The Slow Death of Privacy

I had to go to Lisbon the other day in order to renew my "freedom to travel license", aka passport.

I took the train to go there, and much to my surprise, the conductor didn't ask me for my ticket. All he needed was my identification papers. The logic being that tickets are bought online with name attached. The ticket is therefore not needed. All the conductor needs to know is the name of the person in front of him.

That makes some kind of sense, I guess. However, the conductor proved himself uninterested in my ticket. When I showed it to him before identifying myself, he dismissed it as irrelevant. His only interest was in my ID. In other words, my ID was my ticket. The ticket was nothing but a receipt.

So, this is what they have planned for us. Not only are we required to show ID when traveling internationally, we have to show ID when traveling domestically as well. When they hook our IDs up to their social credit and carbon emission matrix, compliance with the system becomes a requirement for travel.

The social contract

The Most Popular President Ever

It may come as a surprise to some that Biden is the most popular US president ever in terms of ballots cast. The man is a legend. A political giant, no less, with a whopping 81 million ballots in the 2020 election. Trump came in with 77 million ballots in the same election, which makes him the second most popular president.

In comparison to these two titans of American politics, Obama is but a midget. He scored a mere 71 million ballots back in 2008, his most popular year.

Popular votes for US presidents since 1900

By Schmarrnintelligenz - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Tearing Down the Nazi Wall

Javier Milei's victory in Argentina has the potential to blast open the so called Overton Window which has for decades limited political discourse by the fact that Nazis were branded as right wing after the Second World War.

This can be illustrated by presenting the following diagram of the typical left-right political axis.

Overton Window in politics

By placing Nazis to the right of conservatives, the political left managed to silence almost all political discussions taking place to the right of conservatives. No-one wants to be associated with Nazis, and if Nazis are right wing, then Libertarians must be extreme right wing, and Ancaps must be ultra extreme right wing. That doesn't sound good.

One way to avoid this problem has been to claim that Libertarians and Ancaps are not on this axis at all. But that only serves to further exclude them. It's much better in my mind to stick with the simple left-right axis, and simply remove the Nazi label.

Left-right axis in politics

To bolster this position, we add a graph of how much state involvement there is in the economy. This keeps the Nazis label from coming back into our chart because the Nazis were big believers in state involvement in the economy. If anyone insists on us putting the label back in, we'll point out that from an economic viewpoint, Nazis properly belong in between Communists and Social Democrats.

Having gotten rid of the Nazi label, we can put various politicians into our chart.

Political positions

Importantly, we don't put Hitler into this chart because that would reintroduce the Nazi label. Instead, we put Putin where most people would've put Hitler. No-one will object to this because most people equate Putin with Hitler, and those who object to the Putin=Hitler label see Putin as someone positioned somewhere between Conservatives and Libertarians.

With the Nazi wall now torn down, and with no mention of Nazis or Hitler, we suddenly have a much wider Overton Window. The centre in politics is no longer Social Democrats. It's located to the right of Conservatives. Libertarians are no longer extreme right wing. They are right leaning. It's the Ancaps that are right wing.

By doing this, we no longer need to talk about extremes in politics. We have wings instead. Communists are left wing. Ancaps are right wing. Everyone else is located left or right of a Conservative-Libertarian centre.

The Anger Stage has Begun

A cousin of mine, who was pro-vaccines to the point of being abrasive and pushy, just admitted to his sister, in a Facebook comment, that he was now both fully awake and very angry.

This comes only a few months after my brother in law told me in private that he was angry at the fact that he had a debilitating stroke about a year ago, shortly after his second booster.

Then, there's a survey I read about in Zerohedge where a whopping 40% of respondents said they would consider joining a class action lawsuit against the pharmaceutical industry if such a case was made.

In the US, we're seeing the lowest child vaccination rate on record. 7% of children over there are not being vaccinated.

We've had a complete outsider win the presidential race in Argentina. He's a self-proclaimed Anarcho-Capitalist, no less. Holland may soon get a populist conservative as their new prime minister.

This all points to a sea-change in public opinion. We are no longer in the denial stage. We've entered the anger stage, and if it lasts as long as the denial stage, we can look forward to two interesting years ahead.

Headache

By Phee - Pixabay, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Another Step Towards Liberty

I first wrote about Javier Milei back in August when he surprised everyone by winning the first round of Argentina's presidential race. I wrote back then that I didn't hold much hope for him winning the race, but I have been proven wrong. He won by a good margin, and he's now Argentina's new president.

This is astonishing because he's a self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist. That's as libertarian as it gets.

An interesting thing that has happened as a consequence of this is that journalists who have been quick to label libertarians as right wing in the past have suddenly become more nuanced. They realize that libertarians aren't similar to Nazis, and have started to admit this indirectly by refraining from using that label. They are instead calling him ultra-libertarian, or simply anarcho-capitalist.

Most journalists don't like libertarians, so they probably hope that Milei will make a big mess of things so that the labels 'libertarian' and 'anarcho-capitalist' will be remembered as failed philosophies. But I think the libertarian cat is now out of the bag, and I don't think it can be put back into it. The philosophy is no longer a fringe idea from a distant past. It has returned, and it's likely to become the main driver of the new era that we've just entered.

This doesn't mean that I believe Milei will have great success in his endeavour to restore Argentina's former glory. I'm not even sure he's as libertarian as he claims to be. But none of that matters. What matters is that it's now clear to everyone that there is an alternative route forward that's neither socialist nor conservative, and that route is where we're now headed.

Liberty

Mr Rogers' Sweater

Mr Rogers' Neighbourhood was a popular kids program that ran from 1968 to 2001. The opening scene was often one in which Mr Rogers comes into his house wearing a jacket. He takes his jacket off, and then he puts on a sweater.

Many have found this an odd thing to do, and I would have found it odd too had I never moved to Portugal. But here in Porto I frequently do exactly what Mr Rogers does in these opening scenes. The reason for this is that we keep our apartment relatively cool all year round. During fall, we don't mind putting on a sweater. It's a refreshing change from a long and warm summer.

Temperatures in our apartment are often no different from outside. However, it feels strange to go out wearing a sweater instead of a jacket, so we don a jacket when we go out of the house. But since the temperature outside is little different from inside, a jacket on top of our sweater is too much. The solution to this is to take off our sweaters before putting on our jackets. When we return from our errands, we put our sweaters back on.

Mr Rogers' behaviour tells me that he lived in a relatively warm climate, and that he liked to keep his house cool for this reason. As far as the climate goes, he would have felt right at home in Portugal.

Feeling comfortable in my sweater

Climate Change is Whatever the Weather is Right Now

I'm not sure if the drought that was declared a year and a half ago has been officially declared dead and buried, but the talking heads on TV are not mentioning it any more.

Even Algarve has received plenty of rain over the last few weeks, enough to fill their reservoirs. The talk is now of floods rather than drought. But it's still all due to climate change, which goes to show that climate change is whatever the weather happens to be right now.

Greta Thunberg

Eco-anxiety - By Anders Hellberg - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Leaked Documents

Classified documents have a tendency to be leaked at very opportune moments, and the latest leak from Israel is a fine example of this. According to it, there's a plan to push Gaza's entire population of 2.3 million people into Egypt.

This may at first seem like a damning report from Israel. But the rumour that has now been spread will in fact be in Israel's favour, because it will make their actual solution look reasonable in comparison.

My guess is that a solution for Gaza has already been agreed upon, and all that remains is to sell this to the public. The fact that foreigners are allowed to exit Gaza through Egypt indicate that this is so. Israel and Egypt are either in the final stages of negotiations, or they have already settled on a solution.

Most likely, Gaza will be given to Egypt on the condition that the strip is demilitarized.

Liberty