David McElroy

When an earthquake hit the Italian city of L’Aquila in 2009, it wasn’t much different from any other natural disaster. Earthquakes are impossible to predict with any degree of certainty, so nobody knew it was coming. Unfortunately, 309 people lost their lives.

The odd thing about this case, though, is that that local government is sending six scientists and a government official to prison for manslaughter — because their scientific opinion that a major quake was improbable is now considered “too reassuring.” Somehow, an accurate reading of the science at the time is getting these folks sent to jail.

When there were some tremors ahead of time three years ago, the local government set up a risk assessment committee to look at the scientific information and provide an opinion. There were six seismologists and one government official on the committee. After looking at the data, they concluded that a major quake was possible but improbable.

Other scientists now mostly look at the data and say they agree with the conclusions the committee reached. Still, the fact that more than 300 people died meant that government had to blame someone. There had to be scapegoats.

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I’m just going to say one thing about the third party presidential debate that’s being held Tuesday night. I won’t be watching the debate and I don’t much care about it. I’m sure my rhetorical sympathies would be with the things said by Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson, but I can’t say that I want anyone to vote for him. I don’t want anyone to vote for anyone, because I don’t want a ruler.

I don’t want a conservative ruler or a progressive ruler or a Green ruler or even a libertarian ruler. The problem is the fact that someone — anyone — is given power over you, not the identity or party label of the person given that power. Even if a third party had a chance to win, it wouldn’t change the root cause of our political situation. It would just hand power to someone slightly different — until the Establishment took back over. So the problem is the system itself, not who gets elected, which is why the third party debate is irrelevant to me, at best.

If you’d like to argue that the two mainstream parties unfairly keep out the other parties, I’ll agree with you. If you want to argue that the “winner take all” system here makes it impossible for smaller minority opinions to have much of a seat at the table of democracy, I’ll agree with you there, too. But arguing about those flaws overlooks the basic issue.

I don’t want any ruler, no matter what party he comes from.

What’s the purpose of state regulations? We’re told that the state has to regulate various things to protect the public’s health and safety. We’re also told that regulations protect us from being cheated. But governments prove every day that their regulations aren’t about protecting us. Instead, they’re all about politicians and bureaucrats maintaining control over the world around us.

The latest example comes from Minnesota, where state education bureaucrats told a free online education website that it’s illegal for the site to make its courses available — for free, remember — to the people of the state.

You see, there’s a state law that requires any college operating in the state to get permission from the state. The bureaucrats at the state’s Office of Higher Education informed Coursera (and possibly other free online providers) that it’s illegal for them to offer courses to people in Minnesota.

What is Coursera? It’s part of a growing movement that’s making world-class university courses available online for free to whoever wants them. (Take a look at the list of 33 schools that make some of their classes available through Coursera.) Just to emphasize this again, the people taking these online course pay nothing. They have access to great educational opportunities that other people pay thousands of dollars for.

But because the system isn’t set up as state education bureaucrats envisioned it, they don’t like it. They want to shut it down. They want to take the choice away from people who are getting a tremendous value for free. This isn’t about protection. This is about control.

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