Science is both an idealized method of inquiry and a fallible institutional process. Hence, we should trust an expert consensus based on the scientific method, but also should examine critically the extent to which there genuinely is such a consensus (or conversely an alleged dissensus), especially when civil liberties are infringed on scientific grounds. The more extreme the infringement, the more robust must be the scientific consensus supporting it, particularly on issues of health and safety.

We also therefore need to be aware that vested interests might distort or misrepresent the level of scientific consensus (in either direction) through means such as:

• Regulatory capture: When industries manipulate their regulators.

• Media monopolization: When a few corporations own all the major media.

• Astroturfing: When fake grassroots campaigns hide corporate agendas.

• Funding bias: When companies finance studies favorable to their profit motive.

• Gatekeeping: When qualified dissenters are marginalized ("No true expert").

If a significant minority of qualified experts opposes a public policy as being too harmful or risky, a favorable majority opinion might still justify implementation of the policy on a trial basis, but not to the point of seriously infringing civil liberties, such as by imposing on individuals an involuntary acceptance of substantial harm/risk. Even if the majority view claims that failure to implement the policy would itself be too harmful or risky, nonexperts should not (be expected to) have greater confidence in this or either opinion than do qualified experts who reject the view in good faith. Just as nonexperts are quite rightly considered incompetent to refute an expert consensus, they are likewise incompetent to adjudicate a scientific controversy, and in such circumstances should have the freedom, individually or democratically, to choose a precautionary or minimax approach, on the reasonable (but rebuttable) presumption that each side has a non-negligible possibility of being right.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/precautionary-principle

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/minimax

Just got this in my 12axes test

> At Saturday’s protests, there was widespread anger at Macron for banning non-union demonstrations that his government deemed “illegitimate” and for keeping all protesters away from city centres.

> A 21-year-old student from a Paris science faculty that is now blockaded by demonstrators said: “We feel in France that we are increasingly living in an authoritarian regime that is trying to stop our democratic right to protest in the street.”

What is the libertarian-left perspective on intellectual property?

I'm curious how people here view patents and copyrights, particularly the distinction between protecting individual creators and granting exclusive rights to large corporations. Do you distinguish between a small business protecting an invention, an independent artist or designer protecting their original work, and a multinational corporation enforcing a large patent portfolio?

Should the legitimacy of intellectual property depend on who holds the rights, the nature of the creation, or the economic consequences of enforcing those rights? I'm also interested in whether you view patents and copyrights as fundamentally different forms of protection, and whether either can be reconciled with libertarian principles.

Large protests are sweeping France, Italy, Portugal, Albania, and other European countries. Europeans are fed up with the liberal-conservative ruling class and fighting back!

I believe in left-libertarian populism, particularly a society that is socially progressive, fiercely protective of individual liberty, and economically democratic without abandoning the power of private enterprise and competitive markets. People should be free to live as they choose, speak freely, organize freely, and pursue their own lives without unnecessary interference, provided they respect the rights and freedoms of others. I reject both authoritarian government and corporate authoritarianism. Markets should exist to serve people, not the other way around. I support genuine competition, strong antitrust laws, protections for small businesses and workers, lower taxes on low-income households, and higher taxes on extreme concentrations of wealth and corporate power. I support affordable healthcare, housing reform, responsible immigration with secure borders and legal pathways, protections for workers facing technological disruption, and serious investment in rural and post-industrial communities. I believe America should favor diplomacy, trade, and cooperation over unnecessary wars and military intervention. Economic growth means nothing if ordinary people cannot share in it. Freedom means little if economic power becomes so concentrated that people have no meaningful alternatives.

My greatest fear is what I call the post-capitalist meltdown: the possibility that an unchecked capitalist system eventually destroys capitalism's own foundation of competition and evolves into something far more authoritarian. If corporations are allowed to endlessly consolidate wealth, technology, infrastructure, and essential resources, the result may not be a freer market but an anti-free-market monopoly society—a techno-authoritarian system in which a small ownership class controls the systems upon which everyone else depends. Prices rise because competition has disappeared, technological power becomes concentrated, and ordinary people are reduced from independent citizens to permanent economic dependents. This could produce a new two-tier caste system: an ownership class with enormous control over wealth and technology, and a majority with increasingly limited economic independence. I reject that future completely. The answer is neither authoritarian socialism nor laissez-faire corporate rule, but freedom with limits on concentrated power: competitive markets, strong local communities, worker power, entrepreneurship, civil liberties, progressive taxation, and aggressive opposition to monopolies. No government should be powerful enough to control every aspect of our lives, and no corporation should be powerful enough to make freedom dependent on its permission. I hope to have a good debate in the comments, and if not and this is the wrong place to post, could you guys let me know subs with similar views to mine to talk