Dave, do you have the Flash plugin installed? With it, I get something when visiting this page directly (but nothing appears in google reader).

However, I still think the problem of the people not having the power will not be solved though campaign finance reform of one form or another. In the Q&A sections at the end he causally dismissed the idea of trying to reduce the size and reach of government (i.e. The Ron Paul Dream).

I agree that the libertarian ideal is probably not attainable in the conventional sense. Believing that we could elect enough people to office that would reduce their power and influence once they were in office is asinine.

But I think/hope that there is another way to the libertarian ideal of a small and limited government. I envision big technological breakthroughs that change the way we live faster than corporations can lobby government to enact laws that benefit the corporations. While the size of government might remain large, the impact it has on citizens will be negligible.

One example that I could see happening is distributed power generation. It might become real cheap for each neighborhood or household to generate their own electricity (via solar, wind, geo thermal, even nuclear) at some point in the not too distant future. Being independent of the big power companies that have sweet licensing agreements with governments mean that they have less influence and power over us citizens. Thus we all of a sudden have a lot more power than we used to have.

Getting rid of legal tender laws and capital gain taxes on foreign currencies (gold and silver too) appreciation could also be a step in the right direction. Allowing citizens to choose what currency they want without penalty could give people a lot more power over inflation, rather then let the Federal Reserve have all that power.

Enough for now. Thanks for the link again.

That’s still an impressive feat of course, but not as ridiculous as thinking someone could have the fine motor control in their stomach to do this.

Of course, it’s even more reasonable to assume this is all just sleight of hand and things were not swallowed at all.