Nathan Larson
Nathan Larson is a Libertarian/Indy Green fusion candidate for the 1st District of Virginia Congressional race in 2008. Prior to that, he was a student senator at GMU.
Ballot access
Larson filed his declaration of candidacy on May 7 with about 1,075 signatures and is preparing a supplementary filing of another 325 signatures, for a total signature count of 1,400. 1,000 valid signatures are required to get on the ballot. The deadline is June 10.
Nomination
Arrangements are hastily being made to have a 1st Congressional District Libertarian convention, which would probably be held in Fredericksburg. The party chair would need to certify Larson as an LP candidate by June 16, per http://www.sbe.virginia.gov/cms/documents/Cidates/Bulletins/08Nov_USH.pdf .
Platform
Nathan Larson is running for Congress for the 1st District of Virginia, seeking to solve traffic congestion, preserve environmental quality, open our country's borders, end the federal War on Drugs, bring our troops home from Iraq, and promote direct citizen involvement in government.
Transportation
Specifically, Nathan supports auctioning off the interstate highway system, segment by segment, to private investors. He supports doing the same with Amtrak and other government-owned rail systems. The new owners could fund further expansion of these systems and compete with one another to provide the best service at the lowest price.
Environment
Environmental quality should be preserved through the establishment of property rights over land, water, air and other natural resources. The dead zone in the Chesapeake Bay, for instance, can be eliminated through the enforcement of nearby landowners' rights. Common law nuisance actions would compel area farmers to switch to no-till methods that would reduce nitrogen runoff into the Bay.
Immigration
As a pro-business candidate, Nathan advocates removing all restrictions on immigration. This will increase the supply of labor, driving wages down and thus helping businesses cut costs. This will allow savings to be passed on to consumers and enhance the competitiveness of American businesses in the global economy. Studies by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and others have found that immigrants are more likely than natives to start new businesses. We should take full advantage of the opportunity immigration offers to create more American jobs.
Drugs
Nathan advocates repealing drug prohibition, a non-value-added program that is essentially dead weight in the federal budget. According to Jon Gettman's report "Lost Taxes and Other Costs of Marijuana Laws," the cannabis market could generate $40 billion in taxes. Studies by the National Institute of Mental Health that demonstrated that cannabis acts by stimulating cannabinoid receptors rather than through a potentially toxic effect, as had been previously suspected, further demonstrate that the benefits of legalization would outweigh the disadvantages.
War in Iraq
The war in Iraq should be immediately ended and the troops brought home. The impetus for the invasion was to eliminate the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction. There being no evidence of such Iraqi weapons posing a threat to her neighbors at this time, and the security situation in Iraq appearing to have reached a plateau, there is little justification for our continued presence there.
Direct democracy with delegable proxy
Nathan also proposes that Congress be abolished in favor of a delegable proxy system that would combine elements of direct democracy and representative democracy. Any citizen could propose legislation, which would then be posted online. Other citizens could indicate their support for said legislation either directly or through their standing proxies. Proxies would be delegable, meaning that one's vote could be further delegated to his proxy's proxy. A majority would be required to enact legislation.
Views on altruism
Larson disagreed with Ayn Rand on the merits of altruism. Specifically, he posted the following post to the LPVA-Forum list:
- I've discovered that, in addition to being a physically grueling experience that stretches the limits of human endurance, marathons of ballot access petitioning can also put one's commitment to the Libertarian cause to the test. It is necessary to find creative ways of keeping oneself in a positive frame of mind, and remind oneself of the importance of what we're doing.
- For instance, I had much time to ponder, why do I feel such a strong urge to stand here and do this? Not many other people are doing this. Am I even doing the right thing? Would it be more helpful to society if I just engaged in self-interested capitalistic activity instead? I thought back on the writings of Ayn Rand, who held selfishness to be a virtue, and altruism to be totally evil.
- Rand writes, "Observe the indecency of what passes for moral judgments today. An industrialist who produces a fortune, and a gangster who robs a bank are regarded as equally immoral, since they both sought wealth for their own 'selfish' benefit. A young man who gives up his career in order to support his parents and never rises beyond the rank of grocery clerk is regarded as morally superior to the young man who endures an excruciating struggle and achieves his personal ambition. A dictator is regarded as moral, since the unspeakable atrocities he committed were intended to benefit 'the people,' not himself."
- She has a point there. It is true that misguided altruism is wasteful and detrimental to society. But I daresay that even most die-hard Objectivists probably engage in altruistic behavior on a regular basis. For instance, if a old lady fell down on the street, who would just walk by and not help her up? There's something in our nature that compels us to want to help. I suppose in a Randian society, she would be expected to offer a dollar or something in exchange for the service.
- But there is evidence that such systems are not always the most efficient way to organize society. The Fast Company article Only the Pronoid Survive explains the failure of attempts to increase the blood supply by paying blood donors. Altruists became disinclined to donate blood because it did not generate the same happy feelings that come from giving something away for free; and drug addicts and the poor became more inclined to donate. The results are decreases in both the quality and the quantity of blood. It would seem that the blood donation system that works best is one that relies on, and trusts, a subset of the population to act altruistically.
- Similarly, our political system relies on altruism in order to work properly. Every year, 30-50% of the American population engages in an activity that, from the standpoint of personal economics, makes very little sense - namely, voting. Many academic papers have been published speculating on what motivates this seemingly irrational expenditure of opportunity cost, but no consensus has emerged. I may as well add my own theory to the mix.
- I think altruism has its roots in biology. It is generally agreed that, from a biological perspective, our purpose is to survive and reproduce offspring that will do the same. This explains much "greedy" behavior that occurs in nature, such as when a male tiger kills the cubs of a previous male in order to cause the female will come into heat and bear the new male's offspring.
- However, we see a different phenomenon happen in reference to sex ratio, which is described in Robert E. Ricklef's The Economy of Nature. A gene that causes one to produce more male offspring than female will temporarily reproduce rapidly, since a male, by impregnating a number of females, can produce many times more offspring than a female. However, this gene will eventually produce a population with a disproportionately large number of males, actually hurting its efficiency in reproduction in the long run. So species tend to evolve to an equilibrium approximating a 1:1 sex ratio (in humans, 105 males for each 100 females). This phenomenon is known as Fisher's Principle.
- Similarly, our altruistic act of getting involved in politics makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. It may not seem advantageous, within the context of an individual person's life, for him to make sacrifices for others. But it makes a lot of sense from the standpoint of the population as a whole. The key to understanding it is to the see the larger picture, both in terms of time and population. As the founders of this country noted, their self-sacrificing efforts (putting their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor on the line) to preserve liberty were not just for themselves, but for themselves and their posterity.
- In understanding how altruism plays out, it is also worth noting that in nature, the ratio of specialized individuals is not always 1:1; sometimes it is rather lopsided. Consider, for instance, the castes in an ant colony or beehive. They produce large numbers of workers compared to the queens and drones. Over time, the ratio has become calibrated to a level optimal for maximum survival and reproduction. I think that the human species as well has evolved to produce a certain number of individuals with an altruistic streak. These are people born with a strong drive to work for the betterment of society, even at great cost to themselves. Many altruists get dismayed at how few in number they seem to be. But I suspect that, like the ratio of queen bees to worker bees, the ratio of altruistic humans to selfish humans, and the degrees of their altruism, evolved for a reason - and that reason is that it is does not take many strongly altruistic people to suffice for society. Compared to the population of the country as a whole, it would only take a small number of Libertarians, sacrificing their own interests for the interests of society as a whole, to pull the country in a Libertarian direction and keep it that way - and once there, we would move on to other altruistic endeavors, no doubt providing the voluntary charity and so on that most Libertarian proposals (for privatized education, for instance) would depend on to provide for the poor.
- Where altruists run into trouble is when they become misguided and pursue counterproductive endeavors (e.g. socialism); or when they do become Libertarians, they feel guilty about being so self-sacrificing (perhaps bowing to pressure from more selfish individuals to conform, or feeling it is the right thing to do, after reading about "the virtue of selfishness"), and artificially suppress their natural altruistic tendencies in favor of doing "normal" activities and fitting in. But altruists were never meant to fit in and be like everyone else. They were supposed to be different. It's what's necessary for the long-term success of the population as a whole.
- So, in closing, I would say, if you happen to be among the select few who feel a strong urge to altruistically sacrifice your own interests to help the Libertarian Party, don't let anyone make you feel bad about it. Not only are you satisfying your own innate desire to help society, but you're helping us get back to the healthy equilibrium that nature intended. Or at least, that's what I tell myself when people start giving me crap about my involvement in the Libertarian cause.
- Oh, by the way! I just filed my first 1,000 signatures in Richmond today, many of which were gathered on Election Day, so I anticipate being able to get on the ballot for the 1st District Congressional race. If there are any altruists out there who would like to help me get a campaign website set up, please let me know.