> I realize I'm a bit biased because I like the libertarian principles: prioritizing individual civil liberties, stopping human rights abuses and unnecessary wars, and streamlining government.
I think those are completely reasonable things to like in his policies. And as a caveat, I don't personally dislike Gary Johnson (the man) himself. I just haven't heard a compelling argument for what he'd do to address corporate overreach, which I (personally) find the biggest problem average Americans face today, whether it is O&G companies destroying our environment or financial institutions causing global financial crises. I'm not saying (by any means!) Trump or Clinton would do any better, but I don't see how rolling back oversight on the private sector really solves the problem. I wish solving our problems was as simple as dismantling our governments but I don't see how that would help us, as it's our only (very flawed) leverage. I think doing so would decrease the little leverage we have. So to answer your concern, I think the reason people don't like Johnson is because he was running for a political office where they believe he would act against their own best interest.
> I wish solving our problems was as simple as dismantling our governments
I can understand that. It's certainly a topic for debate, not one where one side has proven to be right or wrong.
Johnson wasn't really in favor of dismantling government oversight on everything. He has stated he's in favor of agencies which protect environment, health, water, etc. He wants market-based solutions like a carbon tax where they will work better than heavy handed regulation.
> He has stated he's in favor of agencies which protect environment, health, water, etc. He wants market-based solutions like a carbon tax where they will work better than heavy handed regulation.
I could theoretically get behind some of that. However it doesn't look like Gary Johnson actually supports a carbon tax:
Perhaps the hard political position libertarians put themselves in is between the "no taxes, no regulation, ever!" conservatives and people who aspire to only have regulatory institutions where it makes sense (perhaps such as yourself). Moreover, at a certain point, it seems like market-based solutions and heavy handed regulations become essentially the same. Imagining an extreme scenario: what if you had a carbon tax of $1M per cubic meter of CO2 burned? It would certainly seem a lot like a regulation at that point.
> However it doesn't look like Gary Johnson actually supports a carbon tax:
> what if you had a carbon tax of $1M per cubic meter of CO2 burned? It would certainly seem a lot like a regulation at that point.
Wow, good point. I swear I heard him say he was in favor of it, and so I looked at the article and it mentioned he had said he was, but he changed his mind. Hmm. I remember him talking a lot about market-based solutions to environmental problems, but I guess he wasn't as committed to that idea as I thought it sounded like.
So 1 million per cubic meter of C02 = a regulation? You mean, because it would be of great burden to business with a high tax?
The thing about a tax is that it is extraordinarily more efficient than heavy-handed regulation. In-between concepts like cap-and-trade actually have actually rewarded polluters by subsidizing them, which also isn't right.
People should be rewarded for doing good things, and given disincentives for doing bad things. That's a powerful concept and I think the world would be a better place if people would get behind it in politics.
> People should be rewarded for doing good things, and given disincentives for doing bad things. That's a powerful concept and I think the world would be a better place if people would get behind it in politics.
I remember seeing a clip from Bernie criticizing Trump after the news broke about him "saving" (there's obviously a lot to be discuss about what actually happened) the Carrier jobs, basically saying, American companies should want to keep their jobs in America because it is the right thing to do. After hearing that, I remember thinking to myself, "Yeah, you know, sure. You're right Bernie. Companies should want to do that because it's the American thing to do, but why is it such a bad idea to give companies incentive to stay?" And for the most part, I believe that's what Trump has been talking about with regards to keeping jobs in the US. It sounds to me that he is just trying to make it more expensive for companies to move their jobs overseas than to keep them here by the way of this import tariff he keeps touting. Now, of course, I have no idea how any of this plays out and turns into actual law, but the basic idea makes sense to me.
> So 1 million per cubic meter of C02 = a regulation? You mean, because it would be of great burden to business with a high tax?
I guess what I'm saying is that a tax becomes a regulation at the point where you can't afford it anymore. Also you have to realize that a carbon tax is usually on everyone -- not just corporations. In most cases that affects the lowest people on the totem pole more than the higher ups. You have to realize that for certain people, what you say is "disincentivising" is actually materially affecting their ability to live. If you were to try to distribute that disincentivizing evenly across the totem pole, I'd be on board with it.
Ya for that reason most pro-carbon tax economists already are saying it should come with a rebate to lower income groups. That solves that problem (it is well-known).
> "Finally what do you really care about: name brand or doing cool work?"
I did a lot of boring, mundane work during my time at some startups as well as interesting work at others. It's either subjective or not informed by enough experience to say that only startup work is cool work and you can't find cool work at a larger company.
To the inventor? Perhaps, but there is a great deal of risk and additional work involved. Most inventors take the easy route rather than trying to market and sell their inventions themselves. However, there is a lot of risk involved in doing so. Risk that your idea won't actually translate into a workable invention. Business risk, and so on. With an easy payday in sight there is a greater incentive for people to spend their spare time working on such things, if they have domain expertise. In contrast, working on their own they'd have to contend with the risk that their invention won't actually have as much of a market as they thought or that they wouldn't be able to monetize it very effectively, and so on. With a prize a lot of that risk becomes less important, and shifted onto google's plate instead of the inventor's.
Also, google isn't necessarily depriving the inventor of patent/licensing rights, the $1M dollar prize is likely just the beginning of monetary return for the invention.
It reminds me of that show Silicon Valley where the Hooli (Google) guy offers him $10m for his algorithm, but he decides to go it alone for the chance of big bucks.
You don't have to give $276, you could give $27.6 or even $2.76. I think he was just targeting that amount, since it sounds nice and likely his target audience can afford it. Also I think Kickstarter/Indiegogo would be a bad fit for this -- not only does this organization already have a donation page already set up, but they also would receive a lot less money from making a campaign for that. Lastly, you aren't going to be getting a reward for contributing.
Maybe not your opinion, but giving campaign contributions to bigoted causes would be considered making the world a worse place to many. All of this is morally relative. Maybe 15 years ago he would have just been seen as someone with a politically conservative slant, but we're moving closer and closer to a society that sees him as someone with bigoted views. While I agree that there are unfortunately much more evil CEOs out there than Eich, it's silly to say "oh, well, there are worse guys out there, so let's let the moderately-morally-reprehensible ones go."
Anonymity is definitely a big problem, but there's something to be said for a network that doesn't have a central authority. I don't think the problem with Silk Road was the anonymity, it was more the fact that it was a central authority - once that was taken down, the whole system stopped. As the article says, it's very difficult for the feds to take down a network like this if there's a ton of people using it.
Right, but distributed systems are solved problem at this point, anonymity is much harder, and GNUnet's primary model is distributed / mesh darknets as a foundation for some of their anonymity features.
I think those are completely reasonable things to like in his policies. And as a caveat, I don't personally dislike Gary Johnson (the man) himself. I just haven't heard a compelling argument for what he'd do to address corporate overreach, which I (personally) find the biggest problem average Americans face today, whether it is O&G companies destroying our environment or financial institutions causing global financial crises. I'm not saying (by any means!) Trump or Clinton would do any better, but I don't see how rolling back oversight on the private sector really solves the problem. I wish solving our problems was as simple as dismantling our governments but I don't see how that would help us, as it's our only (very flawed) leverage. I think doing so would decrease the little leverage we have. So to answer your concern, I think the reason people don't like Johnson is because he was running for a political office where they believe he would act against their own best interest.