Mediaboss Marketing

Last week in TAC, Zoltan Istvan wrote about The Growing World of Libertarian Transhumanism linking the transhumanist movement with all of its featureslike cyborgs, human robots and designer babiesto the ideas of liberty. To say Mr. Istvan is mistaken in his assessment is an understatement. Transhumanism should be rejected by libertarians as an abomination of human evolution.

We begin with Mr. Istvans definition of transhumanism:

transhumanism is the international movement of using science and technology to radically change the human being and experience. Its primary goal is to deliver and embrace a utopian techno-optimistic worlda world that consists of biohackers, cyborgists, roboticists, life extension advocates, cryonicists, Singularitarians, and other science-devoted people.

The ultimate task, however, is nothing less than overcoming biological human death and to solve all humanitys problems. Throughout much of Mr. Istvans work on this issue, he seems to think these ideas are perfectly compatible with libertarianismself-evident evenso he doesnt care to elaborate for his befuddled readers.

While most advocates of liberty could be considered, as Matt Ridley coined it, rational optimistsmeaning that generally we are optimistic, but not dogmatic, about progressit is easy to get into a state in which everything that is produced by the market is good per se and every new technology is hailed as the next step on the path of progress. In this sense, these libertarians become what Rod Dreher has called Technological Men. For them, choice matters more than what is chosen. [The Technological Man] is not concerned with what he should desire; rather, he is preoccupied with how he can acquire or accomplish what he desires.

Transhumanists including Mr. Istvan are a case in point. In his TAC article he not only endorses such things as the defeat of death, but even robotic hearts, virtual reality sex, and telepathy via mind-reading headsets. Need more of his grand ideas? How about brain implants ectogenesis, artificial intelligence, exoskeleton suits, designer babies, gene editing tech? At no point he wonders if we should even strive for these technologies.

When he does acknowledge potential problems he has quick (and crazy) solutions at hand: For example, what would happen if people never die, while new ones are coming into the world in abundance? His solution to the fear of overpopulation: eugenics. It is here where we see how libertarian Mr. Istvan truly is. When his political philosophythe supposedly libertarian onecomes into conflict with his idea of transhumanism, he suddenly drops the former and argues in favor of state-controlled breeding (or, as he says, controlled breeding by non-profit organizations such as the WHO, which is, by the way, state financed). I cautiously endorse the idea of licensing parents, a process that would be little different than getting a drivers licence. Parents who pass a series of basic tests qualify and get the green light to get pregnant and raise children.

The most frustrating thing is how similar he sounds to communists and socialists in his arguments. In most articles you read by transhumanists, you can see the dream of human perfection. Mr. Istvan says so himself: Transhumanists want more guarantees than just death, consumerism, and offspring. Much More. They want to be better, smarter, strongerperhaps even perfect and immortal if science can make them that way.

Surely it is the goal of transhumanists that, in their world, the average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. You can just edit the genes of the embryo in the way that they are as intelligent as Aristotle, as poetic as Goethe, and as musically talented as Mozart. There are two problems, though: First, the world would become extremely boring, consisting only of perfect human beings who are masters at everything (which perhaps would make human cooperation superfluous). Second, that quote was famously uttered by the socialist Leon Trotsky.

As Ludwig von Mises wrote sarcastically, the socialist paradise will be the kingdom of perfection, populated by completely happy supermen. This has always been the mantra of socialists, starting with utopian thinkers like Charles Fourier, but also being embraced by the scientific ones like Marx, who derived his notion of history in which communism is the final stage of humanity from Hegel. Hegel himself believed in the man-godnot in the way that God became man through Jesus, but that man could become God one day. Intentionally or not, transhumanists sound dangerously similar to that. What they would actually create would be the New Soviet Man through bio-engineering and total environmental control as the highest social goal. In other words, you get inhuman ideological tyranny taken to a whole new level.

It should be noted that sometimes transhumanists recognize this themselvesbut if they do, their solutions only make things worse (much worse). Take Adam Zaretsky as example, who says that these new human beings shouldnt be perfect: Its important to make versions of transgenic human anatomy that are not based on idealism. But his solution is frightening: The idea is that you take a gene, say for pig noses, or ostrich anuses, or aardvark tongue, and you paste that into a human sperm, a human egg, a human zygote. A baby starts to form. And: We could let it flow into our anatomy, and these peoplewho yes, are humansshould be appreciated for who and what they are, after they are forced to be born in a really radically strange way. Its no surprise that Rod Dreher calls Mr. Zaretsky a sick monster, because he truly seems to be one when it comes to his transhumanist vision. He wants to create handicapped human beings on purpose.

If this were what libertarians think should happen, it would be sad (thankfully its mostly not). As Jeff Deist notes, it is important to remember that liberty is natural and organic and comports with human action. It doesnt require a new man. Transhumanists may say that the introduction of their idea is inevitable (in Istvans words, Whether people like it or not, transhumanism has arrived) but that is not true. And in this sense, it is time for libertarians to argue against the notion of extreme transhumanism. Yes, the market has brought it about and yes, the state shouldnt prohibit it (though giving your baby a pig nose could certainly be a violation of rights), but still, one shouldnt be relativist or even nihilist about such frightening developments. It would be a shame if the libertarian maxim of Everyone should be able to do whatever one wants to (as long as no one is hurt by it) becomes Everyone should do whatever one can do just because it is possible.

Finally, it comes as no surprise that transhumanists are largely, if not all, atheists (or as Mr. Istvan says: Im an atheist, therefore Im a transhumanist. This just proves what the classical liberal historian Lord Acton talked about when he said, Progress, the religion of those who have none. In the end, transhumanism is the final step to get God out of the way. It would be the continuation of what Richard Weaver wrote about in Ideas Have Consequences: Instead of seeing nature, the world and life overall as a means to get to know God, humans in the last centuries have become accustomed to seeing the world as something that is only there for humans to take and use for their own pleasures. Transhumanism would be the final step of this process: the conquest of death.

You dont have to be religious to find this abhorrent. As we have seen, it would be the end to all religion, to human cooperation overall, in all likelihood to liberty itself, and even the good-bye to humanity. It would be the starting point of the ultimate dystopia.

Kai Weiss is an International Relations student and works for the Austrian Economics Center and Hayek Institute, two libertarianthink tanks based in Vienna, Austria.

Visit link:
Transhumanism Is Not Libertarian, It's an Abomination | The ... - The American Conservative

It seems to me that whenever North Korea launches one of their missiles or decides they are going test another nuclear device, the rest of the world loses their collective mind, and needlessly so. North Korea is no threat to the United States, or anyone, but itself.

Let me explain. On one hand people seem to have the impression that North Korea is some grave threat to the West that needs to be stopped; on the other, people have this view of them as some unintelligent, cartoonish throwback to the Cold War, undermining its own credibility when it misidentifies target cities on propaganda maps. While their military is large, and they indeed could cause some damage, nuclear weapons or not, their hardware is mostly forty years out of date and they have no real way to project power outside their immediate surroundings, even if they develop a working ICBM. And as for the perception of North Korea run by stupid, crazy people, I completely reject that. They came out of the Cold War largely unscathed (and remain so) culturally and ideologically, while most other communist regimes collapsed or evolved towards capitalism. They are a nuclear power, a title only a handful of nations can claim, and they have a propaganda machine so good the regime essentially brainwashed 25 million people into believing their dear leader is a god.

All of this is to say the idea that North Korea is run by crazy people that will nuke either the States or their southern neighbor the very instant they have the capability is absurd. Rather than reckless belligerence, they have shown themselves to be calculating and precise, knowing just what buttons to press, and how hard to press them, without causing a metaphorical detonation. The bombardment of Yeonpyeong and the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan show pretty good examples of this. Causing casualties on your enemies without incurring any of your own shows a pretty remarkable amount of intelligence in my book, and wantonly nuking your enemies is the exact opposite way to go about that. I absolutely guarantee the regime running North Korea is smart enough to know they will lose a war they start with either the United States and/or South Korea, and they most certainly know that if they use a nuclear weapon in an offensive fashion, South Korea would become an island soon after.

For all the decades of posturing and chest beating, the Korean War hasnt resumed. Much the same way the USSR and the US had the means and never exercised them, the same way India and Pakistan have the capability but remain fallout free, so too will the Korean Peninsula remain intact, as long as the participating parties continue to use some restraint.

So, what can we do? Im all for sanctions as a moral action, but practically, North Korea has shown they will carry on regardless; attacking them would only cause an unneeded and bloody war. I really think the best thing we can do is ignore them. Their whole shtick is based on aggression by the West, and we feed that every time the news cycle starts interviewing generals about the best course of action to deal with the regimes latest aggression. I am sure that North Korea would continue to pump out their anti-west rhetoric regardless of whether we give it fuel or not, but at that point we could at least claim the moral high ground, and they would at least have to go through the effort of making up stories on their own.

I mentioned at the beginning of this piece that I think the biggest threat to the regime of North Korea is itself. The libertarian community believes that communism doesnt work. It hasnt yet, and if we truly believe that, we must believe that an oppressive regime like that of the DPRK will eventually collapse and undo itself. As the rest of the world continues to progress around their island of stagnation and misery, and ever more sharply juxtaposes the situations of the North and South, the more the people of the North will see what the South has and start demanding it for themselves. We should certainly be there to help pick up the pieces, but the people of the North need to want change before we can do any good.

Image: Getty

* ColoradoYeah runs the libertarian leaning coloradoyeah.com.

Like Loading...

Here is the original post:
The North Korea Problem - Being Libertarian

RALEIGH The N.C. Libertarian Party has picked three Triad residents for leadership roles.

Clement Erhardt of Greensboro is the party's treasurer and the slate of at-large members includesAngela Anderson of Winston-Salem andJ.J. Summerell of Greensboro.

Susan Hogarth of Raleigh has been named the Libertarian Party of North Carolina's new chairwoman.

N.C. Libertarian officials elected a new state party chair and a slate of officers during the party's annual convention held in Lake Lure, according to a release.

Nathan Phillips of Asheville was named vice chair, Brent DeRidder of Hampstead will serve as secretary, and the remaing at-large members are Matt Clements of Carrboro, Chris Dooley of Charlotte, James Hines of Asheville, Amy Lamont of Oxford, Ryan Teeter of Hampstead, Andreas Steude of Cary, and Alec Willson of Asheville.

Summerell was the Libertarian candidate for North Carolina's 1st Congressional District in 2016. Incumbent U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield, a Wilson Democrat, won re-election with 68.6 percent of the vote, defeating Republican candidate and Stantonsburg town councilman Powell Dew (28.9 percent) and Summerell, who picked up 2.4 percent of the vote.

The Libertarian Party, formed in 1971, is the third-largest political party in the U.S. and North Carolina, as well as the only ballot-recognized alternative party in the state.

See more here:
Triad residents among those tapped for posts in NC Libertarian Party - Winston-Salem Journal

From staff reports

RALEIGH - Susan Hogarth of Raleigh has been named the Libertarian Party of North Carolina's new chairwoman.

N.C. Libertarian officials elected a new state party chair and a slate of officers during the party's annual convention held in Lake Lure, according to a release.

"I'm honored to have been chosen as chair of the Libertarian Party North Carolina," Hogarth said. "I couldn't be more excited at the prospect of working with all the intelligent and hardworking folks just elected to the executive committee."

Nathan Phillips of Asheville was named vice chair, Brent DeRidder of Hampstead will serve as secretary, Clement Erhardt of Greensboro is the party's treasurer, and at-large members are Angela Anderson of Winston-Salem, Matt Clements of Carrboro, Chris Dooley of Charlotte, James Hines of Asheville, Amy Lamont of Oxford, Ryan Teeter of Hampstead, Andreas Steude of Cary, J.J. Summerell of Greensboro and Alec Willson of Asheville.

Summerell was the Libertarian candidate for North Carolina's 1st Congressional District in 2016. Incumbent U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield, a Wilson Democrat, won re-election with 68.6 percent of the vote, defeating Republican candidate and Stantonsburg town councilman Powell Dew (28.9 percent) and Summerell, who picked up 2.4 percent of the vote.

The Libertarian Party, formed in 1971, is the third-largest political party in the U.S. and North Carolina, as well as the only ballot-recognized alternative party in the state.

Read more here:
Hogarth tapped to lead NC Libertarian Party - The Wilson Times (subscription)

Invading your privacy without your permission is essentially theft, yet it happens every day on the internet and without consequence. Large corporations, law enforcement, the government, and just about anyone who knows how to use the internet, can easily obtain your personal information in a matter of seconds.

It comes as no surprise that anything you intentionally post online can be used to your detriment, but did you know that information brokers are collecting your personal information regardless of what youve decided to share yourself?

They use information such as your phone number, address and even your social security number to line their pockets. Details about you that cant be found for free are provided by information brokers in exchange for a small fee, allowing them to get rich on the invasion of peoples privacy.

To see how easy it is to obtain someones address, try running a Google search of your name and the city you live in. The results might surprise you but whats truly shocking is that they serve as only one example of why you need to care deeply about internet surveillance.

Here are some other reasons you should be concerned:

Even if you decide to use an alias online, it wont be very effective at hiding your identity or protecting your data. At some point or another, youll probably have to make a payment online or sign up for something that requires you to provide your address and phone number anyways.

Websites, as well as advanced users, can also track your IP address, which provides your location. By knowing your location, they can ultimately determine who you are, so using an alias wont help. You can try to use public Wi-Fi so your home address cant be determined by your IP address, but theres still the issue of surveillance.

Hackers can use unsecured networks, such as public Wi-Fi, as an access point to spy on your online activities and obtain your personal information. They can see your files on your computer, cell phone, or tablet, which may provide clues about your identity.

The invasion of your privacy online isnt just a violation of your personal freedoms; it can also put you at risk. Criminals often use the internet to their advantage because the ease of retrieving information about people makes it easy for them to commit crimes and even stalk people. Identity theft is one of the main issues you need to be concerned about since your social security, full name, address, and phone number are within anyones reach.

As mentioned above, other personally identifiable information can also be located by those who know enough about technology to hack into your data. For example, if a hacker is spying on your online activities and you visit a website and enter your debit card number, they now have those details. Account logins are especially vulnerable and accounts tend to contain enough of your personal data for a criminal to commit identity theft.

Another concern is that information about you listed on the web is sometimes linked to your family members, making it a possibility for them to be targeted as well, even if they dont use the internet.

Though internet surveillance is common and not entirely avoidable, there is a way you can maintain your digital freedom. A proxy service is one of the best ways to protect yourself, as itll hide your IP address and at the very least provide a level of anonymity you wont have otherwise.

When you use a proxy service, youre able to connect to a remote server thats encrypted, essentially securing your internet connection while masking your IP address. Since the same remote server is used by a number of other users, your identity cant be traced.

Any data about you that is already present online (for example, that which has been collected by information brokers) will still exist, but youll be able to put a halt to the majority of future surveillance efforts.

Do you have any additional advice that can help others avoid internet surveillance? Let us know in the comments below.

* Carla is an online security expert and freedom advocate. In her spare time, she often finds herself engrossed in reading blog posts, particularly those that focus on stemming the tide of growing government interventionism.

Image: New Eastern Outlook

Like Loading...

View original post here:
Why You Need To Care Deeply About Internet Surveillance - Being Libertarian