When I was in college, I always thought I was a republican. I thought they stood for smaller government, I thought they wanted to take less of my tax money, and promote business. Then a couple of my friends at the time suddenly told me they were libertarians. I sat there with what I can only assume was a stupid look on my face, because I had no idea what they were talking about. They gave me the simplest possible explanation you can give to anyone… A libertarian is simply someone that wants to be left alone. Let me do whatever I want, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. Well, I thought about it for a while, and I really liked the idea. This was a concept that I could get behind… but who do I vote for to make this happen??? Well, that’s when the education really started.
I learned there a big difference between the “L” libertarians, and the “l” libertarians. Such a subtle difference in spelling, but what a monumental difference in practice. I came to find that even the “L” version was just another political party. In my mind, still better than the R’s or D’s, because the “L’s” aren’t confined to specific doctrines or rules they “had” to follow. But in the end, it was much like the Green party, or any of the other “2nd class” parties out there. No one takes them seriously. The evolution of politics has tried to put everything into A or B, Coke or Pepsi, Republican or Democrat. The marketing genius behind this has managed to keep everyone arguing with each other, while the powers that be go about their business of spending our tax dollars, and lining their pockets. For this reason, it’s nearly impossible for any other political party to be considered legitimate. That’s when I realized that voting for a party isn’t going to change anything. Government will not change until we force it to change.
In my opinion, the only real chance we have is people at the lowest levels voting with their dollars. people like my kids that see the benefit of technology and don’t understand why things change so slowly (or not at all in our government). They see massive advances in medicine, artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency daily, yet our government still worries about things like building walls between countries or enforcing a legal drinking age. Changes are already starting to happen in the world. Look at countries like Estonia that are becoming completely digital, complete with citizenship, voting, etc. With the right technology in place, things like this can eliminate voter fraud, allow everyone to EASILY vote on every issue, not just for an elected official, but literally on each issue. It could drive the elimination of “pork barreling” and other shady political practices. If technologies like blockchain can become the mainstream for things like identification, voting, and control of our data, we could truly begin to move to a more libertarian form of existence.
However, the missing piece to this is getting the politicians to give up their power, and we all know that isn’t going to happen. But what if small groups suddenly opted out of the system and began doing some of these things in very small pockets??? Think of a technological commune like in Atlas Shrugged. It’s wishful thinking, but with the virtual world, the internet, blockchain and a host of other technologies rapidly advancing every day, it just might have a chance =) Of course, I’d be thrilled with the baby step of a single term limit to get rid of career politicians. LOL
Thanks for reading,
As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,Mike