The saturday after I got back, my housemate Anna had a birthday party. She loves costumes (and has a huge collection), so for her birthday, she had friends come over to act as models. We all hung out playing games, and she periodically called a couple people to put on costumes and take various poses. At the end of the evening, she made up a slideshow of the pictures, which were unexpectedly hilarious. She had quite a gift for wringing comedy out of a few brief frames of people in costumes. [Hopefully they'll be up on the web sometime so I can show you].

During the afternoon, I did some research on classes teaching useful skills for expatriation. I found an excellent local sailing school, OCSC, and signed up for a week-long class, starting monday. This class will just teach me the basics, I'll still be a long way from sailing round the Caribbean, but one has to start somewhere. Sailing seems like a useful method of transportation for tropical areas. Not as useful as piloting small planes, but learning that is Katy's job.

I also have been interested for awhile in learning some kind of first aid. If I am going to be a pioneer, living on the edge of civilization, medicine seems like a fundamentally useful skill. I found an awesome month-long class (link), given by WMI at NOLS. The description is:

Wilderness EMT (180 hours)

   If you want the best of both worlds this month long intensive program
   is for you. After four weeks of classroom education, practical skills,
   scenarios and full-scale mock rescues you will have the opportunity to
   test for certification as an EMT and a Wilderness EMT. This program
   fulfills all DOT requirements for certification as a basic EMT. In
   addition to the urban curriculum you will address issues critical to
   managing patients in a wilderness environment. As with all of our
   programs the focus is on increasing your decision making, not the
   memorization of lists. This is the most comprehensive program we
   offer. Successful completion of the course and both written and
   practical examinations will certify the student as a National Registry
   of EMT's Basic EMT, a Wilderness EMT, and for courses conducted in
   California, a California Basic EMT. Note: Healthcare Provider level
   CPR is a prerequisite for this course.

Their December class was full, but they had openings in their January class, which is conveniently taught in the Sierra's only a few hours away. My housemate Andy, who has a lot of first aid training (he teaches Red Cross courses), was also interested, so we signed up together. He is thinking about getting a job as an EMT afterwards, and I was thinking about trying to do some work (perhaps volunteer) part-time, to gain more experience and feel like I'm contributing to the world.

I am very excited about these classes, right after my Costa Rica trip - I feel like I'm making real progress towards my goals.

I had several discussions about libertarian politics at the party. For example, Andy and Mark and I were talking about how to create proper incentives for teaching. Public school doesn't seem to do it well, as we can see from our schools performance. My friends felt that private school, the incentive of profit, doesn't do it either, although I disagree. How can one make teachers really care? I suggested community.

If kids are taught, rather than by teachers hired by government beauracrats and profiteers (not a dirty word to me, but others disagree :) ), by a comm. of their parents, and perhaps a few professional teachers picked by their parents, then the teachers will really care cuz it'll be their own kids. In one sense this is similar to cries today to "get parents more involved in their childrens education", but taking the idea a bit further. Plus this would let parents experiment with more different kids of educational systems and methods than we have today. An industry would quickly evolve, different methods would appear and compete, and we would see some real innovation in what is currently a pretty conservative field.

I talked with a friend named Ed about the Movimiento Libertario in Costa Rica and the Limon REAL project. He suggested that its unfair to impose a libertarian system on people that have expected government services such as subsidized education, health care, and pensions. Its a tough issue. Do people have the right to demand the continuation of theft (what libs call taxation :) ) just because they have gotten used to it? I would argue not, and that the reduction in their taxes will let them pay for much of what they had gotten before (although not those who were being subsidized by the rich). However, there are some things like pensions, where the benefits lag the payments by many years, which I think should be bought out, otherwise the government is essentially defaulting on a loan.

Andy made an interesting point about Lib. He said that non-coercion sounds like a good way of keeping things fair. But what if they started out unfair? In Lib terms, what if people started out with large accumulations of property due to coercion - protecting those property rights is protecting thieves. He feels that capitalism is very effective at maintaining differences. I would argue that entrenched power structures are effective at maintaining differences and that libertarianism involves a vast reduction in entrenched power structures - governments are a lot bigger than all the corporations put together, after all. I also think that leveling out past issues is too much to ask from a system. Sort of like resolving a feud, or an area with long-term terrorism - if you fail to forgive past offenses, you may never have peace in the future.

All in all, it was an enjoyable and productive afternoon.

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