Let me introduce myself by saying that I am a NJ Libertarian who has avidly supported Paul's campaign. I have donated, spread the word, and will vote for him.
With that said, are there any other RP supporters who would like RP to re-consider his stance on global warming? Specifically the accusation that it's a "hoax" on his official issues page? Look, the solutions to climate change are less than clear. Exactly how it will occur is also up for debate. But to say it's a 'hoax' is more or a less a fringe conspiracy in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence and concensus. The reason I distrust the military industrial complex is because of how many times they've betrayed us and lied to us. But hasn't the scientific community been reasonably honest and contributed a lot to society? Hasn't it historically admitted its mistakes and moved human progress further?
Furthermore, when I advocate Ron Paul, people say that he has good ideas but he is an idealogue. I retort that sometimes he sounds like that, but if you dig deeper into his argument there is a lot of truth to that. However, he seems to REFUSE to budge that the free market and property rights could POSSIBLY be an insufficient solution to the environment, even though as someone who studies economics, I would expect RP to understand that the incentives to treat a shared resource well are all screwed up. It's a well studied problem known as the tragedy of the commons. The property rights arguments fails when irreversible damage is done to the environment, or in the cases where powerful lobbying industries can run misinformation campaigns to smear a cause, like we are seeing with the climate change crisis.
As a libertarian, I understand that economic regulations tend to have unintended consequences, be easily corrupted, and hurt the consumer. But we all accept there are some things the free market fails to solve - like protection of property rights or national defense. Why do we refuse to see it might have limitations with the environment? A good example of a system like emissions trading working would be Iceland's fishing population. It was a shared resource where the free market overfished it and hurt everybody. When the government required licenses that could be traded to fish, Iceland's economy grew.
In short, RP looks worse when he sticks to his ideals even in the face of common sense. He looks bad when he chooses conspiracy over science. I want RP to win more than anything else in the world right now! Please help me convince him to become more palatable to the rational, free-thinking scientific community!
With that said, are there any other RP supporters who would like RP to re-consider his stance on global warming? Specifically the accusation that it's a "hoax" on his official issues page? Look, the solutions to climate change are less than clear. Exactly how it will occur is also up for debate. But to say it's a 'hoax' is more or a less a fringe conspiracy in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence and concensus. The reason I distrust the military industrial complex is because of how many times they've betrayed us and lied to us. But hasn't the scientific community been reasonably honest and contributed a lot to society? Hasn't it historically admitted its mistakes and moved human progress further?
Furthermore, when I advocate Ron Paul, people say that he has good ideas but he is an idealogue. I retort that sometimes he sounds like that, but if you dig deeper into his argument there is a lot of truth to that. However, he seems to REFUSE to budge that the free market and property rights could POSSIBLY be an insufficient solution to the environment, even though as someone who studies economics, I would expect RP to understand that the incentives to treat a shared resource well are all screwed up. It's a well studied problem known as the tragedy of the commons. The property rights arguments fails when irreversible damage is done to the environment, or in the cases where powerful lobbying industries can run misinformation campaigns to smear a cause, like we are seeing with the climate change crisis.
As a libertarian, I understand that economic regulations tend to have unintended consequences, be easily corrupted, and hurt the consumer. But we all accept there are some things the free market fails to solve - like protection of property rights or national defense. Why do we refuse to see it might have limitations with the environment? A good example of a system like emissions trading working would be Iceland's fishing population. It was a shared resource where the free market overfished it and hurt everybody. When the government required licenses that could be traded to fish, Iceland's economy grew.
In short, RP looks worse when he sticks to his ideals even in the face of common sense. He looks bad when he chooses conspiracy over science. I want RP to win more than anything else in the world right now! Please help me convince him to become more palatable to the rational, free-thinking scientific community!
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