Interview request on Proposition L (SF executive pay tax passed Nov. 2020)

Activists List
#1

I got an interview request today from a reporter with the site WhoWhatWhy.org (new one to me!). He’s writing about Proposition L, the tax on companies that pay their highest-paid executives more than 100 times more than their median employee earns, which was on last November’s SF ballot and passed with 65% of the vote.

He said he’d have questions about the economic impact and political impact of the measure, and why we don’t think it’s good public policy, and I’m scheduled to talk with him tomorrow afternoon. I have some ideas on what to say, but more input is welcome. Let me know if you can think of any particular good points to be made from a libertarian perspective on the issue.

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

1 Like
#2

It is so easy to move out of this town….and people are doing it left and right. Why would you want to give more people more reasons to leave? So silly. (typical San Francisco). And so easy to avoid. Take income in some form other than salary. Take income in another jurisdiction. The list is endless.

Besides, the idea is based on socialistic labor theory. Labor is only needed if there is capital, management and a customer for what is being produced. Not to belittle labor/employees. But it isn’t the job of government to intervene in those decisions. It is the job of the market. In the end, the customer decides employee wages.

Mike

···

From: Starchild via LPSF Forum noreply@forum.lpsf.org
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2021 10:42 PM
To: mike@dennz.com
Cc: LPSF Forum replies+3cdc7b1d9785c402bb01ab23113d2526@forum.lpsf.org
Subject: [LPSF Forum] [Activists List] Interview request on Proposition L (SF executive pay tax passed Nov. 2020)

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Starchildhttps://forum.lpsf.org/u/starchild
April 22

I got an interview request today from a reporter with the site WhoWhatWhy.orghttp://WhoWhatWhy.org (new one to me!). He’s writing about Proposition L, the tax on companies that pay their highest-paid executives more than 100 times more than their median employee earns, which was on last November’s SF ballot and passed with 65% of the vote.

He said he’d have questions about the economic impact and political impact of the measure, and why we don’t think it’s good public policy, and I’m scheduled to talk with him tomorrow afternoon. I have some ideas on what to say, but more input is welcome. Let me know if you can think of any particular good points to be made from a libertarian perspective on the issue.

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

Visit Topichttps://forum.lpsf.org/t/interview-request-on-proposition-l-sf-executive-pay-tax-passed-nov-2020/21523/1 or reply to this email to respond.

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2 Likes
#3

“Regular” people have an easier time understanding how movie stars and all star athletes can earn so much more than the other employees. If you loose all of your word class talent, you’re left with a B movie or a minor league team, two things that don’t attract interest from around the word.

In some cases, being a CEO might be pretty straightforward. In many other cases, it is a tremendously hard job with a lot of risk. You have to worry about government compliance (in many cases, while forging ahead in unchartered territory, which comes with potentially civil or criminal liability. See Ripple, Coinbase, and Uber, for examples.) You have to worry about your 1000’s of employees. And you have to worry about your investors, both board members and the potentially millions of people that hold your stock.

Furthermore, CEOs are also like all star celebrity athletes! Some super stars (e.g., Zuckerberg, Bill Gates) even took the risk to drop out of school to play with the professionals, and still outperformed all the pros. People like Elon Musk are effective at taking crazy ideas and turning them into successful businesses, in order to challenge the world’s car industry, transportation industry, and space flight industry. If you don’t like these characters, imagine if companies and countries from around the world bid on getting Einstein to tell them what and how to build something. The one that bids 2x the cost of a regular employee won’t win.

A third party should not have the authority to break up a relationship between consenting adults, and that applies to employment relationships as well as romantic relationships. How much to pay an employee is up to the owners of the company and the employee in question. It’s typically set by the market, that is, the demand for that employee. Ultimately, if high pay for an executive ultimately results in customers buying the product or service - when they otherwise would not have - then it’s justified. If people don’t like existence of companies that give high executive pay, then the best way to express their opinion and create change is to stop buying their products. It may be hard, in part because these superstars did such a great job!

An easier way would be to simply punish companies - taking their money coercively - for giving high executive pay. We view this as theft. Alternatively, owners usually choose how much to pay employees. If the government usurps this authority over all companies, then it is seizing control, in part, of each company, in order to make managerial decisions. This is also towards socialism, which (is another instance of theft and) is very inefficient. Having SF voters and politicians in charge of employee pay at private companies is absurd. Remember when SF recently paid the janitor that slept in the closet $270k per year?

Anyway, one of the things that makes SF successful is our talented people and our world renowned companies. SF currently enjoys a budget larger than most countries. But, we’re already losing companies to freer places that are more welcoming to the companies and people that are building the future.

If you feel that reality deviates from “free market” painted above, it’s likely the result of government interference. For example, government patents create barriers preventing “Pear” - a computer company that pays executives less - from freely competing with Apple. Also, stock holders supporting high executive pay could simply demand executive pay be lowered, but they apparently don’t want to, for some reason.

#4

Bit late to this party, and the interview has already been done: I agree that this punitive tax on companies is more naked theft – masquerading as a crusade for “equality” – from the progressive shysters running SF into the ground.

CEO compensation is complicated, often tied to stock options etc. rather than “bags of money”, and if companies are riding a Fed-induced boom, with their share price artificially inflated, then CEO pay is going to rise, all else being equal.

CEO pay is also usually performance-based: so if shareholders/board think a CEO is worth their compensation, then that is their damned business, regardless of how much they pay their janitors.

This tax is, again, the manifestation of the politics of envy, and isn’t going to do a damn thing to help the average worker in any of these companies.

Pompous Fox

#5

Pompous Fox……I don’t know you but you are absolutely right.

Mike

···

From: pompous_fox via LPSF Forum noreply@forum.lpsf.org
Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2021 9:53 PM
To: mike@dennz.com
Cc: LPSF Forum replies+9773fe961999cdf098cb89e71ceda661@forum.lpsf.org
Subject: Re: [LPSF Forum] [Activists List] Interview request on Proposition L (SF executive pay tax passed Nov. 2020)

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pompous_foxhttps://forum.lpsf.org/u/pompous_fox
April 23

Bit late to this party, and the interview has already been done: I agree that this punitive tax on companies is more naked theft – masquerading as a crusade for “equality” – from the progressive shysters running SF into the ground.

CEO compensation is complicated, often tied to stock options etc. rather than “bags of money”, and if companies are riding a Fed-induced boom, with their share price artificially inflated, then CEO pay is going to rise, all else being equal.

CEO pay is also usually performance-based: so if shareholders/board think a CEO is worth their compensation, then that is their damned business, regardless of how much they pay their janitors.

This tax is, again, the manifestation of the politics of envy, and isn’t going to do a damn thing to help the average worker in any of these companies.

Pompous Fox

Visit Topichttps://forum.lpsf.org/t/interview-request-on-proposition-l-sf-executive-pay-tax-passed-nov-2020/21523/4 or reply to this email to respond.

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1 Like
#6

Thanks Mike – have to keep it under a pseudonym when posting online, as the “progressive” political culture here is as about as tolerant of Libertarian views, as Puritans were tolerant of witchcraft…

#7

A pity……but I get it.

Mike

···

From: pompous_fox via LPSF Forum noreply@forum.lpsf.org
Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2021 10:17 PM
To: mike@dennz.com
Cc: LPSF Forum replies+bb3eadb033fc5eb91741c3b4a354fd8b@forum.lpsf.org
Subject: [LPSF Forum] [Activists List] Interview request on Proposition L (SF executive pay tax passed Nov. 2020)

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pompous_foxhttps://forum.lpsf.org/u/pompous_fox
April 23

Thanks Mike – have to keep it under a pseudonym when posting online, as the “progressive” political culture here is as about as tolerant of Libertarian views, as Puritans were tolerant of witchcraft…

Visit Topichttps://forum.lpsf.org/t/interview-request-on-proposition-l-sf-executive-pay-tax-passed-nov-2020/21523/6 or reply to this email to respond.

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#8

Thanks for the input, Mike, Jeff, and PF… I think it went pretty well. Journalist Glenn Daigon seemed legitimately interested in getting both sides (the previous pieces of his I glanced at online seemed fairly neutral), and said I made good arguments for the libertarian perspective. I did concede that this kind of legislation (apparently Portland, Oregon passed a similar law) might have “legs” beyond ultra-liberal jurisdictions. Also mentioned the exodus from SF and California (despite all the natural advantages these locales possess). I’m not convinced that most of the exorbitant pay of executives is a result of natural market forces; I believe they have substantially rigged corporate governance in their favor (e.g. if a shareholder doesn’t vote their shares, incumbent boards get to cast those votes – it’s as if all the votes not cast by eligible voters in the next national election were voted by the Biden administration!). However more government intervention only threatens to make things worse. Instead of defending executive pay, I focused mainly on the self-interest of the politicians in more money and power, how this is mainly symbolic, how the money they’ll take won’t go to the lower-paid workers, how they could just cut the taxes and fees on those workers if they really wanted to help them, etc.

Glenn said he also hopes to talk with someone from Supervisor Matt Haney’s office, and from the Institute for Policy Studies (a left-leaning think tank); I suggested he might consider balancing the latter by also reaching out to a more free market oriented think tank like Cato, the Mercatus Center, or the Independent Institute here in Oakland. He told me the piece will probably be out in two or three weeks, and promised to send me a link when it is.

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

···

On Apr 22, 2021, at 10:10 PM, mike@dennz.com via LPSF Forum wrote:

dennz
April 23
Pompous Fox……I don’t know you but you are absolutely right.

Mike

··· (click for more details)
Visit Topic or reply to this email to respond.

In Reply To

Starchild
April 22
I got an interview request today from a reporter with the site WhoWhatWhy.org (new one to me!). He’s writing about Proposition L, the tax on companies that pay their highest-paid executives more than 100 times more than their median employee earns, which was on last November’s SF ballot and passed w…
Previous Replies

pompous_fox
April 23
Bit late to this party, and the interview has already been done: I agree that this punitive tax on companies is more naked theft – masquerading as a crusade for “equality” – from the progressive shysters running SF into the ground.

CEO compensation is complicated, often tied to stock options etc. rather than “bags of money”, and if companies are riding a Fed-induced boom, with their share price artificially inflated, then CEO pay is going to rise, all else being equal.

CEO pay is also usually performance-based: so if shareholders/board think a CEO is worth their compensation, then that is their damned business, regardless of how much they pay their janitors.

This tax is, again, the manifestation of the politics of envy, and isn’t going to do a damn thing to help the average worker in any of these companies.

Pompous Fox

jeff
April 22
“Regular” people have an easier time understanding how movie stars and all star athletes can earn so much more than the other employees. If you loose all of your word class talent, you’re left with a B movie or a minor league team, two things that don’t attract interest from around the word.

In some cases, being a CEO might be pretty straightforward. In many other cases, it is a tremendously hard job with a lot of risk. You have to worry about government compliance (in many cases, while forging ahead in unchartered territory, which comes with potentially civil or criminal liability. See Ripple, Coinbase, and Uber, for examples.) You have to worry about your 1000’s of employees. And you have to worry about your investors, both board members and the potentially millions of people that hold your stock.

Furthermore, CEOs are also like all star celebrity athletes! Some super stars (e.g., Zuckerberg, Bill Gates) even took the risk to drop out of school to play with the professionals, and still outperformed all the pros. People like Elon Musk are effective at taking crazy ideas and turning them into successful businesses, in order to challenge the world’s car industry, transportation industry, and space flight industry. If you don’t like these characters, imagine if companies and countries from around the world bid on getting Einstein to tell them what and how to build something. The one that bids 2x the cost of a regular employee won’t win.

A third party should not have the authority to break up a relationship between consenting adults, and that applies to employment relationships as well as romantic relationships. How much to pay an employee is up to the owners of the company and the employee in question. It’s typically set by the market, that is, the demand for that employee. Ultimately, if high pay for an executive ultimately results in customers buying the product or service - when they otherwise would not have - then it’s justified. If people don’t like existence of companies that give high executive pay, then the best way to express their opinion and create change is to stop buying their products. It may be hard, in part because these superstars did such a great job!

An easier way would be to simply punish companies - taking their money coercively - for giving high executive pay. We view this as theft. Alternatively, owners usually choose how much to pay employees. If the government usurps this authority over all companies, then it is seizing control, in part, of each company, in order to make managerial decisions. This is also towards socialism, which (is another instance of theft and) is very inefficient. Having SF voters and politicians in charge of employee pay at private companies is absurd. Remember when SF recently paid the janitor that slept in the closet $270k per year?

Anyway, one of the things that makes SF successful is our talented people and our world renowned companies. SF currently enjoys a budget larger than most countries. But, we’re already losing companies to freer places that are more welcoming to the companies and people that are building the future.

If you feel that reality deviates from “free market” painted above, it’s likely the result of government interference. For example, government patents create barriers preventing “Pear” - a computer company that pays executives less - from freely competing with Apple. Also, stock holders supporting high executive pay could simply demand executive pay be lowered, but they apparently don’t want to, for some reason.

dennz
April 22
It is so easy to move out of this town….and people are doing it left and right. Why would you want to give more people more reasons to leave? So silly. (typical San Francisco). And so easy to avoid. Take income in some form other than salary. Take income in another jurisdiction. The list is endless.

Besides, the idea is based on socialistic labor theory. Labor is only needed if there is capital, management and a customer for what is being produced. Not to belittle labor/employees. But it isn’t the job of government to intervene in those decisions. It is the job of the market. In the end, the customer decides employee wages.

Mike

··· (click for more details)
Starchild
April 22
I got an interview request today from a reporter with the site WhoWhatWhy.org (new one to me!). He’s writing about Proposition L, the tax on companies that pay their highest-paid executives more than 100 times more than their median employee earns, which was on last November’s SF ballot and passed with 65% of the vote.

He said he’d have questions about the economic impact and political impact of the measure, and why we don’t think it’s good public policy, and I’m scheduled to talk with him tomorrow afternoon. I have some ideas on what to say, but more input is welcome. Let me know if you can think of any particular good points to be made from a libertarian perspective on the issue.

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

Visit Topic or reply to this email to respond.

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#9

I don’t think it’s quite as bad as that, and may have actually been worse here in the 1990s. Or maybe people are just less confrontational in their politics now. Back then, I feel like I tended to get more vociferously hostile pushback when publicly advocating libertarian ideas.

If you do feel you must use a pseudonym when commenting as a libertarian PF, have you considered something like “Compassionate Fox” instead? I realize it doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but maybe less off-putting… :slight_smile:

Former U.S. Senate candidate Richard Boddie had some great observations he’d work into speeches, one of which was about how important intentions are to people on the left. Akin to the observation that “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” (although that’s someone else’s phrase), I remember him advising, tongue in cheek, that libertarians should add after every point we make, “…and my intentions are good.” :slight_smile:

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

···

On Apr 22, 2021, at 10:16 PM, pompous_fox via LPSF Forum wrote:

pompous_fox
April 23
Thanks Mike – have to keep it under a pseudonym when posting online, as the “progressive” political culture here is as about as tolerant of Libertarian views, as Puritans were tolerant of witchcraft…

Visit Topic or reply to this email to respond.

In Reply To

dennz
April 23
Pompous Fox……I don’t know you but you are absolutely right. Mike ··· (click for more details)
Previous Replies

dennz
April 23
Pompous Fox……I don’t know you but you are absolutely right.

Mike

··· (click for more details)
pompous_fox
April 23
Bit late to this party, and the interview has already been done: I agree that this punitive tax on companies is more naked theft – masquerading as a crusade for “equality” – from the progressive shysters running SF into the ground.

CEO compensation is complicated, often tied to stock options etc. rather than “bags of money”, and if companies are riding a Fed-induced boom, with their share price artificially inflated, then CEO pay is going to rise, all else being equal.

CEO pay is also usually performance-based: so if shareholders/board think a CEO is worth their compensation, then that is their damned business, regardless of how much they pay their janitors.

This tax is, again, the manifestation of the politics of envy, and isn’t going to do a damn thing to help the average worker in any of these companies.

Pompous Fox

jeff
April 22
“Regular” people have an easier time understanding how movie stars and all star athletes can earn so much more than the other employees. If you loose all of your word class talent, you’re left with a B movie or a minor league team, two things that don’t attract interest from around the word.

In some cases, being a CEO might be pretty straightforward. In many other cases, it is a tremendously hard job with a lot of risk. You have to worry about government compliance (in many cases, while forging ahead in unchartered territory, which comes with potentially civil or criminal liability. See Ripple, Coinbase, and Uber, for examples.) You have to worry about your 1000’s of employees. And you have to worry about your investors, both board members and the potentially millions of people that hold your stock.

Furthermore, CEOs are also like all star celebrity athletes! Some super stars (e.g., Zuckerberg, Bill Gates) even took the risk to drop out of school to play with the professionals, and still outperformed all the pros. People like Elon Musk are effective at taking crazy ideas and turning them into successful businesses, in order to challenge the world’s car industry, transportation industry, and space flight industry. If you don’t like these characters, imagine if companies and countries from around the world bid on getting Einstein to tell them what and how to build something. The one that bids 2x the cost of a regular employee won’t win.

A third party should not have the authority to break up a relationship between consenting adults, and that applies to employment relationships as well as romantic relationships. How much to pay an employee is up to the owners of the company and the employee in question. It’s typically set by the market, that is, the demand for that employee. Ultimately, if high pay for an executive ultimately results in customers buying the product or service - when they otherwise would not have - then it’s justified. If people don’t like existence of companies that give high executive pay, then the best way to express their opinion and create change is to stop buying their products. It may be hard, in part because these superstars did such a great job!

An easier way would be to simply punish companies - taking their money coercively - for giving high executive pay. We view this as theft. Alternatively, owners usually choose how much to pay employees. If the government usurps this authority over all companies, then it is seizing control, in part, of each company, in order to make managerial decisions. This is also towards socialism, which (is another instance of theft and) is very inefficient. Having SF voters and politicians in charge of employee pay at private companies is absurd. Remember when SF recently paid the janitor that slept in the closet $270k per year?

Anyway, one of the things that makes SF successful is our talented people and our world renowned companies. SF currently enjoys a budget larger than most countries. But, we’re already losing companies to freer places that are more welcoming to the companies and people that are building the future.

If you feel that reality deviates from “free market” painted above, it’s likely the result of government interference. For example, government patents create barriers preventing “Pear” - a computer company that pays executives less - from freely competing with Apple. Also, stock holders supporting high executive pay could simply demand executive pay be lowered, but they apparently don’t want to, for some reason.

dennz
April 22
It is so easy to move out of this town….and people are doing it left and right. Why would you want to give more people more reasons to leave? So silly. (typical San Francisco). And so easy to avoid. Take income in some form other than salary. Take income in another jurisdiction. The list is endless.

Besides, the idea is based on socialistic labor theory. Labor is only needed if there is capital, management and a customer for what is being produced. Not to belittle labor/employees. But it isn’t the job of government to intervene in those decisions. It is the job of the market. In the end, the customer decides employee wages.

Mike

··· (click for more details)
Starchild
April 22
I got an interview request today from a reporter with the site WhoWhatWhy.org (new one to me!). He’s writing about Proposition L, the tax on companies that pay their highest-paid executives more than 100 times more than their median employee earns, which was on last November’s SF ballot and passed with 65% of the vote.

He said he’d have questions about the economic impact and political impact of the measure, and why we don’t think it’s good public policy, and I’m scheduled to talk with him tomorrow afternoon. I have some ideas on what to say, but more input is welcome. Let me know if you can think of any particular good points to be made from a libertarian perspective on the issue.

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

Visit Topic or reply to this email to respond.

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To unsubscribe from these emails, click here.
If you were forwarded this email and want to subscribe, click here.

#10

“Pompous Ass” was already taken as a Twitter handle, so went with the next animal that came to mind!

And “compassion” wouldn’t be the defining aspect of my views, or how I choose to express them: there’s enough hypocrisy in politics as there is, so went with something representative. :slight_smile:

#11

I can handle open hostility face-to-face with strangers in the street (I’ve spend years in customer facing roles, so have a tough skin and a certain patience for moronic behavior), but what I don’t want to risk is employers black-listing me for my political beliefs.

The tech sector has a “left progressive” bias, and the tech elites have been cosying up to the State for many years (a very dangerous trend): they don’t want free markets, they want Government enforced rents.

“Libertarianism” is not a belief system they tolerate – I’ve dipped my toes in those waters here in the Valley, and I’m still feeling the burn…

#12

It’s a fair point that people mostly don’t judge arguments on their rational merit, but rather on their feelings about the speaker:

At the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.
— Maya Angelou

That said, I don’t know how successful we can hope to be when appealing to people whose primary criteria for judging the effect of a policy is the supposed intentions of the policy makers – how can we reason with such woolly-headed people?

The supposed intention of the War on Drugs was to protect people from harmful drugs – the actual effect was to enable a War on People, especially minorities, drive the militarization of the police and enable infringements of people’s property rights that are reminiscent of British Colonial rule.

Has the War on Terror fulfilled its supposed intention of making America, and by extension the world, a “safer” place?

You obviously know the issues with State intervention – my point is that trying to appeal to those people whose primary metric is intentions, might be a dead-end. Hopefully, they don’t make up too much of the population. :slight_smile:

Of course, I do think that Libertarianism motivated by genuine concern for society is going to have a broader appeal than the “I wanna do whatever the hell I want!” flavor…

#13

NOTE: I’ve moved this thread to the Discuss list, as it’s clearly more discussion than activism at this point.

··· 

	Yes, I understand the advisability of being politically discreet when it comes to one's relations with certain employers, or perspective employers. This is one reason I work as a sex worker, so I don't have to answer to anyone and can avoid all that B.S.! I guess it comes down to a personal decision of how much value you put on being able to speak freely, versus how much value you put on a particular career or employment opportunities, at any given point in time.

	I'm not ready to just say what I think people want to hear or trying to convince them I'm a nice person at any cost myself, but I do see a lot of people engaging online in ways that (at least from where I sit) appear to needlessly discredit themselves (and by extension their ideas); using avatars of villains or mean-looking people or entities, for example (e.g. the Grim Reaper, Darth Vader, Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, etc.), or names that might tend to convey similar kinds of unpleasantness or bad intentions ("GangstaPimp", "LiberalSlayer", "RichMutha", etc.). 

	For what it's worth, my observation is that this kind of thing is somewhat more common among people on the right than people on the left, but it puzzles me how widespread it is in general, and pains me to see people doing it when expressing pro-freedom ideas to a general audience. I sometimes wonder how much of this is conscious, or to what extent it may reflect a real lack of benevolence in their personalities, or an ideological attachment to presenting as someone who lacks benevolence. 

	None of that necessarily applies to yourself or in any other particular case, of course. And I do respect your desire to avoid hypocrisy (and phony virtue-signaling). Still, you might be able to find an avatar/handle option that would meet that objective to your satisfaction without coming across as reveling in being a jerk. While being a jerk to people online is obviously super common, I doubt it's winning many hearts and minds. Admittedly I sometimes get called an "a-hole" and other names even when deliberately trying to be polite and nicer than those I'm debating – some people will probably react badly to libertarian ideas no matter how they're presented – but I think I'm more likely to prompt those with anti-freedom views to be friendly/respectful than those who don't make the effort (you can see both reactions in the reader comment on the story at e.g. https://sfist.com/2021/04/19/one-ucsf-doc-says-outdoor-mask-mandate-should-be-lifted-another-says-he-still-wont-dine-indoors/#comment-5360432505). If not "compassionate fox", perhaps "wise fox" or something else? I'm not trying to tell you what to do here, just throwing out some friendly ideas...

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))


On Apr 26, 2021, at 10:41 PM, pompous_fox via LPSF Forum wrote:

> 	pompous_fox         
> April 27
>  Starchild:
> Former U.S. Senate candidate Richard Boddie had some great observations he’d work into speeches, one of which was about how important intentions are to people on the left. Akin to the observation that “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” (although that’s someone else’s phrase), I remember him advising, tongue in cheek, that libertarians should add after every point we make, “…and my intentions are good.”
> 
> It’s a fair point that people mostly don’t judge arguments on their rational merit, but rather on their feelings about the speaker:
> 
> At the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.
> — Maya Angelou
> 
> That said, I don’t know how successful we can hope to be when appealing to people whose primary criteria for judging the effect of a policy is the supposed intentions of the policy makers – how can we reason with such woolly-headed people?
> 
> The supposed intention of the War on Drugs was to protect people from harmful drugs – the actual effect was to enable a War on People, especially minorities, drive the militarization of the police and enable infringements of people’s property rights that are reminiscent of British Colonial rule.
> 
> Has the War on Terror fulfilled its supposed intention of making America, and by extension the world, a “safer” place?
> 
> You obviously know the issues with State intervention – my point is that trying to appeal to those people whose primary metric is intentions, might be a dead-end. Hopefully, they don’t make up too much of the population. 
> 
> Of course, I do think that Libertarianism motivated by genuine concern for society is going to have a broader appeal than the “I wanna do whatever the hell I want!” flavor…
> 
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> 
> 	Starchild         
> April 23
> I don’t think it’s quite as bad as that, and may have actually been worse here in the 1990s. Or maybe people are just less confrontational in their politics now. Back then, I feel like I tended to get more vociferously hostile pushback when publicly advocating libertarian ideas. If you do feel you …
> Previous Replies
> 
> 	pompous_fox         
> April 27
>  Starchild:
> I don’t think it’s quite as bad as that, and may have actually been worse here in the 1990s. Or maybe people are just less confrontational in their politics now. Back then, I feel like I tended to get more vociferously hostile pushback when publicly advocating libertarian ideas.
> 
> I can handle open hostility face-to-face with strangers in the street (I’ve spend years in customer facing roles, so have a tough skin and a certain patience for moronic behavior), but what I don’t want to risk is employers black-listing me for my political beliefs.
> 
> The tech sector has a “left progressive” bias, and the tech elites have been cosying up to the State for many years (a very dangerous trend): they don’t want free markets, they want Government enforced rents.
> 
> “Libertarianism” is not a belief system they tolerate – I’ve dipped my toes in those waters here in the Valley, and I’m still feeling the burn…
> 
> 	pompous_fox         
> April 27
>  Starchild:
> If you do feel you must use a pseudonym when commenting as a libertarian PF, have you considered something like “Compassionate Fox” instead? I realize it doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but maybe less off-putting…
> 
> “Pompous Ass” was already taken as a Twitter handle, so went with the next animal that came to mind!
> 
> And “compassion” wouldn’t be the defining aspect of my views, or how I choose to express them: there’s enough hypocrisy in politics as there is, so went with something representative. 
> 
> 	Starchild         
> April 23
> I don’t think it’s quite as bad as that, and may have actually been worse here in the 1990s. Or maybe people are just less confrontational in their politics now. Back then, I feel like I tended to get more vociferously hostile pushback when publicly advocating libertarian ideas.
> 
> If you do feel you must use a pseudonym when commenting as a libertarian PF, have you considered something like “Compassionate Fox” instead? I realize it doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but maybe less off-putting…  
> 
> Former U.S. Senate candidate Richard Boddie had some great observations he’d work into speeches, one of which was about how important intentions are to people on the left. Akin to the observation that “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” (although that’s someone else’s phrase), I remember him advising, tongue in cheek, that libertarians should add after every point we make, “…and my intentions are good.”  
> 
> Love & Liberty,
> 
> ((( starchild )))
> 
> ··· (click for more details)
> 	Starchild         
> April 23
> Thanks for the input, Mike, Jeff, and PF… I think it went pretty well. Journalist Glenn Daigon seemed legitimately interested in getting both sides (the previous pieces of his I glanced at online seemed fairly neutral), and said I made good arguments for the libertarian perspective. I did concede that this kind of legislation (apparently Portland, Oregon passed a similar law) might have “legs” beyond ultra-liberal jurisdictions. Also mentioned the exodus from SF and California (despite all the natural advantages these locales possess). I’m not convinced that most of the exorbitant pay of executives is a result of natural market forces; I believe they have substantially rigged corporate governance in their favor (e.g. if a shareholder doesn’t vote their shares, incumbent boards get to cast those votes – it’s as if all the votes not cast by eligible voters in the next national election were voted by the Biden administration!). However more government intervention only threatens to make things worse. Instead of defending executive pay, I focused mainly on the self-interest of the politicians in more money and power, how this is mainly symbolic, how the money they’ll take won’t go to the lower-paid workers, how they could just cut the taxes and fees on those workers if they really wanted to help them, etc.
> 
> Glenn said he also hopes to talk with someone from Supervisor Matt Haney’s office, and from the Institute for Policy Studies (a left-leaning think tank); I suggested he might consider balancing the latter by also reaching out to a more free market oriented think tank like Cato, the Mercatus Center, or the Independent Institute here in Oakland. He told me the piece will probably be out in two or three weeks, and promised to send me a link when it is.
> 
> Love & Liberty,
> 
> ((( starchild )))
> 
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> 	dennz 
> April 23       
> A pity……but I get it.
> 
> Mike
> 
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