How can you say ‘No’ to an abolishment that has this?
15Feb11
Abolish ASUN…for the Kids
26Jan11
Isn’t it funny?
By: UNR Student For Liberty
It turns out that you can use basic economic laws to discern quite a lot. And while we have been saying this for a couple of years now, it is genuinely funny (and disheartening) to see that many people stand befuddled when their favorite quack theory of government is shown to be wrong.
Now, rather than point to the faults of President Obama’s economic fallacies in his recent State of the Union (fallacies which are blind to those who already believe in government), let’s just show a few things that the UNR Students for Liberty said would happen to our own student government, the ASUN.
They say that the student government is the voice of the students, addressing issues that concern students.
We say that an institution whose highest voted senator (who recently resigned, apparently for a job at an Apple Store) garners ~2% of students’ votes has no right to call itself the voice of the students.
They say that our student government can help reduce the budget cuts and make sure students aren’t as severely affected.
We say the budget cuts will continue to happen and student leaders will be powerless to stop it.
They say they are working on ways to keep ASUN fees from getting out of hand by cutting things like the Unity Commission and Flipside, and instituting a flat fee.
We say it’s about damn time.
The problem with government isn’t that its spending is out of control. It’s that its spending must be out of control. Controls are placed by markets, where gross overspending is punished and underspenders rarely prosper. Markets are the things that bring people and incentives together. It is in markets where people learn the value of their time and trade it accordingly with others. How can one even know what their time is worth if they get paid exactly the same for doing a terrible job and for doing an excellent one? Without markets no hope exists for coming to the optimal solution for problems. Not in our student government, nor our government at large.
11Jan11
Nominated: Event of the Year
By: UNR Student For Liberty
Our club (along with several other excellent organizations) has been nominated for the national Students for Liberty‘s Event of the Year. The event we were chosen for was our initial kick off of the Abolish ASUN movement, namely, the Abolish ASUN Festival, where, just in case you forget, we willfully wasted our student government’s funds to show that no governments can ever properly allocate the money of others.
The event inspired many spin-offs, gained a lot of local and national exposure, and lit discussions about the fundamental realities of governments amongst everyone who has heard about it.
So please check out all the award finalists and vote* for those individuals and groups you feel are propelling the libertarian youth movement in exciting and fertile new ways.
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*Gasp, I know, we’re advocating voting!
By: UNR Student For Liberty
Barry, somewhat awkwardly, informed me that a certain keyword, when entered into Google in the Reno area, displays our webpage on the front results.
…and it turns out if that’s not your thing, you can always check out the girls going wild…
4Jan10
And now your new president…
By: UNR Student For Liberty
We here at the UNR Students for Liberty are proud to announce our newest president:
(She’s the cute one in pink and green.)
After much deliberation, our former president (Barry Belmont) has decided to pass the torch on to a new generation of libertarians. Mary Hunton, for those of you who don’t know, is the most open-minded of the members of the clubs: her willingness to listen to various opinions is matched only by her decency to give each of those positions due consideration. In addition, she is dedicated to the UNR Students for Liberty and while differing mightily with her more brutish predecessors, she will undoubtedly continue the UNR SFL tradition of fostering meaningful dialogue within our community.
We could not be happier with our decision.
31Oct08
A Little Real Reporting
By: UNR Student For Liberty
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fL5ElPFDMM&feature=related
I suggest watching all six parts. Its interesting even though he talks to you like you’re a child.
1May08
The right way to live
By: UNR Student For Liberty
Below is a link to the “This is John Galt speaking” speech from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Its pretty long, but I love it. They have it written and in audio form. It is a call for freedom, responsibility, and rationality.
http://compuball.com/Inquisition/AynRand/galtspeech_pmark_broken.htm
9Apr08
USA PATRIOT?
By: UNR Student For Liberty
Clearly, acts such as the USA PATRIOT act and the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act have drastically empowered the executive branch of our government. These acts are un-patriotic and un-constitutional. They strike at the essence of a free society and we cannot allow them to become codified in judicial law (though we are watching it happen). With the destruction of governmental balance we lose the ethics instilled in our country by the founding fathers. We are seeing this happen and it is an ominous threat to the future of the USA as a free society.
In business we study ethics. One of our subjects is the slippery slope of defying ethics. Once an organization starts to break rules we find that they will continue to do this until large scale criminal activity brings the organization down. We see real world examples of this in companies like Enron, World Co., Tyco and Qwest (to name a few). These companies stepped onto the slippery slope of dubious ethics and continued to slide until failure.
We are now witnessing the government of the United States taking their first step onto this slippery slope. The passing of said acts (USA PATRIOT, Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act) the government is relinquishing past barriers to power and therefore cheating the system. Many people argue that these acts are for the sole prevention of defending our country against terrorist. This has been proven unfounded recently with the resignation of the former mayor of New York City, Elliot Spitzer.
Elliot Spitzer went from being a well liked successful mayor of New York City to a resigning “frequenter of prostitutes”. I believe that provisions of the USA PATRIOT act allowed for him to be vilified. While it is hypocritical for Spitzer to be frequenting prostitutes, it isn’t all that criminal. What is criminal is that now the government has the ability to use provisions of law in order to attack other politicians.
This is the slippery slope which the US government is dancing upon. If we are to live in a free society we need to repeal these acts and bring back balanced government. We need this because it is essential for a free society. As Benjamin Franklin once said “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”
21Mar08
Who runs the world?
By: UNR Student For Liberty
Who runs the world?
In the current global situation, wouldn’t it make sense if the leaders from all the big corporations and big nations met together with specialists to devise a comprehensive plan for the world? Well, they do meet and have been doing it for the greater part of a century. The association is known as the Bilderberg group, only because that was the name of the hotel in the Netherlands where they first met.
Every year since 1954, the men and women who control the world meet in different locations. These meetings are held strictly in secret. No one knows what gets talked about. Until recently, no one knew who attends (now this list can be easily accessed through wikipedia and other sources).
How do you become a Bilderberger? You have to get invited. Which usually only about 130 people are every year. In order to get an invitation, you generally have to be an expert in a particular field that they want to discuss, be part of congress, be the leader of a nation, or be a CEO of a major corporation (especially media and financial institutions). To name a few, both Clintons have attended, Robert McNamara, Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Dan Quayle, and all the prime ministers of Canada. The World Bank, the Federal Reserve, the “Big 10” media corporations, the big banks, and defense contractors are represented at every meeting. Many other powerful corporations are represented such as IBM, Fiat, BP, Microsoft, Google, and Nokia.
In 2006, they met in Ottawa, Canada, and there was virtually no media coverage of it. In 2002, they met in Virginia and nearly no one knew about it.
It is good that they are meeting because it would certainly be helpful to have a single cohesive plan to further international cooperation. However, it is not good that there is no coverage of their meetings. Important meetings like this should not be held in complete secrecy. There is no accountability for these men; there is no scrutiny. The purpose of a democracy is to monitor the aristocracy, and this sort of government secrecy makes this impossible.
