All posts by Thomas L. Knapp

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The State is at War — with the Future

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It’s turning into a long hot summer for the emerging global counter-economy.

In June and July, an international group of law enforcement agencies took down two of the largest “Dark Web” marketplaces, Hansa and Alphabay.

Then on July 25, the US Securities and Exchange Commission issued a weird, barely coherent, press release seemingly kinda sorta but not exactly declaring its own plenary authority over all things cryptocurrency.

On the heels of the SEC’s fit  of apparent glossolalia, the US Department of Justice announced its indictment of cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e for “money laundering” even as one of the site’s admins, Alexander Vinnik, was arrested in Greece.

What we’re seeing  is the latest bit of backlash from a  political establishment scared witless by technologies which threaten to make it superfluous.

A friend of mine who writes under the pseudonym dL notes that “[t]he trajectory of technology follows a repeated path. When first introduced, it gives an asymmetric advantage to the individual. Over time, the state catches up and the asymmetric advantage shifts to the state.” Maybe he’s right. Maybe the political class will be able to nip a bright future in the bud and maintain its grip on power.

On the other hand,  Victor Hugo seemed quite sure that “one withstands the invasion of armies; one does not withstand the invasion of ideas.”

We stand at the doorway of a future featuring money without borders, work and trade without permission. That future represents existential crisis for the political class: The end of the state as we know it. Absent the ability to tax and regulate its host, the parasite known as government starves and dies.

The situation is equally dire for the rest of us.

High-profile takedowns like the Silk Road, Alphabay, Hansa and BTC-e, large as they loom in the moment, are mere speed bumps. The road to the future remains open, and the only way to plausibly close that road off entirely is to essentially pull the plug on every technological development since the introduction of the personal computer. What would that look like? Think the Dark Ages, the Great Depression, and North Korea all rolled into one.

There’s no doubt that the American and global political classes are willing to go there. Any number of regimes have done so on a temporary and semi-effectual basis in times of unrest, and American politicians have seriously proposed ideas like an “Internet Kill Switch.” The excuse for such proposals is to protect us from terrorists and drug dealers, but make no mistake: Their real purpose is to protect our rulers  from us.

That’s what’s at stake, folks.  We can free ourselves or we can return to the caves. There is no third alternative.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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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Send in the Clown: Scaramucci versus the Leakers

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Русский: Comedie italienne (Arlequin, Scaramou...
Русский: Comedie italienne (Arlequin, Scaramouche, Capitan, Mezzetin) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In Italian  comic theater, Scaramouche is a clown, the boastful poltroon whose antics frequently bring him to grief.  Presumably new White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci’s name is related  to that tradition.

His personality seems tailored to it as well: He’s off to a running start with the boast that he’s going to put a stop to White House leaks. How? “I’ll fire everybody, that’s how I’m going to do it. You’re either going to stop leaking or you’re going to be fired.”

That would be cool, if he meant it and if the people he pink-slipped wouldn’t be replaced. But even draconian measures like mass firings won’t stop the leaks.

In Washington information is currency and there will always be staffers who are willing to spend a little of it in pursuit of their own careers and political goals. A White House job is at most a four to eight year gig, and unless you’re the president himself (maybe even then!) the goal is to use it to move up in the world. A positive relationship with the press comes in handy on that front.

Also, a good many White House leaks are approved of, and perhaps even originate with, people Scaramucci can’t fire. That includes one Donald Trump, aka the Leaker in Chief, aka POTUS. Sometimes it makes sense to let a piece of information — for example, a trial balloon concerning a tentative policy shift — come out via leak instead of formal public announcement so that it can be quietly quashed in the event of negative public response.

Scaramucci will fail in his boast. The White House will continue to leak like a sieve. He’ll either get used to it and turn his attention to other matters, or get fired over it, or both.

That’s a good thing. It’s exactly what Scaramucci would want if he subscribed to the high school civics version of politics. Per that mythos, “the people” are boss and Donald Trump and Anthony Scaramucci are mere hirelings. Any information they have, we’re entitled to, and leaks are as good a way to get it to us as any.

Of course Scaramucci and other members of the political class don’t believe that for a minute. To them, “the people” are so many piggy banks to be emptied and cows to be milked in pursuit of power.

Fortunately for us, reality has come into alignment with the mythos. The age of government secrecy is over. If Scaramucci doesn’t believe me, he might want to ask Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, or Julian Assange.  As Jesus said, “there is nothing hid, which shall not be manifested; neither was any thing kept secret, but that it should come abroad.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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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Healthcare: A House Divided Cannot Stand

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The latest healthcare initiative from the Trump administration and the Republican Party’s leaders in Congress seems set to sink just like the last version. Mitch McConnell can’t seem to round up the votes to push it through the Senate, if anything the House is more likely to tear apart than pass the Senate version, and the White House isn’t getting anywhere with its attempt to mobilize the nation’s governors behind attempts to modify the Affordable Care Act, aka “ObamaCare.”

Good. Even the most ambitious proposal up for serious consideration —  repealing ObamaCare and reverting to pre-2010 rules — is just nibbling around the edges of the problems of maximizing care availability and minimizing costs, as was ObamaCare itself. Sooner or later (and the sooner the better) one of two radical solutions will be adopted.

Note: “Radical” does not mean “extreme.” Per Oxford Dictionaries, it means “relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something; far-reaching or thorough.”

Let me define the problem by mangling a famous Abraham Lincoln speech: A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this healthcare system cannot endure, permanently, half government-run and half kind-sorta private. I do not expect healthcare to disappear — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.

The two real alternatives before us are:

Adopting a “single-payer” system in which the state takes complete top-to-bottom charge of healthcare; or

Radically reducing — even eliminating — the state’s role in healthcare.

As a libertarian, I support the latter course. Every government involvement in healthcare, starting with guild socialism and occupational licensure in the late 19th century (at the urging of the American Medical Association, to prop up profits for doctors) and proceeding through socialized healthcare for veterans (the VA), socialized healthcare for the elderly (Medicare), socialized healthcare for the poor (Medicaid) and partially socialized healthcare for everyone (from the Health Maintenance Organization Act to ObamaCare) has impeded care and raised costs at the expense of patients. A constitutional amendment requiring separation of medicine and state would be the best possible outcome.

But that seems unlikely to happen, doesn’t it? The big business players in healthcare (pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, “insurance” companies, et al.) would rather use government to protect their monopolies and pass burgeoning administrative costs on to the rest of us than compete in a free market. And the customers (patients) themselves have good reason to distrust what’s been falsely advertised to them as a “private sector” system.

I predict that the US government will adopt a “single-payer” healthcare system no later than 2030, and probably sooner. And while I oppose that outcome and believe its results will be far worse than a real free-market system would produce, I also suspect that those results will be better than the current half-fish, half-fowl, largely socialized but with fake “private” players sucking it dry, system.

Ultimately, it must be free-market or “single-payer.” Either way, I mostly just wish the politicians would stop tinkering and make up their minds.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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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