Ad Astra Per Aspera

I hate to feel this pessimistic about the long-term, but it's hard to be optimistic about the state of America. Between the Afghanistan "withdraw", Republicans continuing to side with pestilence, and Boeing having yet another delay with Starliner, there's not a lot of evidence for the civilizational competence I expect we'll need to survive the 21st century in roughly one piece. A poor night's sleep and the start of fall allergies obviously aren't helping my perception, but these things really are bad.

My personal life is basically fine; I need to wrap up my degree but I've got a decent job and have plans to move out in a few months. But all of this makes me think I should both put serious effort into minimizing potential future downsides (even well out into what I would have previously considered the long tail), as well as put some real effort into trying to construct that civilizational competence that I'm honestly not sure we ever actually had.

I tried and failed to read this article at the Niskanen Center about the failure of the small government movement the other day. Despite an initially strong analysis, it quickly fell apart into another, extremely sloppy instance of the "libertarians wish we had that kind of influence in the halls of power" think-piece genre. Despite that, it got me thinking about the failure of pro-market messaging on the mainstream.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that libertarians are atrociously bad at messaging. The fact that Dan Behrman wasn't laughed out of the 2020 primary (to say nothing of Vermin Supreme) should be more than enough evidence of that fact. Radicals of all stripes stay attached to slogans long past any marginal rhetorical return has vanished, and the "taxation is theft" types are no exception.

I can see a couple of reasons for this. First and perhaps foremost, radicals are not trying to convince moderates, but signalling their radicalism to other radicals of the same stripe. This dynamic turns radicals into extremists in real time. There's a joke that the difference between Ron Paul Republican and an anarcho-capitalist is six months. It exaggerates, but not greatly. I've seen it play out among those who didn't have other ideological obligations to forestall the process.

Second, non-mainstream ideologies select for systematizing thinkers who see and cannot accept the contradictions of modern liberalism and conservatism. If anything, libertarianism overselects for systematizing types moreso than other forms of radicalism, because it doesn't promise the loot that things like socialism and neoreaction do.

Combine these and probably many other important factors I'm not considering, and you get the current state of affairs, where politicians play lip service to free markets, but in practice just blow up the deficit with tax cuts while keeping the subsidies for their corporate cronies and leaving the regulations choking small business growth intact.

I'm not sure how to fix this, but I think a good starting point would be an emphasis on clear, precise, and complete messaging. Many, many capitalist ideas get watered-down into something that serves special interests instead of leveling the playing field. My favorite example of this is supply-side economics, which was originally about reducing the cost of goods and service by increasing production. Somehow, this got reimagined as trickle-down economics, which implies that giving money to rich people is the most efficient way to help poor people. The equation of these two could only be achieved by the loosest, muddiest of thinkers—which is to say, exactly the sort of person who thrives in Washington, D. C.

Rhetorical and terminological shortcuts may save time, but at the cost of the message. Avoid them like the plague—or how we liked to think people would avoid the plague, before we had one and found that everyone is desperate to spread disease if it interferes with brunch. Virtually any existing term or slogan is emotionally-loaded, so explain the idea as clearly as possible before introducing the word or phrase in question. This is a good strategy in general, because it pushes an audience to confront its implicit associations. But it's especially valuable if you're trying to explain what you mean by concepts like "capitalism". Simply saying the words isn't enough, because many people use conflicting definitions. Don't let your message get caught in that.

The Libertarian Party had its National Convention this weekend. Due to the pandemic, it was a virtual convention, which meant a Zoom call with a thousand contrarian rules-lawyers. By the end of it, someone had set up a website soliciting donations to buy a brewery gift card for Nicholas Sarwark, the Libertarian National Committee Chairman. Poor man has to put up with a lot and I hope he gets to relax now that he's stepping down from that position.

The Libertarian National Convention involves selecting party officers and updating the platform, but the real reason most of us care about it is that that's when delegates select the Presidential ticket. Before we talk about it, let's talk about the history of Libertarian candidacies.

Since I've gotten involved with the CubeSat team, I had to take some export control training this week. Team members have to take export control training because apparently the equipment for small, scientific research spacecraft could potentially be useful in spy satellites and missiles, so the US government wants to control its export—even though 95% of this stuff is already common knowledge internationally.

This is really reigniting the libertarian hatred of government regulation in me. Everything that interests me professionally is apparently illegal subject to numerous federal regulations that make selling products and services internationally effectively impossible. I'm not sure how launching commercial payloads to orbit counts for export purposes but it's probably going to require a full-time employee to handle. One more hurdle to starting a new aerospace company.

I don't think compliance will be a real issue for me on the team, but it's one more thing I have to keep in mind as we move forward.