Around the US, a number of state legislatures have passed, or ar working to pass, various laws which would require people to “verify” their ages such that those under different ages would find themselves excluded from some or all computer and Internet access.

It all started, of course, with Internet pornography. That’s the easiest sector to boost an “it’s for the chillllllllllldren” propaganda campaign for.

It quickly escalated to social media platforms because woke rightists agree with woke leftists that the wrong words constitute violence and must be controlled “for the chillllllllllldren” (they just disagree on which words are the wrong words), and because many parents are willing to hand off their job of supervising their kids to the state, expanding the base of support for government controls.

Because California is the “authoritarian law idea? Hold my beer!” state, governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation last October which requires operating system providers to collect age information on each new user account, and provide an API that lets Internet platforms and app developers access that information so as to exclude users Gavin Newsom doesn’t think should be using those platforms and apps.

It’s almost, but not quite, funny.

It’s almost funny because it won’t take the chillllllllllldren in question more than a few minutes to figure out ways around this kind of thing. “Age verification” laws are, and always have been, political fantasy, as you know yourself if you were ever a 19-year-old college student who used a fake ID to get into a nightclub.

It’s not quite funny because it isn’t, and never was, about “the chillllllllllldren.”

There’s an old and accurate saying in the right to keep and bear arms community: “Gun control isn’t about guns, it’s about control.” Victim disarmament (“gun control”) laws only control the behavior of those who obey laws. Those who don’t care about the government’s background check and waiting period requirements will still get guns. The people who do obey laws? They get to endure the inconvenience and endangerment, all so that politicians feel like their rings have been sufficiently kissed.

Unfortunately, lots of people obey even evil and idiotic laws. Equally unfortunately, the big players in any given industry usually find it easier and cheaper to just comply with, rather than contest, those evil and idiotic laws.

Which means that even though these “age verification” laws won’t be more than a minor inconvenience to the 13-year-old who wants to view porn, gamble, post mean tweets, the average computer user will once again just do as our rulers say, and maybe even convince himself or herself it’s “for the chillllllllllldren.” Society will become generally a little less free and a little more controlled.

All, however, is not lost. In addition to fake IDs for “age verification,” Virtual Private Networks to connect to sites/apps from areas without such laws, etc., one major computer operating system family inherently puts itself beyond the reach of those laws.

That operating system family is called Linux. It comes in hundreds of flavors (“distributions”), most of which are at least as easy to acquire, install, configure, use, and maintain as the bigger players (Microsoft Windows and Apple MacOS). Most “distributions” are built and maintained by communities of volunteers, and many of those communities have already announced they won’t comply with California’s law or others like it.

If you’re not interested in being an obedient serf, give Linux a look. And take a moment to thank the cypherpunks, hacktivists, Linux developers, and other freedom warriors who’ve been fighting — and beating — government control over encryption, cryptocurrency, and everything else for decades now.

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.

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On May 11, a new law went into effect in Florida, “allowing” businesses to round the amounts charged for cash purchases to the nearest nickel.

Really? Nothing more important than this for our masters in Tallahassee to spend their time on?

Don’t get me wrong. The practice in question makes sense:

Last November, the US Mint stopped producing pennies for circulation. That seems like  a sound decision, since the cost of producing the one-cent coins came to nearly four cents each.

Perhaps the production cost could have been brought down by using different materials, but after more than a century of fiat currency inflation, we’re well past the point where most people can be bothered to pick a stray penny up off the sidewalk anyway.

When I was a kid, one could put a penny in a machine and get a gumball, or buy a piece of “penny candy” at the store counter. According to my handy-dandy AI assistant, those treats now cost anywhere from a nickel to a quarter each.

Because new pennies aren’t being minted (and many Americans are socking the pennies they have away as collector items), the retail sector is experiencing a penny “shortage.”  If your purchase comes to $1.98 or $5.01, and you’re paying in cash rather than with a debit card, there may not be pennies in the till to make correct change.

So, rounding. Under the Florida law, retailers can round cash purchases up or down (whichever is closest) to make that $1.98 into two dollars even, or that $5.01 into $5.00.

Very nice, very neat, and goodbye to those “take a penny, leave a penny” trays on convenience store counters. While retailers MIGHT game their pricing to make individual items come in at the “round up” point, most people don’t buy just one item anyway, so I doubt we’ll see a general price increase out of it.

But why on Earth would merchants need a law to “allow” this?

Early on, it seems reasonable for stores to put up signs notifying customers that their cash purchases will be rounded up or down to the “nearest nickel.” Customers would be free to either accept those terms or to shop elsewhere.

Over time, it would just become accepted practice, like handing over $6.00 for a gallon of gas even though the price is technically only $5.999 per gallon (I’m pricing in the likely continuing impact of the Iran fiasco).

A law “allowing” this kind of obvious, transparent, and not dishonest practice isn’t just useless, it’s damaging.

Even when framed as “voluntary” — as this one is –unnecessary laws “allowing” behaviors already unquestionably “allowed” (by common sense and conventional morality) tend to nudge  the public toward an “everything not required is forbidden” mindset in which we instinctively seek permission from our rulers for every action, trivial or momentous.

And that mindset widely adopted, leads us inexorably toward Mussolini’s definition of fascism: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

But with rounding, my two cents come to nought, don’t they?

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

Senate Republicans, the Associated Press reports, plan to give the Secret Service $1 billion for “security upgrades” to president Donald Trump’s  (supposedly $400 million, supposedly donation-funded) White House ballroom project.

After an assassination attempt outside the Washington Hilton ballroom hosting the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April, Republicans began boosting the ballroom itself as a presidential safety solution.

Every time the president ventures forth to environments inhabited or surrounded by the hoi polloi, they point out, the Secret Service has to create bespoke environments within otherwise open facilities  to ensure that he’s not shot at, yelled at, glared at, or annoyed. Better to keep him in a facility that’s controlled 24/7 for his safety and convenience.

That’s fair, and it occurs to me that, done rightly, adding a secure ballroom to the White House could benefit not just presidential security but public convenience. My proposal:

Build the ballroom. Make it, and the White House grounds, as secure as humanly possible. If necessary, enlarge the White House grounds (perhaps by incorporating Lafayette Park) to make room for more amenities. We want future presidents to be comfortable, because the other half of the deal is:

On January 20 of the year following his or her election, immediately following the  inauguration ceremony, each new president enters the White House grounds, and does not leave until, four years later, he or she leaves for home or to travel over to Capitol Hill for re-inauguration.

Don’t make it a suggestion. Make it a law.

The president would be very safe. Instead of constantly navigating, analyzing, and securing new environments, the Secret Service could focus on a layout they knew like the backs of their hands and could pre-approve and carefully monitor any changes to. No security system is impenetrable, but this one would be a very hard target.

As for the public, we’d no longer be inconvenienced by having the president wander around the country at will and at our expense, disrupting every community he or she visits.

No more airport/airspace closures for Air Force One.

No more roads and streets shut down for presidential motorcades.

No more swarms of Secret Service agents and mobs of other law enforcement agents sealing off golf course, fairgrounds, universities, etc. because The Very Special Important Person is going to be there.

There’s nothing a president HAS to do that requires him or her to leave 1600 Pennsylvania NW and its attached grounds.

The chief executive’s job is to sign or veto bills (which can be done at the Oval Office desk), supervise various departments (whose heads can come to the White House for cabinet meetings, etc.), negotiate treaties (such negotiations are usually handled by envoys, but other heads of state, etc. could visit the White House as necessary), and occasionally report to Congress on the “State of the Union” (which can be, and for many years was,  done via  written report rather than by personal visit to a joint session of Congress).

Safer president, less public inconvenience, and much cheaper. It’s a win-win.

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.

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