect fees, impose rules, approve business plans, and solicit public support for class actions against internet companies. It is reasonable to be skeptical of the notion that increasing government power is the key to protecting privacy, but without federal preemption, the nation could balkanize with 50 sets of online privacy rules, undermining the seamless digital experience consumers enjoy today as well as the internet economy which powers some 10 percent of national gross domestic product.

I, for one, feel the regulatory approach to data privacy and protection of the internet is just flat out wrong.

One reason people believe the US has an inferior, laissez-faire approach to internet regulation is that they confuse data privacy and protection and because they are not familiar with America’s own substantive privacy protections developed since its founding. In fact, there are literally hundreds of laws on privacy and data protection in the U.S.—including common law torts, criminal laws, evidentiary privileges, federal statutes, and state laws. America’s tradition of protecting privacy is predicated on ensuring the individual’s freedom from government intrusion and pushing back the overreach of the administrative state. By way of comparison, the EU’s laws are relatively new, officially dating from this century, and still lack the runway of judicial scrutiny and case law that characterizes U.S. law.

This experience from Europe gives us a glimpse of what to expect should we adopt a similarly heavy-handed regulatory approach in the USA. Simply put, the EU’s laws don’t work to create trust in the online ecosystem. After a decade of data protection regulation—in which Europeans have endured intrusive pop-ups and disclosures on every digital property they visit—Europeans report no greater sense of trust online. As of 2017, only 22 percent of Europeans shop outside their own country (a paltry increase of 10% in a decade). Moreover, only 20 percent of EU companies are highly digitized. Small to medium-sized European companies have neither modernized their operations nor marketed to other EU countries because data protection compliance costs are too high.

To do business in the EU and comply with the new rules, US firms with 500 employees or more will likely have to spend between $1 and $10 million each to comply with GDPR. With over 19,000 firms of 500 employees or more in the US, total GDPR compliance costs for U.S. firms alone could reach $150 billion, twice what the U.S. spends on network investment and one-third of annual e-commerce revenue in the U.S. Not surprisingly, thousands of online entities, both in the EU and abroad, have proactively shuttered their European operations for fear of getting caught in the regulatory crosshairs.

Moreover, there is a business model behind data protection regulation. Not only will Europe have to hire some 75,000 new data protection professionals as regulatory compliance officers, but regulatory authorities are also doubling their staff and budgets to take on the increased workload of managing compliance and complaints. Just seven hours after the GDPR came into effect in May 2018, Austrian activist Max Schrems lodged complaints against Google and Facebook, demanding $8.8 billion in damages because their services are so popular that they effectively “force” people to use them.

Politics continues to play a huge role in data privacy and protection.

A decentralized, limited government approach has been empirically shown to better protect data privacy, but regulatory advocates are too powerful, organized, and determined to let well enough alone. They consider themselves the self-appointed protectors of all Americans, who they deem unwitting digital serfs, forced to engage in transactions against their will and too stupid to learn how to be safe online.  While freethinkers value sovereignty and choice, they are diffuse and difficult to galvanize. The sweeping regulations adopted in California and the European Union were enabled by a small yet vocal group of activists.

While the media emphasizes the partisan chaos in Washington, there is a bona fide, fact-based, bipartisan effort within Congress to create a rational policy for consumer online privacy. The Senate Commerce Committee has hosted a series of hearings to gather input from a variety of stakeholders.  In addition, the Trump Administration has tasked key agencies with developing scientific and policy principles that ensure standards and guarantee freedom of choice for individuals while also giving organizations legal clarity and the flexibility to innovate. It may seem counterintuitive that we need more privacy legislation, but in this case, the outcome will be worse for freedom if Congress does not clarify a single national policy.

I personally prefer a market-based approach to data privacy and protection. To me, the required trust in consumer intelligence is difficult, but necessary if we are to both protect our privacy and data and protect our freedom.

The elements of a market-based approach includes a consistent national policy that promotes technological innovation, consumer education, and freedom of choice for consumers.

Privacy-enhancing technologies. Continuous technological improvement of online systems will always be better than regulatory regimes that rely on bureaucrats to decide how data should be processed and which abuses to adjudicate. Scientific research demonstrates that privacy-enhancing innovation (a field including dozens of technologies such as encryption, data minimization, anonymization, attribute-based access controls, etc) makes the online experience safer and more private than a bureaucratic approach can. Moreover, soft law instruments such as multi-stakeholder processes, scientific best practices and standards, and codes of conduct can address emerging data protection challenges without resorting to heavy-handed rules. Policymakers should consider the role of incentives for design and experimentation with privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs). These can include grants, awards, and competitions. Importantly, a national policy would include a legal safe harbor for innovators so that they can experiment without punishment and so that enterprises can be confident that they are complying with the law.

Consumer education. Informed consumers who have the freedom to choose among a robust array of goods and services are the bedrock of a free-market economy. This assumes a marketplace in which there is sufficient information, ease of market entry and exit, and minimal regulatory distortion. Scientific research concludes that the consumer’s level of knowledge about the online experience is crucial when it comes to creating trust online. Notice and consent are meaningless to consumers if they don’t understand the nature of the transactions in which they engage, how online platforms work, and the associated costs, benefits, and alternatives. (See p. 13 of this filing to the Federal Trade Commission for the history of consumer education and models of online privacy education.) Individuals need to take the responsibility to educate themselves about the online services they use and policy-makers must ensure that there are transparent ways for consumers to get access to that information. Moreover, educated consumers are a powerful check on unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, limiting the need for regulation in the first place.

Choice. Individuals must have freedom of choice over whether to share their data in exchange for a service as well as the ability to say no to terms and conditions which make them feel uncomfortable. When a consumer says no and declines the service, this sends an important message to providers to improve their products and services. A key problem of the California and European rules is that they obligate providers to deliver services even if users object to sharing their data. This perversion creates a free-rider problem, which increases the amount of processing that must be performed on consenting users so that the service provider can cover its costs. Moreover, it removes the essential feedback that providers need from users so that they can improve their services.

Flexibility. A recent Senate hearing featured the architect of the California Consumer Privacy Act, Alastair MacTaggart, who took offense that his local Supercuts hair cuttery requested his email and phone upon checking in for an appointment. MacTaggart called it “out of control” and intimated that this practice should be eliminated for all Supercuts customers. (He also spent nearly $3.5 million of his own fortune from a successful real estate business, which, ironically, relies on the same kind of data processing he now wants to eliminate.) This kind of elitism fails to see how many people appreciate SMS reminders for their salon appointments and want to receive email offers of coupons for hair care products, discounts, and so on. 

The situation is a reminder of the need for regulatory flexibility. Consumers who do not want to participate in such programs should not have to, but those who want to should be allowed. Regulatory advocates don’t like the idea that a customer loyalty program has such requirements. They don’t want enterprises to have the flexibility to reward loyal customers. Again, this creates a free-rider problem. If enterprises are obliged to make offers available without any minimum requirements, the provider’s incentive for offering the promotional program is thus removed, and the provider pulls the offer. This leads to overall price increases while reducing welfare for the set of customers who wanted the offer in the first place. In any case, there are technical workarounds that can secure privacy without eliminating enterprises, such as anonymizing email addresses and phone numbers. (See p. 11 of the filing for the discussion on anonymization).

Consistency. America’s 50 states are a single market, which is a boon to America’s digital economy. An app posted in Maine can serve a user from Hawaii. However, California’s new privacy law disrupts this seamlessness, inhibiting commerce both inside and the state. Other states (NY, NJ, MD, MA, RI, IL, and CT) are threatening to make their own rules. We need a single federal privacy standard enforced by a single Federal regulator – ideally the Federal Trade Commission.  The FTC can enforce the standard and deliver enforcement with the cooperation of state attorneys general.

The cycle of privacy panic, the manufactured fear that accompanies new technologies, has been a well-documented phenomenon for more than a century. When first introduced, photography was maligned for violating one’s privacy. As people experience new technology, they grow more comfortable with it, ultimately adopting it in a way that demonstrably improves their lives. When asked what has brought the biggest improvement to their lives in the past 50 years, Americans name technology more than any other advancement, notes Pew Research in a 2016 survey.

Today’s debate about the data-driven economy is no different. Market-based solutions can address data privacy concerns without surrendering the internet to government control. If anything, this legislative moment is about reaffirming America’s history of data protection and privacy. We need federal law to stop state-level overreach so that the freedom of individuals and enterprises can flourish.

Tell me your thoughts on this by leaving a voicemail on the Yogi’s Podcast Network hotline at (657) 529-2218.

That’s it for this episode of Liberty Revealed. .If you like what you’ve heard, please rate us 5 stars on Apple Podcasts and Google Play. If you’d like to learn more about personal liberty, grab your free copy of my book “Liberty Revealed” by heading over to http://yogispodcastnetwork.com/libertyrevealed. Until next time...stay free!

Welcome back to another episode of Liberty Revealed, the show dedicated to revealing personal liberty to all who listen. I am your host, Mike Mahony, and today I want to discuss why I am so disappointed with Americans in general and Libertarians specifically.

As I record these words, much of our country is under lock down. This has happened due to an attempt to control the spread of the virus known as COVID19. The problem is that the story keeps changing. Let’s begin by addressing some very concerning issues.

Right now the government is exercising vast power to keep citizens inside as much as possible. On March 30, 2020, Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington DC announced people will receive 90 days in jail and a $5,000 fine if they leave their homes. The only exceptions: grocery shopping, essential workers, and outdoor exercise. What the hell is wrong with people?

Why aren’t people marching in the streets in protest? Why are people so willingly relinquishing their rights? Why can’t they see the obvious problems with the story the government is feeding us?

It is extremely concerning to me that we are so willing to do exactly what the government is telling us to do. This is unprecedented. We didn’t do this for SARS or MERS. Why are we so willing to voluntarily destroy our economy? It baffles me!

Where are Libertarians during this crisis? Yes, a small number with leadership qualities are speaking out, but so many are silent on this issue. That, too, baffles my mind.

Now is the time for us to stand up and shout about our liberties being taken away. It is time for us to be leaders and show the rest of the country that we are being aggressively oppressed. We need to let President Trump know we will not continue with this lockdown. 

We need to tell people that they can be safe from the virus and still have a mostly normal life. There are ways to accomplish this that don’t involve completely destroying our own economy. Using common sense would be the place to begin.

It frustrates me that people truly believe the government can and should hold our hand and take care of us.are you serious? The government that can’t figure out how to run things without massive taxes is supposed to protect us from a virus? Are we not capable of conducting ourselves in a manner that addresses hygiene and cleanliness to avoid spreading this virus? Think! Our government was not at all prepared. They were not just caught with their pants down, they were caught naked and asleep at the wheel. That’s the government people expect to save them?

Libertarians! Now is the time for us to get our message to the masses. We need to explain to them why Liberty is so important. We must show everyone that we know how to handle this issue without shutting everything down for an extended time period.

We need to use our social media accounts to spread the word. We need to explain our principles to everyone. If we have to do this multiple times a day every single day, it needs to happen.

We are at risk of losing our liberty permanently. How do you think the government is going to react once this is all over? Have you considered that they will create restrictive regulations to control us because they see how we’ve rolled on our backs like scared dogs? That’s exactly how our government works. We give them an inch and they take that inch for themselves plus a few hundred miles more.

As for me, I’ve been speaking out. I am not going to allow this to happen to my country without a fight. Are you with me? If you are, please email infi@yogispodcastnetwork.com and just say “I am in!” If you do that, I will respond and we can begin to work together to spread the word. Only when true patriots stand up against this oppression will it stop.

Instead of us wasting time worrying about the name people give to this virus, we should put our foot down and demand things change immediately. Again, email me at info@yogispodcastnetwork.com and let’s get started.

That’s it for this episode of Liberty Revealed. .If you like what you’ve heard, please rate us 5 stars on Apple Podcasts and Google Play. If you’d like to learn more about personal liberty, grab your free copy of my book “Liberty Revealed” by heading over to http://yogispodcastnetwork.com/libertyrevealed. Until next time...stay free!

Welcome back to another episode of Liberty Revealed, the show dedicated to revealing personal liberty to all who listen. I am your host, Mike Mahony, and today I want to talk to you about why the United States should stop its constant interventions in foreign countries.

Over several decades, Libertarians have expressed opposition to United States intervention in foreign countries. We have offered alternatives that have been ignored by the leadership in Washington DC. Every election cycle the Republican and Democrat candidates claim they will bring peace and stability and never seem to do that. The American people are growing weary of this constant cycle of intervention. Is it now time for a Libertarian foreign policy?

Adam Smith taught that for there to be a tolerable government, there needed to be in place the essential ingredients of peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.” War doesn’t make the list for good reason. It is probably the largest and most far-reaching of all statist enterprises. It's an engine of collectivization that undermines private enterprise, raises taxes, destroys wealth, and subjects all aspects of the economy to regimentation and central planning.It also alters the citizens' view of the state in a subtle way. "War substitutes a herd mentality and blind obedience for the normal propensity to question authority and to demand good and proper reasons for government actions," the late scholar Ronald Hamowy writes in The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. He continues, "War promotes collectivism at the expense of individualism, force at the expense of reason and coarseness at the expense of sensibility. Libertarians regard all of those tendencies with sorrow."

Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman stated the issue more clearly. "War is a friend of the state," he told the San Francisco Chronicle about a year before his death. "In time of war, government will take powers and do things that it would not ordinarily do." The evidence is solid and irrefutable. Throughout human history, the government has grown during wartime, rarely surrendering its new powers when the guns fall silent. War is a means used for the government to increase in size and that’s not a good thing.

Some people make the claim that a particular threat to freedom from abroad is greater than anything we could do to ourselves in fighting it. But that is a hard case to make. Even the post-9/11 "global war on terror" — a war that hasn't involved conscription or massive new taxes — has resulted in wholesale violations of basic civil rights and an erosion of the rule of law. From Bush's torture memos to Obama's secret kill list, this has all been done in the name of fighting a menace — Islamist terrorism — that has killed fewer American civilians in the last decade than allergic reactions to peanuts. It seems James Madison was right. It was, he wrote, "a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad."

Some would say the United States is an exceptional nation that serves the cause of global liberty. The United States pursues a "foreign policy that makes the world a better place," explains Sen. Lindsey Graham, "and sometimes that requires force, a lot of times it requires the threat of force." By engaging in frequent wars, even when U.S. security isn't directly threatened, the United States acts as the world's much-needed policeman. That's the theory, anyway.

In the real world, the record is decidedly mixed. This supposedly liberal order does not work as well as its advocates claim. The world still has its share of conflicts, despite a U.S. global military presence explicitly oriented around stopping wars before they start. The U.S. Navy supposedly keeps the seas open for global commerce, but it's not obvious who would benefit from closing them — aside from terrorists or pirates who couldn't if they tried. Advocates of the status quo claim that it would be much worse if the United States adopted a more restrained grand strategy, but they fail to accurately account for the costs of this global posture, and they exaggerate the benefits. And, of course, there is the obvious case of the Iraq War, a disaster that was part and parcel of this misguided strategy of global primacy. It was launched on the promise of delivering freedom to the Iraqi people and then to the entire Middle East. It has had, if anything, the opposite effect.

Libertarians harbor deep and abiding doubts about the government's capacity for effecting particular ends, no matter how well-intentioned. These concerns are magnified, not set aside when the government project involves violence in foreign lands.

In domestic policy, libertarians tend to believe in a minimal state endowed with enumerated powers, dedicated to protecting the security and liberty of its citizens but otherwise inclined to leave them alone. The same principles should apply when we turn our attention abroad. Citizens should be free to buy and sell goods and services, study and travel, and otherwise interact with peoples from other lands and places, unencumbered by the intrusions of government.

But peaceful, non-coercive foreign engagement should not be confused with its violent cousin: war. American libertarians have traditionally opposed wars and warfare, even those ostensibly focused on achieving liberal ends. And for good reason. All wars involve killing people and destroying property. Most entail massive encroachments on civil liberties, from warrantless surveillance to conscription. They all impede the free movement of goods, capital, and labor essential to economic prosperity. And all wars contribute to the growth of the state.

It is my own personal belief that when something isn’t working we should stop doing it. Clearly, this constant intervention into foreign issues is not working. We are not accomplishing the goals our leadership claims exist for these interventions. Instead, we are risking both American and foreign lives in a fruitless endeavor to be the police for the world community. While the concept may on the surface appear admirable, the end result is anything but. This is where a Libertarian foreign policy would change everything.

Now, as my regular listeners are aware, I am a pragmatic Libertarian. While I believe 100% in libertarian principles, I know that our society is fully entrenched in its current ways and any change is going to take time. There are a lot of political and structural impediments to the government doing less of anything. We face a problem when dealing directly with the American people. There's a strong bias among the American people that when you face some economic or social problem — from healthcare to education to welfare — the government should do something. When you say the government should do less or limit its response, many are skeptical.

When it comes to foreign crises, you're constantly faced with bad actors on the international stage — from dictators to ayatollahs. The argument that we should restrict intervention or avoid projecting strength often doesn't resonate with the public. What's interesting, however, is that you generally don't get both of these attitudes — government activism at home and abroad — from the same person. Those most likely to grasp that government is not the solution to every domestic problem are the most likely to be skeptical of that argument when it's presented in relation to foreign policy. And that really means that those advocating a libertarian foreign policy are men and women without a country. In our binary political system, there's no party or constituency that's really speaking for that viewpoint.

You can see the evidence of that in the congressional vote for the Iraq War. Among Republicans, there were only seven who voted against authorization. What's less well remembered is that half the Democrats in the Senate voted to authorize the Iraq War. The list includes Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Chuck Schumer, and Harry Reid. These are not "back-bencher" Democrats. They're some of the most prominent figures, including the supposed Peace Party's most likely next candidate for president of the United States.

That means that the parties really present an echo, not a choice. There's this "me tooism," even when it comes to Democrats. In some respects, that makes sense because they're the party that believes in the government's ability to keep us safe all of the time and in every situation. But some of it is also a relic of politics from the 1980s and 1990s, when a lot of these people came of age at a time when the Democratic Party was seen as weak on foreign policy. A lot of Democrats internalized that critique and regarded it as a political liability. Ultimately, they tried to counter that liability by becoming more hawkish.

The odd thing about that is that it doesn't reflect many of the trends in public opinion, particularly those of rank-and-file Democrats. But politicians tend to stick with the ideas they adopted during their formative years. So you have a generation of hawkish Democrats leading a party of people who are hesitant to see such an outsized U.S. role in the world, and particularly in the Middle East. Thus a lot of the core assumptions that are being batted around by both parties in discussing the potential nuclear threat from Iran are very similar to the core assumptions that led us into the Iraq War.

So what do we do about this? There was a period when we were seeing real growth in the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, and some chastened conservatives seemed to be moving in that direction. But, again, it's easier to make those arguments when everything is going well. As soon as there's any significant instability in the world, it becomes much harder to make non-interventionist arguments in foreign policy. The Republican Party seems at the moment to be reverting to form.

But I don't think all is necessarily lost. True, the political incentives for even the best-intentioned libertarian-leaning Republicans are bad. They will be punished by the loudest voices on the right if they say anything that deviates from the idea of aggressively projecting strength. At the same time, there's been a lot of success framing a libertarian non-interventionism as President Barack Obama's foreign policy. Now I find it interesting that a president who escalated one war, launched two more without congressional approval, and proposed a fourth is any kind of non-interventionist. But there you have it. Our binary political system makes it difficult to have these debates in a nuanced fashion.

On the positive side, I've always argued that we need to get people who are engaged in economics — those conservatives and libertarians who specialize in fiscal areas — to be a little more vocal on foreign policy. In private, you often hear a lot of conservative budget experts express their doubts about an ever-expansive military footprint abroad. There, of course, still needs to be some foreign policy expertise that comes from a less interventionist perspective on the right.

But, in the meantime, as we cultivate those voices, there's a vacuum that needs to be filled by people who are philosophically sympathetic to less intervention and yet specialize in other issues. They shouldn't let the wall of separation between budget gurus and defense hawks dictate what the Republican Party's foreign policy is going to be.

Tell me your thoughts on this by leaving a voicemail on the Yogi’s Podcast Network hotline at (657) 529-2218.

That’s it for this episode of Liberty Revealed. .If you like what you’ve heard, please rate us 5 stars on Apple Podcasts and Google Play. If you’d like to learn more about personal liberty, grab your free copy of my book “Liberty Revealed” by heading over to http://yogispodcastnetwork.com/libertyrevealed. Until next time...stay free!