Why I Am Libertarian

I've gotten a couple of comments on my blog (so far only from my wife and her best friend, but it's a start :-). One definitely interested me. Initially I was going to reply as a comment, but I definitely want to put some of my political beliefs in my blog, so I'll reply as a blog posting instead of a comment.

Some excerpts from the comment:

have you ever heard of/read: Libertarianism, a Primer

I didn't realize you consider yourself Libertarian. I respect that a lot since I feel that our loss of rights for the sake of Government handling our responsibilities has been suffocating lately! They just love to grow themselves, don't they? And there's not a darn thing we can do about it! Well, other than whine and vote for Ron Paul.

I have not read "Libertarianism, a Primer", so I can't comment on it.

My "conversion" to libertarianism really started shortly after graduating from high school when I read Atlas Shrugged for the first time (I've read it several since then). I have some minor issues with the book itself. It's a little long winded. Okay, I take that back. At well over 1000 pages, it's a LOT long winded. Even so, the philosophy and ideas presented in that book are so important, and so dead on that I cannot see anyone reading it and failing to appreciate it.

As I read that book, I realized that government control of the economy, or personal freedoms, and (perhaps worst of all) morality is a direct route to loss of personal liberty.

Although I had those beliefs (or at least, the beginning of them), they were not well formed, and I wouldn't have called myself libertarian at that point. Over the years though, I've spent a great deal of time formalizing my political beliefs. I've studied some of the political statements of the founding fathers. I've familiarized myself with several political parties and philosophies. The greater understanding I have of my political beliefs, and the more I know about the things that made this country great, the more importance I place on personal liberty. For me, personal liberty is the factor that overrides all others when making political decisions. The Libertarian philosophy is the only one which agrees with that. I am therefore, completely and unreservably libertarian.

I would recommend the recent book "The Revolution: A Manifesto" by Ron Paul. It's a fairly simple and enjoyable read, and it presents many of the ideas of libertarianism in a very contemporary setting, so it is much more accessible to people.

As far as Ron Paul, he's an interesting wrinkle in how I may vote in the upcoming election. I hope it's completely unnecessary to say that I will not be voting for McCain or Obama. For me, it will come down to Bob Barr (the libertarian candidate) or Ron
Paul (if he's on the ballot).

Ron Paul appears to me to be a libertarian who actually wants to get elected, so he calls himself a republican in order to increase his likelihood of getting votes. Bob Barr appears to me to be a republican who does not agree entirely with the party, so he calls himself a libertarian. Ron Paul's actual stance on most issues is almost entirely libertarian. Bob Barr's has been very republican in the past with a relatively recent shift towards libertarianism.

If they're both on the ballot, I'll probably vote Ron Paul. He's demonstrated that he's a libertarian but he might actually draw enough support to implement some of his ideas. Otherwise, I'll vote Barr. I'm not 100% committed to this course at this point however.

With respect to the comment "there's not a darn thing we can do about it"... my response is this:

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. -- Thomas Jefferson

As long as we go along with the flow, the current course that this country is taking will continue. If you disagree with the course that the country is taking... if you disagree with the political views of the candidates... if you disagree with the laws that are being passed, that opinion must be voiced.

As long as we continue to vote for the "lesser of two evils" (whichever candidate of the two you consider the lesser evil), we'll continue to get (at best) the lesser of two evils. Vote for the person who supports your liberty (which almost certainly means voting third party). Tell people you're doing so, and tell them why you're doing so. If we stop being silent... we're doing something. It may not be a lot (and it may not be enough), but it's a start.

Voice your opinion about the laws being passed. Write to your representatives. It's very easy at this point since there are any number of "contact your representative" web pages which can be used to send email to the appropriate people containing your views.

And I'd like to say something to all those people who have a "Proud to be a Democrat" or "Proud to be a Republican" bumper sticker (or flag, or shirt, or whatever). I'm proud to say that in the past 20 years, I have not voted for a Democrat or Republican presidential candidate. I'm not sure what it is you're proud of, but I know what I'm prout of. I am proud to have voted for people who I thought would protect personal liberty: both mine AND YOURS!

I would like to add one sidenote about Atlas Shrugged.

A common complaint about the philosophy presented in Atlas Shrugged is that it seems at first glance to be critical of acting charitably to people who are in need of help, or of trying to do the right thing for personal spritual or moral beliefs. And it may be true that Ayn Rand (a self-proclaimed atheist) presented some of those ideas in such an emphatic manner that they can be taken that way. As a very religious person, who believes in acting in a moral way, and in the responsibility to help others, I can understand this complaint, but do not find that her philosophy contradicts mine. Her philosophy was that we should be free to behave in such a way as we find good, and to do those things which make us happy (so long as we do not harm others), and that the government should not force a set of moral beliefs on the people. In other words, while I find it admirable that someone would voluntarily help someone who was in need, I find it dangerous (at the very least) that the government should be able to say "this person is in need, and you WILL help them or you WILL go to jail" (and this is exactly what the government does when they take taxes from us and use them for any number of social programs). I do not oppose the social program... merely the use of government force in their operation.

Anyway, enough about politics for now.

I Get 1500 MPG!!!

When gas hit $4 a gallon, I decided to bike to work. I live a little over 5 miles from work, and between stop lights and everything else, I can bike there or back in about 25 minutes. For comparison, in the morning, I can drive in in about 15 minutes (since the traffic is so low), but coming home in the afternoon (even leaving at 4:00), it takes me 25 minutes, so I only spend about 10 additional minutes on the commute. In addition, I save quite a bit on gas (somewhere in the neighborhood of $40/month) and get in over 4 hours of exercise per week. Luckily, the people I work with are in to biking a lot (2 others bike in every day too), so it's a pretty bike friendly place to work.

Anyway, a friend and I were discussing alternative fuels, and in this case, we were talking ethanol. He drives a small motorcycle, and figured that he could get around 50 MPG going 50 MPH on it using ethanol. So, I got curious and started figuring out some numbers.

As a side note... I love math. I got a minor in math, and do math puzzles for fun. I suspect you would have guessed this by the time you get to the bottom of this post.

Anyway, these calculations are just for fun of course... nothing too scientific, so take them with a huge grain of salt.

First off, I went to the internet to find out some information, and learned that ethanol contains 150 calories/ounce, and an ounce is 0.0078125 gallons. A resting human metabolism burns around 75 calories/hour, and an easy biking (10 mph) metabolism is around 200 calories/hour for a 150 pound person. So, biking burns about 125 calories/hour in addition to the normal resting metabolism.

Using simple dimensional analysis (I'll write about that sometime!), you get the following:

X miles     10 miles   1 hour        150 cal
-------  =  -------- x ------- x ----------------
gallon        hour     125 cal   0.0078125 gallon

       = 1540 miles/gallon

Of course, I'm not suggesting that I (or anyone else) should use ethanol as their main source of calories, but it's an interesting result.

I decided to take it a bit further. If you want to go twice as fast, you don't burn twice as many calories. Instead, it goes up at some exponential rate. So, back to the internet I learned that more strenuous biking (20 MPH) burns around 540 calories/hour (or 465 after you subtract resting metabolism).

Plugging these results in, we get:

X miles     20 miles   1 hour        150 cal
-------  =  -------- x ------- x ----------------
gallon        hour     465 cal   0.0078125 gallon

       = 830 miles/gallon

A professional biker in the Tour de France bikes 4 around hours a day and burns between 6000 and 8000 calories per day. If you use 7000 as a happy medium, subtract the normal daily metabolism of 2200 calories per day, and divide the result over 4 hours of racing (and yes, I realize that that is a huge number of assumptions and over simplifications), that works out to be around 1200 calories per hour. The average speed this year was 25 MPH. Plug these numbers in and we get:

X miles     25 miles   1 hour        150 cal
-------  =  -------- x ------- x ----------------
gallon        hour     1200 cal   0.0078125 gallon

       = 400 miles/gallon

Obviously, I don't believe that a biker could actually go 50 MPH (as fast as the motorcycle that this all started with), but what if they could?

The first thing I did was to plot MPH vs. the log of calories burned per hour (since this is exponential). Then I extrapolated to 50 MPH. I realize that extrapolating outside of the range of the data is a horrible practice, given how far outside of the data (which consists only of 3 very approximate data points), the result is almost meaningless... but who cares. This is just for fun.



The extrapolated value gives approximately 10.75 at 50 MPH. This corresponds to 46,600 calories. Plugging these numbers in:

X miles     50 miles   1 hour        150 cal
-------  =  -------- x ------- x ----------------
gallon        hour     46600 cal   0.0078125 gallon

       = 21 miles/gallon

It should also be noted that the motorcycle is pushing the motorcycle and rider with a total weight of at around 500 pounds (remember, I'm talking a small motorcycle). The bicycle and rider is no more than 200 pounds. So, the motorcycle gets somewhere on the order of 5 times better gas mileage than the theoretical cyclist who could achieve 50 MPH.

Anyway, just some fun numbers to think about...

My Daughter Awake

It's early Saturday morning right now. Elizabeth woke up a little after 7:00... and for us, that's sleeping in by an hour. It was really nice!

Before I was marrired, my preferred sleeping time was about 1:00 AM to 8:00 AM (or sometimes 2AM to 9AM). That's actually been my best sleeping time all of my adult life.

When I got married, one of the things that both my wife and I wanted was to have the same sleeping schedule, so we ended up compromising on about 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM, and that wasn't too bad.

Then we had a baby who wakes up at 6:00 AM almost every morning. She's done that almost from the time she was born, and became very consistent when she settled into a sleep schedule (actually, it was 5:00 AM, but when Daylight Saving TIme ended, it became 6:00 AM). So for the past 19 months or so, our schedule has been either 10:00 PM to 5:00 AM (during the winter time) or 10:30 PM to 6:00 AM (during the summer time). The Daylight Saving Time switch was mostly ignored since Elizabeth just kept the same schedule.

Even though I've been doing it for for a year and a half, it still feels so unnatural. If I were on my own for a week (which I don't want), I could slip back into my real schedule in about 2 days.

One huge advantage of it though is that for the first time in my life, I'm working a 7:00 to 4:00 schedule. This means a couple of things. I work in IT, and the majority of people are night people like me, so it's not unusual for me to be there one or two hours alone before anyone else shows up. Also, I get to leave at 4:00 which actually gives me time to do a few things after work that need to be done in the normal 9-5 work day. And it gives me a very long afternoon to spend with my family.

I like the advantages so much, I plan on keeping up this schedule permenantly, even though the sleeping still feels so wrong to me.

Incidentally, my wife created a blog for our daughter. It's called "My Joy" and it's linked in the side bar if you're interested.

Why?

I usually do things for a reason, but in the case of this blog, I'm not sure why I'm doing it. I'm kind of excited about it... I get to talk about anything I want. Sometimes it'll be stream of consciousness type writing. Other times I'll write essays. I always enjoyed writing essays. But it doesn't really explain why I'm looking forward to writing. Probably just because it will allow me to talk about things that are important to me. Or maybe it's something else that I'll figure out as I go.

Some of the most important things in my life are: my wife and daughter (I'll write a lot about both of them), my church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; aka Mormon), my political beliefs (staunch libertarian), building things (I love to build), my job (computer programmer and systems administrator), etc.

We'll see where it goes.

Maybe I'll start by saying where the title of my blog comes from. I've been called "The Date Man" on a couple of occasions, and I kind of liked it. It doesn't refer to the number of girls I've gone out with. It refers to a program I wrote (and continue to modify) called Date::Manip. It's a perl module... and unless you are a perl programmer, this probably means nothing to you, and is not very interesting.

One of the fundamental things about me is that I am an engineer. I like to build things. I "build" computer programs. I "build" meals (I like to cook). I enjoy carpentry and metal working and have gotten to build a number of things. Some might think that writing a computer program, cooking a meal, and building a shelf are three completely different things, but I get almost the exact same enjoyment out of them.

In each type of building, I look forward to building something "grand" or especially meaningful. Although I've written a number of computer programs, Date::Manip stands out as one of my most important. So when I was called "The Date Man", it was definitely a compliment. Anyway, it came to mind when I was starting this blog, and it stuck.

But don't worry... I'm not going to go into any details about writing computer programs (at least, I don't think I will). I can just see it. An essay entitled "The inner workings of a computer programmer's mind". I realize that it would be thrilling, but you'll probably just have to do without.

Anyway, more later...