In 2004, a few years before K.G.M. — a pseudonym, because now you don’t even have to reveal who you are to get taxpayer-funded courts to hear your frivolous lawsuits — was born, three guys gave the world something called “MySpace.”

It wasn’t the first instance of “social media” on the Internet, but it was the first one to get global buy-in, with around 100 million users by 2008.

MySpace kicked off an era in which nearly two out of three humans on the planet use social media platforms to connect with others, share opinions and content, and, yes, sometimes scroll obsessively through everything on offer.

You or I may or may not like social media.

You or I may or may not use social media.

And, even though it’s pretty much the unique distinguishing development of the 21st century (everything else, including perpetual war, is just variation on eternal themes), you and I don’t HAVE to use social media.

Nor was K.G.M. forced to use social media.

But on March 25, a California jury awarded her $6 million in “damages” — half “compensatory” and half punitive —  from Google (which owns YouTube) and Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), because she allegedly suffers from anxiety and depression and blames social media for those problems.

It’s really all punitive, because there are no “damages” to compensate for.

Google and Meta provided services which K.G.M. was free to use, not use, or use as much or as little, and in whatever ways, she pleased.

The availability of those services neither, as Thomas Jefferson might put it, picked K.G.M.’s pocket nor broke K.G.M.’s leg.

Since I don’t know K.G.M. personally, I can’t say whether she came up with the idea for this frivolous lawsuit or got conned into it by ambulance-chasing lawyers who thought they could mine moral panic for a big payday.

But the lawsuit was, in fact, frivolous and the verdict and “damages” award are, in fact, insane.

That insanity seems likely to become a trend (other such frivolous litigation awaits adjudication already), and the biggest costs won’t come out of the social media platforms’ bank accounts. They’ll come out of your freedom of choice.

Which happens to be EXACTLY what our ruling political class wants.

These platforms have opened the world up to examination and analysis. Not just by a few privileged insiders, by everyone. It’s harder for bad actors in politics, finance, etc. to hide.

These platforms have exposed their audiences to a previously unimaginable diversity of opinion. The heads of broadcast networks and publishers of newspapers no longer get to curate the viewpoints their audiences can hear, consider, and compare.

As platforms race to insulate themselves from liability to frivolous litigation, and politicians race to exploit the moral panic for control rather than mere financial benefit, our world is going to shrink back toward limited knowledge of, and enforced uniformity/conformity of public speech.

Now more than ever, we need decentralized — “ownerless” — social media platforms to make the rest of the 21st century censorship-proof … and judgment-proof.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

It’s “mow the yard” time again in north central Florida, which means it’s “Tom complains about lawn culture” time again for this column.

This year, though, my case against the whole idea of the “lawn” comes with a more compelling than usual news hook: War in the Middle East!

As you may have noticed, the price of one key lawn maintenance ingredient — gasoline for your mower — is way up lately.

As you may not have noticed yet, you’ll also be paying more for a second ingredient, fertilizer.

Both of those hits to your wallet result from war-related shipping woes (in particular, the partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz), and both are likely to drag on for some time even if the war comes to an end soon.

It’s always a good time to consider converting your surrounding green space from a carefully trimmed, lovingly landscaped “lawn” to a more natural (or, if water usage matters, xeriscaped) “yard.” But this year, it’s an even better time than usual.

Speaking of time: According to multiple surveys, the average American spends 150-175 hours a year on “lawn care.”

That’s basically a full week … and four or more “work weeks” out of every year that you COULD be doing something besides mowing, trimming, treating, raking, etc.

And then there’s the money. Americans spend $130 billion per year on “lawn care.” That’s an average of about $400 per person. “Do it yourselfers” spend less (at least in years when a mower doesn’t need replacement); people who can’t or won’t do it themselves spend more having it done. But even at the low end, you’re probably spending several days’ worth of your income every year on the matter.

Unfortunately, many of us HAVE to do that because of local laws requiring us to maintain our yards as “lawns” in the style of 17th century European aristocrats (who, of course, had slaves or servants to do the actual work for them).

By the 19th century, a “lawn” was a status symbol, a conspicuous consumption item that meant you’d “made it” and were no longer a mere peasant with just a “yard” for keeping some chickens and a garden.

Since the mid-20th century, with more general prosperity, the introduction of affordable gas-powered mowers, and the growth of suburban uniformity norms, it’s more and more become a social, and even legal, requirement.

And the costs aren’t JUST to your wallet and to the time you’d rather spend doing other things. There’s also the environment to think of.

I’m not one of those “radical environmentalists” who wants to forbid you to drive a gas-powered car or leave a porch light on at night, but the “lawn” situation is beyond silly.

Even as states and municipalities fight over water allocations from ailing rivers and strained aquifers, about 1/3 of US residential water use — three trillion gallons a year — goes to watering lawns. Yes, really.

Fertilizer runoff from lawns screws with our water supply, too — it leads to lower oxygen levels and algae blooms that harm wildlife, and contaminates human drinking water too.

Speaking of wildlife, our lawn fetish deprives critters of habitat, to their detriment and almost certainly to ours as well.

If all our lawns were consolidated into one patch, that patch would be larger than the state of Florida. We use five times as much land for lawns as we do for growing corn!

We’d all be better off — time-wise, money-wise, and environment-wise — if we abandoned “lawns” in favor of more human-, water-, animal-, and native-plant-friendly “yards.”

A necessary first step is getting governments and HOAs to let us abandon “lawn culture.”

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Since everyone seems to have a sticker shock story lately:  I rolled one of my motorcycles up to a gas pump yesterday and, for the first time ever, spent more than $5 to fill the tank (small bike, small tank — I paid $5.67 for 1.1 gallons of premium).

The obvious reason is, well, obvious.

Since the US war on Iran began, oil and gas prices have skyrocketed. It’s the flip side of the Otto T. Mallery paraphrase: “When goods don’t cross borders, armies will.”  In this case, the engagement of armies — attacks on energy facilities, the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz — is hitting the global, intertwined “supply side” of oil and its associated products rather than vice versa. Same concept, different application.

US government policy in recent years has tended toward aspirations to autarky — “economic independence” at a national level. You’ve heard the slogans. “America First!” “Buy American!” “Energy independence!”

At the level of a society or national government, autarky is a stump-stupid idea. It makes people poorer by thwarting competitive advantage.

That is: Some people in some places can do or make this or that thing less expensively than other people in other places, meaning they can sell at lower prices. The sellers do better because they sell more. The buyers do better because they pay less. Everybody wins!

Well, not exactly. Enterprises that don’t enjoy competitive advantage in Activity X don’t do better if they stick to Activity X. They lose. Instead of coming up with new business models they tend to lean on governments to “protect” them from “foreign competition” at the expense of those own governments’ consumers with tariffs and other trade barriers. In which case everybody loses … except the most politically connected enterprises with the best lobbyists.

The war on Iran is temporarily producing the same result that actual US “energy independence” — usually promoted as proposed autarky in the production/sale of oil — would deliver without “armies crossing borders.”

Almost all  oil and gas produced in the US comes from “tight formation production” — horizontally drilled wells and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) to extract the stuff from shale . That’s more expensive than just drilling a vertical well and pumping the black gold out, as is done in the Middle East.

That’s a “competitive disadvantage” for US oil companies. The only way for US oil production to be profitable is for the price per barrel to be kept artificially high through “protectionist” measures … or war. The US producers can only profit by increasing YOUR costs.

At the level of the individual American, on the other hand, a certain amount of “energy independence” — autarky! — makes a good deal of sense.

Some Americans AREN’T experiencing sticker shock at the pump because they don’t drive gas-powered vehicles. And some of those Americans aren’t paying more for the energy to power those vehicles because they’re generating that energy themselves using home solar or wind mechanisms (or, in the case of non-electric bicycles or just plain walking, their own bodies).

It’s not total autarky. “No man is an island” and solar panels, turbines, bicycles, and calories have to come from somewhere. But it’s a lot closer to autarky than daily reliance on distant sources subject to constant political machinations or military developments.

While it’s obviously difficult, if not impossible, to become the mythical entirely self-reliant “rugged individualist,” there’s something to be said for protecting your daily life from the whims of politicians who don’t understand — or maybe just don’t care — that global free trade produces maximum prosperity.

From weaning ourselves off gasoline to planting home gardens, etc., a certain amount of “autarky” is really just smart self-defense.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY