The stopadvertising subreddit attempts to inform its largely SJW and socialist leaning subscribers of the economic ties between platforms, advertisers, and users. Their aim is to silence the users by identifying the advertisers and doing so through the platform.

The process stopadvertising is using is an example of how targeted boycotts can undermine the advertising model that many major businesses use. Fortunately, they do not appear to have apps set up to tell their followers what to and not to buy/read, but it illustrates a part of the mechanisms at work in current social trends.

This is all voluntary association, which is why we need to be actively involved in the process or accept that big businesses and big government will mandate solutions. When an action is one of voluntary association, it innately sets itself in line with the law because no one is forced into a situation except in ways that are legal and fair.

30% of a population deciding that they will not buy a product because of the social message behind it is absolutely permissible within a just law framework. Despite the legality of this, a question remains as to whether or not it is a morally just thing* to do as it amounts to actively silencing other people.

People who want to resist the pull towards intolerance need to know how to encourage tolerant speech and recognize when groups are silencing others. We need to do this not because we agree with the actions other take but because we agree with the ways they are taking action.

If we do not defend voluntary association in all of its forms, we lose the concept as a human right. It then becomes a sort of black market value that is pruned of all of its unique qualities until only certain social groups retain its values, and often only for their own people.

The stopadvertising subreddit is wrong in its goals but correct in its methods. For that, I would prefer to counter them with dialogue and a cohesive social movement that uses the voluntary methods while protecting the social framework that people use to communicate and socialize.

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1. The issue of legally permissible and morally/socially permissible ties into a concept of legal and social tolerance. This may in part be a perversion of definitions as the concept of tolerance has a history of being treated like the Constitution of the United States. In other words, a thing is tolerant when I like it and intolerant when I don’t like it.

Original Version available on Medium.com – Published on Feb 27

Juan Macias was working hard outside a UC Berkeley football game selling hotdogs when a campus police officer told him his cart was illegal. What Juan did wrong is that he did not have a license. Rather than tell Juan to just leave, the officer demanded to see Juans’s wallet and proceeded to take out all of Juan’s cash, $60 dollars, saying it was “suspected proceeds” from an illegal act. The police do this to “punish such vendors and protect public health”. This is occupational licensing. Now, Juan Macias has received a crowdfunded $87,000.00 to pay his legal fees and start a new business

Occupational licensing is tied to prolonged poverty. Research by Professor Steven Horwitz at the Mercatus Research Center found that licensing fees and business regulations are one of the primary reasons why those below the poverty line lack upward mobility. UC Berkeley, CA could take a bold stand in defense of the financially vulnerable by relaxing their licensing fees. UC Berkeley could empower the financially vulnerable to provide for their families simply by making it easier for entrepreneurs to supplement their income.

Occupational licensing tries to keep people safe, but it only hurts the people who need work. There are better ways to keep people safe and occupational licensing does too much harm to the people who need to feed their families and make money to get away from poverty.

Only 15% of Hispanic males have licenses, versus the 27% of non-Hispanic white males. The Institute for Justice has found that the average cost for just getting a license is $209 dollars in fees, at least one exam, and approximately nine months of education and training. Without the money, Juan would have had no time and no ability to get those licenses. He only had $60.00 dollars in his wallet and he needed an interpreter to talk about his experience with the campus police.

But, is licensing people the best to keep them safe? The reason we say we make people get licenses is to, “to protect health, prevent disease, and promote healthy practices among the public” but a 2014 CDC studyconducted on food poisoning incidents found that food poisoning incidents at restaurants were nearly double that of food poisoning incidents taking place at private homes.

And all of these food poisoning incidents at restaurants were happening under licensed businesses. If licensed food venues are more likely to have food poisoning, occupational licensing does not keep people safer.

Loosening occupational licenses have been one of the hardest things to achieve. Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Texas have all tried to stop or lighten up occupational licensing, but they all failed. Even though most of the efforts were raised by Republicans, it was not Democrats who fought them the hardest. It was businesses with licenses.

The Institute for Justice found that when Louisianan licensed florists were put in charge of passing and failing new florists, fewer than 50% were likely to pass. This meant that a person was more likely to pass the Bar and become a lawyer than becoming a florist, a person who arranges flowers into beautiful bouquets. As a florist put it, “You can’t really hurt anybody with a flower.”

Occupational licensing has become a bigger issue than public safety, which it admittedly fails to accomplish. Licensing has become a system in which those who have licenses can keep people out of the market. The people who we want to get jobs are literally being fined and arrested.

Occupational licensing is not a necessary part of the public good. Legislators can take this challenge as the opportunity to alter and relax occupational licensing to both cut costs and boost social services to remedy issues. Entrusting the public with more choices allows the people to become

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Original Version available on Medium.com -Published on Mar 3

 

There has been a recent splurge of boycotts and counter-boycotts centering around the anti-firearms advocate David Hogg and his critics. After Laura Ingraham made a deprecating joke about Mr. Hogg’s getting rejected from four high ranking universities, David Hogg called for a boycott of her sponsors.

The challenge I see with this boycotting disagreeable free speech is that it forces us to explore the old issue of legal liberty versus social liberty. If you watch the video of Bill Maher in this article, you will see multiple people give similar iterations of the argument that free speech does not mean a guarantee to advertisers paying you to say your free speech.

John Stuart Mill, argued in the book On Liberty that the true challenge against individual liberty was not the law but society and its authority over the individual

Max Boot of the Washington Post said, “”She can talk all she wants. That doesn’t mean that all these big companies have to underwrite her speech to millions of people.” To which Maher responded, “It is a very chilling atmosphere because it could happen to any of you”

A philosopher from the 1800s, John Stuart Mill, argued in the book On Libertythat the true challenge against individual liberty was not the law but society and its authority over the individual. We are seeing this today as people try to influence and modify the opinions of all Americans without engaging in meaningful dialogue or debate. By trying to bend and play at the rules of our system, these debatable tactics are undermining the playingfield.

This is reflected when Bill Maher said, “Effectively, it(boycotts) is the modern way of cutting off free speech”. Bill Maher is touching on the fact that this boycotting strategy is a recent development and it is aimed at preventing people with contentious ideas from speaking to the public. I would add that these boycotts are often times a PR attack rather than a withdrawal of service as it is debatable about how many of these boycotters and tweeters are actually doing business with these companies on a day to day basis.

What strikes me as odd is that these people are all, to the best of my knowledge, in support of other social justice issues like respecting LGBTQ+ groups, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the equal opportunity laws. These laws go above and beyond the civil liberties espoused in the Constitution and the Amendments. They assert positive obligations on people over and above the rights protected by our core legal system.

These laws run against the spirit of the argument that free speech does not guarantee the right to receive funding without social opposition because the spirit of the Civil Rights Act and similar acts is to guarantee a civil liberty that is being frustrated by voluntary association because they leverage social opinions towards forcing others to obey or suffer.

I do not believe that these people are intentionally trying to create a double standard. I think that the issue is that our nation, the United States of America, was based on negative rights of what others and the government could not do and not on positive rights except when voluntarily agreed to.

The United States people are not in the right frame of mind to begin reviewing and changing how our system works. There is too little respect for differing opinions. Yet, we are rarely ever ready for what needs to happen and it falls on individuals to lead the way.

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Original available on medium.com – Published on Apr 8

Out of all the intellectual social circles of the 1700s, the French salons allowed for authoritarian ostracism, via the salonnière. Could that be a variable to the violent overthrow of the French revolution? That because only the rich and accepted were allowed to speak in the French social venue, the undesirables felt compelled to violence?

At the salons the salonnière chose her guests and thereby determined the ultimate composition of the room. Guests were there by the grace of the salonnière… and could still be evicted if the salonnière decided they were no longer beneficial to her salon. — Bonnie Calhoun

Britain had violence, yes, but they never resorted to killing off all of the social elite of their society, and they drank coffee, a known upper narcotic.

Perhaps allowing even the least desirable of a society to have a voice prevents violence and social revolution.

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Original Version available on Medium.com – Published on