A year ago, Audible Vacuum County was just a glimmer in our eyes. Kelly Clear sent me a demo, I liked it, and we decided to create an Audible version. Read all about it here:
Libertarian positions on any issue are about repealing government mandates. They are not about telling other people what they should or should not do.
The essence of the libertarian doctrine
Here are a few libertarian positions:
Taxation should be repealed.
Mandatory Education should be repealed.
Mandatory Health Insurance should be repealed.
Mandatory service -- military or otherwise -- should be repealed.
Government funding of any product or service should be repealed.
Government prohibition on the possession of any product or object or animal or thing should be repealed.
Government interference in freedom of contract should be repealed.
Any law telling people what to do in their private lives with other consenting adults should be repealed.
Here are some examples of non-libertarian positions:
Telling people that they should educate their children.
Telling people what they may or may not say, write or publish.
Telling people what religion they may belong to.
Telling people how to prepare food.
Telling people what substances they may imbibe, inhale or eat.
Telling people how to use their money.
Telling people what sorts of agreements they can make with other people.
Telling people that if they are not educated enough or wealthy enough they should not have children.
Telling people what they may not do for a living.
This should not be all that hard to understand. And yet I constantly hear people who hold office in the Libertarian Party saying things about what people should do. Just stop it! You are not helping the cause.
Here is a recent discussion about some of these issues that I had with Julia Hanna.
One of the reasons that most of my writing isn't deliberately set in the science fiction or fantasy genre is that I do hope that the insights that people get from reading my works can be translated into their real lives, rather than being interpreted as "allegorical". I mean, if a hero in a fantasy slays a dragon, sometimes that is just translated into real life as standing up to our fears and conquering our anxiety. But when I say "Go slay a dragon!" I don't mean that. I really do want that tyranny toppled.
Well, that was probably as clear as mud. So I'll try to say it a different way. I once met a man who lived in a hole in the ground, but he wasn't trying to be a Hobbit. He wanted to be like John Galt. And when all the other good little Objectivists heard about it, they laughed. Because to them, Atlas Shrugged was just an allegory.
The truth is that I myself am far less of a hero than I would like to be. I do pay my taxes, local, state and Federal. But I wait for the day when the dream of liberty can become a reality.
In order to bring that about, we need to recognize than none of us is as pure as the man who lived in the hole in the ground. We can't go attacking parents for sending children to public school and teachers for working at public schools, while doing nothing to repeal the school district. One LP officer told people that they should not have children if they are going to send them to public school. But did you know that if the school district and its taxes are not repealed, then home owners would still have to pay taxes to educate non-existent children, and to pay non-existent teachers? Like the Catholic Church in a world where all mankind has died out, according to Ted Sesame in Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy Way, the School District will exist even in a world without children.
So instead of telling people not to have children, wouldn't it be better to repeal the taxes? Slay the dragon. Leave the virgins alone.
Julia Hanna recently interviewed Kelly Clear and me about Vacuum County. It was via livestream, and each of us were live on our own channels. Here is the finished interview.
One of the insights from this interview: If you enjoy science fiction, there's a good chance you will like Vacuum County. For more insights, watch the entire interview. And here's a tip: the closed captioning on YouTube is really good. So if you are having trouble hearing any one of us while we talk or cannot understand something because were are interrupting each other, you can always turn on the cc and get a written version of what was said.
Kelly Clear: "[If you] enjoy sci-fi there's a good chance you will like Vacuum County."
