Three of the top third-party candidates who are challenging the entrenched duopoly – Jill Stein (Green Party), Rocky Anderson (Justice Party) and Judge Jim Gray (Libertarian Party) — gather together to find common ground and purpose, on The Progressive Commentary Hour with Gary Null.
Follow the link above to listen to the interview.
Judge Gray is an excellent speaker. He did very well in articulating libertarian positions.
better then Johnson methinks.
I really liked the interview; they were great questions which really helped Gray to give a very different answer than we usually hear from Libertarians.
The compassionate progressive is differently a group libertarians need to go after more.
@2- Agreed.
Gary Null is best known as an author of books on holistic health, and he has been involved with the health freedom movement in opposition to excessive regulation of vitamin supplements.
People involved in the health freedom movement are an important constituency for Libertarians. They understand that even well-meaning regulation often has undesirable consequences. And they understand that health is a matter of personal responsibility.
Jim Gray of course got the obligatory “but what about the workers” questions libertarians always face. I think one thing all libertarians should add to their answer to this is the point that our modern corporate world was created by the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890.
We often think of this as a form of regulation that made big corporations afraid, but it actually MANDATED corporate conglomerates by making collusion illegal. Before this, small regional firms or even mom-and-pops could band together in “pools” to control prices and thus maintain their employment levels. After Sherman, these pools could only band together in national corporations, and in the oligopoly system that ensued “price leadership” by the largest firm in a particular market led to the same effect on prices, but a greater negative effect on workers (& goods from different firms were distinguished based on quality & marketing rather than price). The U.S. never gave pools the force of contract out of paranoia, whereas Europe continued to be dominated by family firms till WWII by recognizing pools with contracts. What also boosted corporate formation was a change in state laws beginning in 1882 allowing corporations to own stock in other corporations for the first time, creating unstable inter-connectivity.
I think if Libertarians could make liberals/progressives understand that our modern corporate world is a result of government meddling and not a “natural” outgrowth of capitalism, it would help change many minds. As usual, we generally need less regulation, not more.
(See The Rise of Big Business by Glenn Porter)
7 responses so far ?
1 ctomp // Jun 18, 2012:
Judge Gray is an excellent speaker
[Lake: and has been for years ………]