Sounding Board

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In 2011 the residents of a small municipality in Mexico rose up against politicians, the police and illegal loggers associated with the drug cartel La Familia Michoacana. Expelling the corruption and driving those responsible from the town, the crime rate in Cherán has dropped off a cliff.

What can we learn from their unique example? Do you really need the state?

Is centralised control really the best way of achieving any kind of good outcomes?

Or is decentralisation and self control the way forward?

The Libertarian Manifesto by Murray Rothbard can be downloaded for free, here: https://mises.org/library/new-liberty-libertarian-manifesto

The Machinery Of Freedom by David D. Friedman can be downloaded for free, here: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf

The post Cherán, Mexico – How One Town Expelled The State appeared first on sounding board.

It’s results day 2019!

In this episode, we discuss the UK General Election results. We look at statistics, trends, vote share and debate who, & what, were the real winners and losers this time around.

We may be relieved, but is the result actually bittersweet?

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It’s that time again! It’s polling day tomorrow, so we couldn’t record anything but a General Election special.

We discuss the latest YouGov MRP (whatever that stands for…), trends amongst other polls and the state of the current crop of political parties.

Just how close do we think the result will be? Will we be heading for a strong Tory majority? Or will we face another hung parliament? Are we really in a time of unprecedented political turmoil?

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Recorded straight after the last edition, we follow on with a discussion on the problems of our democratic system and whether we only have a choice of the “least worst” from here on in.

We talk about whether voting matters in a “safe seat”, and whether we have been unwittingly encouraging others to vote on twitter by pointing out how dangerous the Labour Party policies are.

Should Nic hold his nose and vote Tory to stop the Communists? Where do you draw the line with Socialism? Should you always vote for the least Socialist party?

We discuss all of this, and a hypothetical Libertarian Party that would have the power to dismantle all of it…if only they were voted in.

The post Democracy, Libertarianism and the Trouble with Voting appeared first on sounding board.

In this episode we analyse the manifestos of all major UK parties. And the Greens.

Andrew reached for the short straw this week when he had to read all parties’ manifestos for the upcoming UK General Election on December 12th.

Why are they all so similar? Why is it so hard to tell the difference, these days? Is any party doing anything new?

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Has Boris found the magic centrist formula for winning the election with his championing of both the free market and the public sector? Or will the Conservatives desire to spend, spend, spend, cause them to look like Labour Lite?

After writing this blog post before there was a general election set, has anything changed?

We review Boris’s first campaign video and discuss whether this is all very smart politics, or if by shifting the Overton window ever statewards without making practical and moral cases for shrinking the state and getting out of our lives, it’s only a matter of time before a Communist gets into power.

Blog Post in the intro – https://soundingboard.com/boriss-a-la-cartism-is-exactly-what-the-public-will-vote-for/

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It’s the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall – a crucial moment in the late 20th century that signalled the end of the Cold War and the retreat of Communism.

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What if everything the government does was privatised? Not the law making, but all of the other functions and agencies and quangos.

Could it be done quickly? What would be the consequences, and should we start with something small first… like the NHS.

As we discuss going the whole hog, we realise we never started the podcast wanting to talk about any of this, but ended up having what we think is an interesting discussion.

But were we always on the same page? We also analyse our thought processes around the conversation, and how we constructed our arguments in order to communicate with each other effectively. We are always interested in improving how we think critically, so this was a revealing retrospective on the conversation, that wouldn’t normally be aired.

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