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Online Liberty Campaign: "Reset The Net" on June 5, 2014

Sick of government surveillance spoiling the freedom and fun of the Internet? You're not alone. And now there's something you can do about it. 

On June 5th, 2014 â€” the anniversary of the first NSA surveillance story revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden — a worldwide coalition of tens of thousands of Internet users, companies and organizations is pledging to "Reset The Net." 

Reset The Net is a day of global action to secure and encrypt the web to shut out the government's mass surveillance capabilities. Tens of thousands of Internet activists, companies and organizations — from across the political spectrum and across the technology industry — have committed to preserve free speech and basic rights on the Internet by taking simple steps to shut off the government's mass surveillance capabilities. And you can join them.

Participating organizations, sites and companies include the Libertarian Party, Fight For The Future (who initiated the campaign), reddit, CREDO Mobile, Namecheap, Imgur, Greenpeace, FireDogLake, Thunderclap, DuckDuckGo, Disconnect.Me, Demand Progress, Access, Free Press, Restore the Fourth, AIDS Policy Project, PolitiHacks, OpenMedia, Free Software Foundation, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Code Pink, Popular Resistance, Participatory Politics Foundation, BoingBoing, Public Knowledge, Amicus, New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Student Net Alliance, and the Center for Democracy and Technology.

These and other organizations will participate by publicizing the effort and by improving their own security and/or promoting privacy tools to their followers.

Individual Internet users can act with Reset The Net in several important ways. They can get and install a free "privacy pack" of safe open-source software tools that make end-to-end encryption easy, as well as learning other ways to secure their online life against intrusive surveillance. Information on how to do this will be available from Reset The Net. 

Individuals are also invited to sign a petition supporting online freedom and pledging to participate in the campaign. So far nearly 20,000 people have done so. Reset The Net hopes to have at least 50,000 signatures by the June 5 kick-off date. 

Reset The Net will offer supporters a splash screen they can run at their web sites on June 5. These screens will potentially reach millions with a call for privacy and a link to the privacy tools pack.

Twitter users can join the #ResetTheNet Twitter brigade to further publicize the idea. Still more suggestions are at the Reset The Net website. 

"The NSA is exploiting weak links in Internet security to spy on the entire world, twisting the Internet we love into something it was never meant to be," says Reset The Net. "We can't stop targeted attacks, but we can stop mass surveillance, by building proven security into the everyday Internet."

For more information watch the short ResetTheNet.org campaign video and visit ResetTheNet.org. 

"The Libertarian Party enthusiastically joins Reset the Net," said Carla Howell, Political Director for the Libertarian National Committee. "Over thirty Libertarian candidates running for federal office this year have pledged to shut down the NSA and invite Edward Snowden to return home a free man. He should be granted an immediate presidential pardon, awarded the American Medal of Freedom, and applauded for blowing the whistle on the NSA's abuse of the Constitution."

"Freedom to be yourself is everything. No government can take that away from us, so we're going to use the power we have to take it back," said Tiffiniy Cheng, co-founder of Fight for the Future. "Now that we know how mass surveillance works, we know how to stop it. That's why people all over the world are going to work together to use encryption everywhere and make it too hard for any government to conduct mass surveillance. There are moments in history where people and organizations must choose whether to stand on the side of freedom or tyranny. On June 5th, the Internet will show which side it's on."

New Poll: Americans Want A More Libertarian Foreign Policy

Nearly half of the public, and a strong plurality, say the United States government should intervene less in the internal affairs of other nations, as libertarians have long urged. 

That's the finding of a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted April 23 to 27 and released May 1.

Fully forty-seven percent said the U.S. should "become less active in world affairs." Only 19 percent — less than one in five — said it should be more active, and just 30 percent said it should remain at the current level.

This is consistent with a Pew Research Center poll we reported on last year, which found a record 52 percent of Americans agreeing that the United States "should mind its own business internationally." That figure is a 40-year low. 

Notes the political newspaper The Hill: "The latest numbers are a stark contrast from public opinion WSJ and NBC News recorded just after 9/11, when 40 percent of people wanted the U.S. to engage more of the world and only 14 percent wanted it to be less active." 

The WSJ/NBC poll also found support for President Obama's interventionist foreign policy extremely low. Only a bit over a third approved of his handling of foreign policy. Just 37 percent said they approve of Obama's handling of Russia's intervention in Ukraine. 

The entire poll can be seen here.

The Piketty Challenge to Capitalism

Seems like everybody is talking about French left-wing economist Thomas Piketty's new book Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

It rocketed to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

Lefty pundit Paul Krugman hails it as "the most important economics book of the year — and maybe the decade."

An Esquire review was entitled "The Most Important Book of the Twenty-First Century."

New York magazine described Piketty as a "Rock-Star Economist." 

The title of an article on Bill Moyers website crowed: "Piketty's Bombshell Book Blows Up Libertarian Fantasies."

Even the Pope tweeted a thumbs-up to the Piketty thesis: "Inequality is the source of social evil."

No doubt about it: proponents of massive government intervention and coercive wealth distribution are praising Thomas Piketty's new book to the skies. 

Piketty's tome is seen as a devastating criticism of the very fundamentals of capitalism. Basically, Piketty examines an enormous amount of historical economic data to conclude that capitalism inevitably, over time, promotes huge inequalities in wealth. This wealth becomes ever more concentrated in just a tiny percentage of the population, leaving the rest of us far poorer and far less powerful politically. 

This inequality, Piketty believes, poses a serious threat to the people of the world (except the wealthy). The solution? Although he himself suggests it is probably unrealistic, at least for the moment, he urges a massive worldwide tax on wealth to radically reduce income inequality. 

And what a tax it is! For the U.S. Piketty wants a steeply progressive income tax with a top rate of 80% on incomes starting at around $500,000 or $1 million, as well as a 50%-60% tax rate on incomes as low as $200,000, which he confidently asserts "would not reduce the growth of the US economy." To make sure the beast of inequality remains slain, he suggests an annual wealth tax up to 10% on the largest fortunes, and grabbing up to 20% of lesser estates. 

No, he's not kidding. And the main purpose of this tax is not to flood governments with revenue â€” though it would, at least at first — but simply to reduce income inequality. Indeed, he has surprisingly little concern with how inefficiently or destructively government might use this money. 

These proposals may sound downright insane to libertarians and other market advocates, but at the moment Piketty's book is sweeping the country. So libertarians will want to learn about this latest challenge to liberty and why Piketty's arguments against economic liberty are dangerous and wrong.  

Here are some good short, very readable places to start:

* Piketty Gets It Wrong by Michael D. Tanner (Cato Institute), National Review (Online), April 23, 2014.

Excerpt: "Piketty's solutions would undoubtedly yield a more equal society, but also one that was remarkably poorer."

* Fighting Inequality: Rule of Law Vs. Legal Plunder by James A. Dorn (Cato Institute), Investor's Business Daily, April 29, 2014.

Excerpt: "The likely result of this utopian scheme would be to drive creative people out of high-tax countries, slow economic growth, and make societies poorer in the long run."

* Will 80% Income Taxes and a New 10% Wealth Tax Fix Our Economy? by Hunter Lewis, AgainstCronyCapitalism.org, May 2, 2014.

Excerpt: "Perhaps the most astonishing claim in Piketty's book is that government bureaucracies need to be reformed so that they can make most efficient use of all the new income and wealth taxes that are recommended. The assumption is that almost complete government control of the economy would be best, but that the machinery needs some fine tuning."

* Who Is Thomas Piketty And Why Has The Obama White House Rolled Out The Red Carpet For Him? by Hunter Lewis, AgainstCronyCapitalism.org, April 19, 2014.

Excerpt: "This is all complete nonsense. Economic growth is produced when a society saves money and invests the savings wisely. It is not quantity of investment that matters most, but quality. Government is capable neither of saving nor investing, much less investing wisely."

* The Inequality Trap Distracts from the Real Issue of Freedom by Richard Ebeling, May 5, 2014.

Excerpt: "The only important and relevant ethical and political issue in a free society should be: How has the individual earned and accumulated his material wealth? Has he done so through peaceful production and exchange or through government-assisted plunder and privilege?

"Rather than asking the source or origin of that accumulated wealth — production or plunder — the egalitarians like Thomas Piketty merely see that some have more wealth than others and condemn such an 'unequal distribution,' in itself."

* Thomas Piketty's bestselling post-crisis manifesto is horrendously flawed by Allister Heath, UK Telegraph, April 29, 2014. 

Excerpt: "Parts of the US intelligentsia now advocate the same ideas that are to be found on Europe's Left-wing fringes… Envy is back, disguised as a concern about 'inequality,' and the bail-outs and QE were merely a convenient excuse to bash the rich. It is shocking how many intelligent people now support seizing most of the wealth created by entrepreneurs…"

* Smith, Marx, and Piketty by George Reisman, Reisman's Blog, April 21, 2014.

Excerpt: "Contrary to Mr. Piketty, the fact that the rate of return on capital is higher than the rate of economic progress does not at all imply that the fortunes of the rich will increase more rapidly than the overall size of the economic system. … Our problems today result largely from government policies that serve to hold down saving and the demand for capital goods. Among these policies are the corporate and progressive personal income taxes, the estate tax, chronic budget deficits, the social security system, and inflation of the money supply. To the extent that these policies can be reduced, the demand for and production and supply of capital goods will increase, thereby restoring economic progress, and the aggregate amount and average rate of profit will fall."   

* On the Piketty Welcome Party by Bas van der Vossen, Bleeding Heart Libertarians, April 21, 2014.

Excerpt: "…inequality per se need not bother us as much as it does the Piketty-acolytes. …What matters is that living standards keep rising, and keep rising for all. That has been the crucial engine of humanity's greatest achievements in poverty reduction, increases of life expectancy, literacy, culture high and low, and so on."

* Liberal Pundits of the World Unite Over Thomas Piketty's New Book: Democratic pundits have enthusiastically and unconditionally embraced a book that evokes Karl Marx and talks about tweaking the Soviet experiment" by David Harsanyi, Reason.com, April 25, 2014.

Excerpt: "…it is worth pointing out that liberal pundits and writers have enthusiastically and unconditionally embraced not only a book on economics but a hard-left manifesto. …But how does a book that evokes Karl Marx and talks about tweaking the Soviet experiment find so much love from people who consider themselves rational, evidence-driven moderates?"

* Obama: Wrong About Income Inequality; The problem is joblessness, not rich people by Ronald Bailey, Reason magazine, April 2014.

Excerpt: "Are the rich getting richer? Yes. Are the poor getting poorer? No. In fact, over the past 35 years most Americans got richer. Has income inequality increased in the United States? Yes. Does it matter? …No. …if most Americans' incomes are rising, does it matter if some are getting a larger share?"

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Intellectual Ammunition is written by Liberator Online editor James W. Harris. His articles have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, and he has been a Finalist for the Mencken Awards, given by the Free Press Association for "Outstanding Journalism in Support of Liberty."