Nick_Gillespie

Alyssa, before becoming known as a political journalist at Reason.com and Reason TV, I ghostwrote an advice column as you at the late, lamented Teen Machine magazine. (Needless to say, I apologize to anybody who followed any life advice I proferred and I will be happy to testify in your parole hearings.) My questions: The Teen Machine gig was set up between my bosses and your managers, but were you aware of it at all? What was it like reading about yourself as a teenager in those sorts of mags? And do you think teen stars--and adult stars, for that matter--have any responsibility to act as role models for their audiences?

We try not to speak in the royal we at Reason (we don't believe in monarchy or group-based editorial stances), so I won't speak for my colleagues. But I am very much in the copyright anarchist camp. Whatever the origins of copyright in an American (and constitutional) context, it's clear that most intellectual property laws are the tools of politically connected firms (cough, cough, Disney, cough cough). As long as you are not falsely claiming work as your own, I think things should be wide open.

Our goal at Reason--published by a nonprofit--is to spread our ideas and journalism far and wide. This turns out not only to be a pretty good business model (we have stable if limited funding) but it means we don't get super worried when people start using our stuff. But we haven't looked at the copyfree license and probably should.

As with immigration and drug laws, copyright laws are not particularly operative in the decisions people make. But to the extent they make it harder to produce and consume culture, they should be amended.

Viva Grokster!

What Matt said, plus this: I worry less about the parties themselves and worry more about policy. The fact is that we'll always have two major parties because of the way votes are counted in our system. What those parties stand for changes all the time and gives us plenty of room to create true libertarian polices in either or both parties: Free trade, open borders, immigration, you name it. The parties are empty wine bottles (as a classic 19th century cartoon once put it). It's our job to fill them with new wine. The wine of...freedom, baby!

In the short term, technology causes some dislocations. In the long term, it grows the economy and the overall number of jobs and possibilities. This is what the historical record shows over and over again (typists were killed by the rise of personal computers, but the new PC-centric world employs far more people than old typing pools ever could).

An important addendum (especially from a guy in his early 50s): All of us need to keep growing and expanding our skill sets over our entire lifetimes. If you don't, you're waiting to get caught in a bad pinch.

Here's Reason's Ron Bailey on why we shouldn't worry about technological unemployment going forward.

Specific to the question of convincing disadvantaged minorities to give libertarianism a shot: The events in Ferguson and Staten Island are a terrifying indication of how the state's police power is abused at the cost of minorities lives. I believe that many if not most of the problems of inner cities (and rural areas, too) are the direct results of government policies. You bring in school choice; end the drug war and the black market violence it concentrates in poor neighborhoods; and get rid of dumb minimum wage laws, occupational licensing hassles, and stupid zoning restrictions, and you're a long way toward creating a better, fairer America.

As Rand Paul has noted, libertarians have done a poor or nonexistent job in talking with minorities about their situation and how less government and more empowerment might help. We need to do that and I think we are. At the Daily Beast, I wrote about "The Libertarian Moment in Ferguson," where African-American anger at police abuses merged with libertarian concerns about militarized police. That's a great starting point, as is school choice and discussions of eminent domain abuse and drug legalization.