Comments for The Libertarian Scientist

Comment on The Dictatorship Begins on Jan. 1st, 2014 by Tristan Brown

Tristan Brown — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 00:46:34 +0000

Yes, I do think Mitt Romney is different than Barack Obama. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have spent so much money trying to beat each other. Mitt Romney, while no libertarian, did indeed offer a message of limited government.

Comment on The Dictatorship Begins on Jan. 1st, 2014 by OrganicOne

OrganicOne — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 21:39:59 +0000

I was all good until I read “If you’ve been wondering what would drive a libertarian like myself to support a conservative like Mitt Romney, this is why.” Do you REALLY think that Mitt Romney is ANY DIFFERENT? If you do, you’re the reason this country has fallen so far. Get it in your head: The “Right” versus “Left” puppet show they put on for you people is just that… a puppet show. And while you stare at it, drooling, they are screwing you from behind. Both sides have hands up their bottoms telling them what to say, and the hands belong to the same source: the big banks.

Wake up, people. There are no Democrats, there are no Republicans, there are only puppets who are distracting you from the real problem.

Otherwise, awesome article. Let’s just not make the same mistake over again.

Comment on Title Change by Tristan Brown

Tristan Brown — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:58:15 +0000

I work at the birthplace of the union movement, and rejecting the pressure brought by those elements was no problem. It’s always justifiable to scold someone for unnecessarily bringing divisive politics into a professional environment. But by publicly associating the name I put on research publications with the name I use to advocate liberty, I’m working from the other side of the coin.

Despite the intended purpose of universities, Academia is not at all tolerant of viewpoint diversity. All of that pretension about enlightened inclusiveness is bullshit- nothing more than a facade. Obtaining a graduate degree and working in an academic environment is extremely bureaucratic and political. If you show your hand at any point before becoming a tenured professor, any of your superiors who happen to disagree with you can ruin you. I already have one particularly totalitarian colleague who is pretty eager to destroy me, and I don’t want to make it easy for him. I’d rather not Ron Paul myself out of a career.

Instead, I’m playing the long game. If I can keep the identities I use for professional work and political advocacy mostly separate for now, then I can grab my degree and escape to more private ventures with nonpolitical funding sources. Once I have a PhD and I’ve made a scientific name for myself, then my position of authority will be more amenable to merging my two identities. People listen to their professional superiors. They don’t listen to an upstart graduate student trying to revamp the entire system he’s just getting started in.

Comment on Title Change by snuffles

snuffles — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:00:31 +0000

In other words, you’re too much of a coward to show your true face to your colleagues? Not very brave of you. Why don’t you just treat this like a weird porno collection then, and hide it from everybody? No seriously, have the balls to care about it and hold it dear. I work at the most unionized place in town and there are negotiations coming up. There is PRESSURE to join the union, and I’m not having it. They all know my position, and I’m not joining. So why can’t you do that? Aren’t you brilliant enough to overcome an unfair system? If a pathetic waste of life like me can hold off a union, I think you can hold back a few greedy scientists.

Comment on The Problem With Democracy by Democracy is Not Freedom « Tristan's Journal for a Free Society

Democracy is Not Freedom « Tristan's Journal for a Free Society — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 21:41:37 +0000

[...] would express the will of the majority at the expense of the basic liberty of the minority. Yet, we’ve supplanted nearly all of our constitutional principles in favor of the democratic socialist perspectives of Franklin Roosevelt and Barack [...]

Comment on The Struggle of a Libertarian Scientist by Editor

Editor — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 15:37:01 +0000

Thanks for the article.

Libertarian ideas pave the way for scientific discourse, and many pro-libertarians lead in scientific and technical progress.

Libertarian concepts of non-coercive public funding are spreading and being applied. For info on people using voluntary Libertarian tools on similar and other issues, please see http://www.Libertarian-International.org , the non-partisan , secular and pro-science mother Libertarian International Organization….

Comment on Noam Chomsky is Insane by your blog is lame

your blog is lame — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 09:27:43 +0000

He is not crazy. If you disagree with his points, refute them properly.

Comment on The Debt Cliff by Tristan Brown

Tristan Brown — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 22:44:03 +0000

Oh, I know. Both Paul Krugman and his followers in the Democratic Party are now supporting this money-printing plan.
http://tinyurl.com/atysmru
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/debt-in-a-time-of-zero/
The Democrats are ignorant enough of economics to think this is actually an original idea that just might work. Paul Krugman, on the other hand, should know better. At this point, I’m pretty sure he deliberately wants to destroy the United States.

Comment on The Debt Cliff by Robert

Robert — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 22:17:59 +0000

There are some in congress who have hit upon what they believe is a solution. Mint a one ounce platinum coin (an amount of metal worth about $800), declare it to have a value of $1 trillion and then deposit enough of them in the treasury to pay off the national debt. This shows what I have suspected, that there are people in our government who have no connection to reality. If they decide to go through with this, why stop there? For about $8,750,000 worth of platinum, we could give a coin to every human on the planet and eliminate world poverty. Just think, every starving child in Uganda would be a trillonaire.

Comment on Freedom Correlations, Part 2: The Most Important Form of Freedom by Socialist Myths That Just Won’t Die, Part 1 « Tristan's Journal for a Free Society

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 17:55:17 +0000

[...] Myth: Australia/Germany/Canada/etc is more socialist than most countries because they have socialist health care. Truth: You can’t just base your entire idea of how socialist a country is on one policy, and expect to be correct. At one time, the US was the least socialist country in the world, but that’s simply not true anymore. Your preconceptions are entirely subjective and out-of-date. If you want to determine which countries are actually “more socialist” and which are less, you need a more objective measure, like the economic freedom indices I’ve posted countless times. You’ll find in those indices that both Australia and Canada are consistently less socialist than the US. Germany is more socialist, but not by much, and they’re certainly not faring as well as their less socialist neighbors. So how can you even pretend that it’s these countries’ socialist elements that brought them prosperity, when in fact these are some of the most economically libertarian countries in the world? In reality, prosperity correlates strongly with economic freedom, with private property rights being the strongest driving force. [...]