"Today, the road to tyranny is being paved by a collectivist-Industrial complex -- a dangerous brew of wealthy, international NGO's, progressive do-gooders, corporate cronies and sympathetic political elites."

Thought provoking...

They make several good points, such as this one:

They deride the notion that "private sector data collection practices must be scrutinized and tightly regulated inthe name of 'protecting consumers,' at the same time as government’s warrantless surveillance and collection of private citizens’ Internet data has dramatically increased."

What a mess.

Uh... NGOs and do-gooders are the problem? Net neutrality is the problem? Not, like, corporations that have no accountability whatsoever about what they're doing with your data? Or countries that veritably give away valuable monopolies such as broadband to private interests for a fraction of what they're worth?

You can always count on the Pauls to be right about some things and crazy about most things.

I tried really hard to get behind the Pauls and their supporters about government surveillance -- aka security theater -- which I agree is an intrusion of personal liberty for essentially no gain. But by this logic, it seems that if the government would merely auction off the right to strip-search you at the airport to a private company instead of doing it themselves -- a private company that could not be audited or overseen by the government OR an NGO -- then the fact of being strip-searched would be perfectly fine.

Part of the problem is there are quite a few libertarians who really do believe such a thing: not simply that government action is immoral, but that private action is inherently moral by dint of it's separation from the state, regardless of what that action is!

Do such libertarians not believe in the concept of moral hazard?

Do doctrinaire people ever?

Yes, many doctrinaire economists believe in the concept of moral hazard. :)

So I think I earned the "Flame war maker" achievement with this post. On a related note, this is PFK:

https://projectmeshnet.org/

@Dave, you should post your meshnet on the RITA site since DOT wants to use mesh networking for future cars

Uh... NGOs and do-gooders are the problem? Net neutrality is the problem? Not, like, corporations that have no accountability whatsoever about what they're doing with your data? Or countries that veritably give away valuable monopolies such as broadband to private interests for a fraction of what they're worth?

If you believe that government is already controlled by a select few corporations, then yes, it's worse, because the government defends those corporations at the taxpayer's expense, under criminal law rather than civil law.

If you have a system that's actually fully transparent, then you can implement a system where the free market can actually solve these problems, instead of being crippled.

By making airport security private, it's easier to sue a security company for inappropriate conduct, whereas trying to litigate against the TSA, good luck proving your case.

Tort reform is sorely needed to actually make a free market work. It is far too expensive to litigate when someone does something that violates your rights. If there was a system that made it extremely efficient (cheap and quick) to resolve non-frivolous disputes, and strongly punished frivolous suits, that wasn't driven mostly by technicalities and the size of your pockets, you would see a system emerge where corporations and people would be less likely to violate the rights of others, because the cost would be prohibitive to do so. Instead we have a system that basically limits liability, as it's very rare for a company to lose a lawsuit that would bankrupt them.

A libertarian will argue that the EPA isn't needed, because it's ineffective. In a free market, if a company destroys your water supply, they'll need to compensate you for this. Unfortunately, until something gives and the legal system is streamlined for such cases, bad government regulations and inefficient use of tax dollars are what are stuck with.

The Pauls get that our country has strayed so far from freedom and liberty, that a strong push needs to be made in that direction to correct an imbalance that has gone far down a slippery slope of eroding our rights.

If you want a disturbing look at US policy on expansion, war, and economics, spend an hour and read http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/geopolitics-united-states-part-1-inevitable-empire and part 2 as well. While the historian in troutgirl will likely have plenty of things to debate about its contents, it's worth a read to get a perspective that's far different than I received in any of my history classes.

Adam, your video explains exactly the libertarian point of view of when government goes wrong.

That's why I chose that video.

Governments can be just as guilty of moral hazard as corporations. :)

"Military-industrial complex" is the triple moral hazard (government, military, and industry) that incentivizes large numbers of people to create war.