Freedom Line Blog

Balaji S. Srinivasan, a computer scientist and co-founder of the genomics company Counsyl who also serves as a Stanford University lecturer, made waves earlier this month when he told an audience of young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs that they should secede from the United States. Wisely, Srinivasan didn’t call for Silicon Valley braniacs to attempt to form an independent state. He did, however, encourage his audience to look for ways to work around, or beyond, America’s suffocating government.

His speech became a rallying cry for innovators frustrated at America’s tax laws, regulatory burdens and other bureaucratic barriers to creativity. Since  Srinivasan essentially called for the creation of physical and virtual libertarian cities, his speech crossed over from Silicon Valley’s tech crowd into websites and email lists consumed by those of us who champion individual freedom and free market economic policies.

Because of government policies and social factors, the U.S. has become obsolete according to Srinivasan.

The logical conclusion of Srinivasan’s philosophy are free states and free cities, or perhaps seasteading. But Srinivasan recommends a number of more viable options in the near term.  The New York Times points out that it’s already possible utilize technology to opt-out of government oversight, intervention and taxation by “spending unregulated digital currency, sleeping in unregulated hotels and manufacturing unregulated guns.”

Srinivasan’s speech should be a wake-up call to entrepreneurs, innovators and employers hampered by government interference. The speech should be taken even more seriously by the federal government.  Technology has created opportunities for clever individuals to live outside of government, and the more damage taxes and regulations cause to individuals and businesses, the more taxpayers and job creators will choose to avoid the government.

2012  may be remembered as the year that Barack Obama dropped the mask. Based on his remarks at a campaign stop in Roanoke, Virginia on Friday, the president has no interest in making his peace with America’s entrepreneurs. In fact, his remarks there should make their blood run cold:

We’ve heard this rap before. It sounds suspiciously like Elizabeth Warren’s pep talk to a room full of agitated Boston liberals. But, if anything, Obama’s remarks are actually worse. Warren didn’t go so far as to denigrate hard work and intelligence, which the president seems to consider middling factors when it comes to being successful in life (note to the president: I’d absolutely love to meet these armies of workaholic geniuses who wouldn’t be succeeding without the federal government).

The asininity per square inch of this speech is pretty daunting, but here are a few corrective notes:

• Notice the examples Obama uses — teachers, firefighters, and infrastructure. These are all (by relatively expansive definitions, anyway) public goods. If there were a caucus of conservatives out there advocating boarding up schools, abolishing fire departments, and moving to a system of rope bridges, the president would have a point, but these are generally uncontroversial examples of public expenditures. Moreover, they’re not areas that are primarily financed by the federal government. Left unsaid is why taxes should increase to fund green-energy boondoggles like Solyndra, PR efforts for the stimulus package, or six-figure salaries for the Interior Department’s Twitter monkey.

• The constant liberal assertion that the economic growth of the 1990s — coming on the heels of Bill Clinton’s tax increases — shows that taxes don’t effect the broader economy confuses correlation with causation and ignores the effects of NAFTA, the IT revolution, welfare reform, etc. In truth, the 90s likely boomed less than they would have without Clinton’s tax hikes, something that the work of Obama’s own economic advisers suggests.

• Liberals love to trot out the example of the internet as government innovation that works, but it’s worth noting that the internet wasn’t designed with commercial purposes in mind, but rather as a communications tool for the military. And, in fact, many of the lingering inefficiencies of the internet stem from its government paternity, and a whole host of the improvements that have been made to it owe to market forces.