rob311 wrote:

Threadjacking a bit, it hasn't escaped my notice that Libertarians and "far left" and Republicans and 60s hippies all ended up saying the same thing at the end: "leave me alone! Freedom!" And then the practicalities of such a wish become problematic, like a little kid who wants to run away from his parents and then doesn't have an understanding of what that really means a few steps down the road.

We're all connected. All responsible. Living and dying without being considerate of others is a lonely, simplistic, selfish life.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:

Scott, while I wouldn’t presume to speak for all libertarians or the woke, there may be a few areas where woke and libertarians would agree, e.g., LGBTQ+ rights and, at least for some libertarians, abortion rights. However, many woke positions are diametrically opposed to libertarian ones, including "speech is violence", cancellation or shouting over others' speech, DEI as institutionally implemented, BDS, intersectionality and its related view that creates the oppressor-oppressed duality.

Err.  Am curious if the issue is a tad more complicated than merely the selection of content.

William, as always, has been clear that he welcomes all viewpoints.  I've also read that RP is now providing Radio 2050 to some other outlets, including, IIRC, an NPR station. So, this is an element of the Radio 2050 business plan - ie syndication (?)

Q. Are the episodes of the Radio 2050 content being provided to these outlets in a contract where they must take all, or can they cherry-pick as they see fit?  

Some of these other stations may not be interested in episodes that present an alternative view from their own existing programming.  And that could make the Radio 2050 content more difficult to find licensees (and revenue ?).

/idle thots

 Steely_D wrote:

Steely (Dan?), I totally agree. See my response to Bill below.

 William wrote:

First off, I was hoping this would be your reaction so I'm very happy with your response. This country definitely needs more dialog.

Here are a few organizations that you might want to contact. All of them are working to make things better. Some on a global level and others on almost individual, case by case, level.

The Copenhagen Consensus Center (https://copenhagenconsensus.co...). A think tank that advises governments and philanthrophists on how to be most effective tackling the world's myriad of problems. The title of a book published in 2014 encapsulates the goal nicely: "How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place". Although primarily the vision of Bjorn Lomborg, heavy use is made of subject experts and interaction between them to obtain a consensus on both how to spend, and how to prioritize between different problems all competing for resources and is encapsulated in a recent book "Best Things First."

The Institute for Justice (https://ij.org/). One might think of IJ as a libertarian version of the ACLU. IJ provides free legal support to people whose rights are being infringed on by government. I suspect that much of what IJ does would appeal to people who are not libertarian: e.g., protecting freedom of speech, enhancing school choice, eliminating civil forfeiture, and enhancing economic liberty. For example, and picking just one of these, economic liberty, IJ has successfully acted on behalf of hair braiders who were forbidden to practice their craft without first completing 2,000 hours of cosmetology training and also on behalf of a casket manufacturer that was blocked from selling caskets without first getting a mortuary license. IJ frequently has cases that go to the Supreme Court, usually coming out on the victorious side. However, their most famous case was a Supreme Court loss. This was the Kelo v. City of New London case with the Kelo family fighting eminent domain seizure of their home by the town in which they lived so that the town could turn around and sell the land to Pfizer who wanted to build on it. The loss of the case, and the Kelo's home, was widely seen as unfair and led to favorable eminent domain reform around the country.

Another organization is Reason (https://reason.org/). A think tank with a focus on individual rights, transportation, pensions, education and psychedelics. Reason has a history of successfully working with local and state governments on pension reforms and transportation planning to name just two areas. Reason started advocating for gay and lesbian rights, particularly the right to marry, long before it became a progressive plank. The earliest article I can find online was in 2004, but I recollect that Reason's support for same-sex marriage goes back much further.

A fourth organization is the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, aka FIRE (https://www.thefire.org/). Like IJ, FIRE provides legal and other support directly to people. FIRE is more focused than IJ, specializing in clients who are being punished by government, their employer or school for what they said or wrote. Historically FIRE has focused on college students and faculty whose speech has been surpressed or who have faced penalties such as being expelled (as students) or fired (as faculty). FIRE is ideologically neutral with respect to clients it supports. Although suppression of speech is more frequent when the speech is conservative, FIRE has also supported a number of people whose speech was progressive. It is my recollection (but I cannot find support for it now) that by FIRE's own count approximately 1/3 of the cases it handles are suppression of progressive speech and the other 2/3 are suppression of conservative speech. FIRE has gotten a lot of media exposure recently in conjunction with congressional testimonies (and the fallout thereof) of the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT.

Fifth, there is the AHA Foundation (https://www.theahafoundation.o...). Founded by Aayan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim who has experienced female genital mutilation and credible death threats (one was pinned to the body of a Dutch filmmaker after he was executed by an Islamic extremist) and is now a champion for women's rights, especially in predominantly Muslim countries.

All of these organizations have competent writers/speakers and if you contact them I would hope they would be happy to work with you on an episode.

 rob311 wrote:

Well, I think you’re really asking for thoughtful and useful diversity, which is the problem; you have to find some that’s a valid contribution.
Someone can tell you that the world is a sphere and it’s true there is a dissenting view. But it’s valueless. It’s just noise for the sake of being difficult. 
It’s not just that diverse opinions express a dissenting or different view - but they have to some version of merit, not just disagreement with something.
Otherwise 

 rob311 wrote:

My hunch is that Libertarians *delete* *delete* about RP using its platform to voice what they believe, or voice what they think is valuable for their listeners. And I can't speak for them but I doubt they agree that "Woke" and "Libertarian" are mutually exclusive. 

We’d welcome your suggestions about potential guests who meet your political criteria and who are also actively engaged in pursuing solutions to the problems we’re facing.

Not talking about what should be done, or pointing fingers at “them”, but finding something that needs to be done and doing it.

I have no doubt that they’re out there, and we would gladly add their voices to the mix - just like we welcome all civil voices here in the RP forum. 

I just went through the abstracts of the current 16 episodes on Radio 2050, and listened to a few, and by my tally the sixteen can roughly be categorized as follows:

• 7 have a self-help (or community self-help) orientation
• 5 are anti-capitalist or exhibit woke characteristics
• 4 are difficult to classify

Having 5 with a leftist/woke leaning wouldn't bother me if Radio 2050 didn't also have some with a libertarian or conservative viewpoint.

The five that I think are leftist are as follows along with a brief explanation of what influenced my categorization:

• Doughnut Economics. I did a deeper dive on this than the others, looking at their websites, concluding that it looks a lot like socialism. Doughnut Economics come close to echoing the socialist slogan "to each according to their needs, from each according to their abilities", adding a clause that might be "as long as none of our limits are violated". 
• Partnerism. Seems a lot like socialism. Not sure what is meant by "the current domination-oriented system" but I suspect they mean capitalism. Partnerism seems sort of halfway between indivualism and communitarianism, the former generally associated with capitalism and the latter with socialism.
• Community and Technology. On the face of it this doesn't seem anti-capitalist, but in the abstract one sees "challenging individualism" and "intersectionalist approaches to AI". The term "intersectionalist" comes straight out of the woke culture.
• Green Amendment. May not be focused against capitalism, but the presenter lists one of her achievements as "successfully challenging pro-fracking laws", apparently and ironically unaware that fracking in the US is what has allowed the US, maybe alone among all countries, to actually lower its CO2 output over the last two decades.
• Safe Spaces. This may not be anti capitalism, per se, but the title itself, "bystander intervention," and "economic justice" are all terms popularized in woke cancel culture on our college campuses.

So, Radio 2050, are you in favor of diversity? Then how about some viewpoint diversity!