The Permanent Traveler @ Bastiat Free University
A PT - Permanent Traveler is a good fit for becoming a BFU student. With no physical campus, Bastiat Free University travels well.
Hundreds of years ago people seldom traveled more than a few miles from the place they were born. For large parts of the physical world's population this is still the case.
(warning -- rant ahead)
I'm sure you have heard of the "One hundred dollar lap-top" fiasco. A few years ago a bureaucrat conceived the idea that at under US$100.00 every child in the world could have a wind up computer provided by their governments. Laptops have now started to ship to poor kids. When crooked politicians don't grab them first, the kids themselves are selling them as soon as they get them. The "$100" laptops now cost almost US$200 dollars each, not counting graft and distribution expenses.
Not only are bureaucrats acting surprised this should happen, they want lots of new laws, powers, and controls installed to stop it. It won't work. They even have the gall to be mad at private enterprise because you can now buy a new laptop off the shelf for less than their centrally planned nightmare costs. Private enterprise seeks to provide what people want, bureaucrats tell us what we will want, and then can't deliver.
Back to our BFU & PT lifestyle theme - there is a connection.
For decades freedom loving people have been quietly slipping out of the bureaucratic world. With businesses that travel well, and a desire to live as they feel best suits them, they have joined others in loose associations of what may be called sovereign individuals.
These are the perpetual travelers know as PT. Joining this group has been easy, if you were well educated, or had a mobile business, or a nice bit of savings. That and the knowledge that they were not born to be an employee or an indentured citizen led these pioneers to discover routes to personal liberty.
Now to tie it all together.
Back in the late sixties electronic calculators became available - slide rules were faster - and a hundred times cheaper. As time passed, a calculator's quality and number of functions increased - and prices dropped. At first only the wealthy, or businessmen and scientists, or some students would pay the high price for a calculator. By the late eighties calculators were not only cheap - they were give-away premiums with a purchase.
Lets roll the tape again, but this time let computers play the role once acted by calculators. If the free market is allowed to operate, private enterprise will drive down the cost of computing to where it is not worth the effort of a child, or a crooked diplomat, to steal and sell computers.
The age of the individual will have been born.
Empowered by inexpensive technology, anyone in the world can discover the best places for them to live, and have access to a medium that will allow them to earn their tickets. These will be the students that need BFU and others of its ilk; they will also be the ones that network without boundaries, ethnicities, and distance as limitations. These are the hope for a better, safer future; the Netcohort. That is they may have this wonderful chance.
If we can keep the bureaucrats from destroying their opportunities with new laws, regulations, and taxes.
.
Hundreds of years ago people seldom traveled more than a few miles from the place they were born. For large parts of the physical world's population this is still the case.
(warning -- rant ahead)
I'm sure you have heard of the "One hundred dollar lap-top" fiasco. A few years ago a bureaucrat conceived the idea that at under US$100.00 every child in the world could have a wind up computer provided by their governments. Laptops have now started to ship to poor kids. When crooked politicians don't grab them first, the kids themselves are selling them as soon as they get them. The "$100" laptops now cost almost US$200 dollars each, not counting graft and distribution expenses.
Not only are bureaucrats acting surprised this should happen, they want lots of new laws, powers, and controls installed to stop it. It won't work. They even have the gall to be mad at private enterprise because you can now buy a new laptop off the shelf for less than their centrally planned nightmare costs. Private enterprise seeks to provide what people want, bureaucrats tell us what we will want, and then can't deliver.
Back to our BFU & PT lifestyle theme - there is a connection.
For decades freedom loving people have been quietly slipping out of the bureaucratic world. With businesses that travel well, and a desire to live as they feel best suits them, they have joined others in loose associations of what may be called sovereign individuals.
These are the perpetual travelers know as PT. Joining this group has been easy, if you were well educated, or had a mobile business, or a nice bit of savings. That and the knowledge that they were not born to be an employee or an indentured citizen led these pioneers to discover routes to personal liberty.
Now to tie it all together.
Back in the late sixties electronic calculators became available - slide rules were faster - and a hundred times cheaper. As time passed, a calculator's quality and number of functions increased - and prices dropped. At first only the wealthy, or businessmen and scientists, or some students would pay the high price for a calculator. By the late eighties calculators were not only cheap - they were give-away premiums with a purchase.
Lets roll the tape again, but this time let computers play the role once acted by calculators. If the free market is allowed to operate, private enterprise will drive down the cost of computing to where it is not worth the effort of a child, or a crooked diplomat, to steal and sell computers.
The age of the individual will have been born.
Empowered by inexpensive technology, anyone in the world can discover the best places for them to live, and have access to a medium that will allow them to earn their tickets. These will be the students that need BFU and others of its ilk; they will also be the ones that network without boundaries, ethnicities, and distance as limitations. These are the hope for a better, safer future; the Netcohort. That is they may have this wonderful chance.
If we can keep the bureaucrats from destroying their opportunities with new laws, regulations, and taxes.
.
Labels: free markets, laws regulations and taxes, mobile businesses, private enterprise, pt- permanent traveler
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