Welcome to the home page of Carl Milsted, Jr., Ph.D. I am a physicist by training and programmer by career, who dabbles in political philosophy and strategy when time permits.

Once upon a time I was quite active in the Libertarian Party, and conducted quite a few experiments to determine why we weren't winning elections. The result was a new political philosophy which advances multiple values: freedom, equality, nature, and morality. I tried to get the Libertarian Party to enlarge its ideological tent to include those who like my new philosophy back in 2006. The result was a bit of a mess, but the party did run a couple more realistic presidential candidates afterwards. I have no idea how much my efforts had to do with this change, but I can honestly say that the party platform became less frighteningly radical as a result of my efforts -- at least for a while. I left the party back in 2008.

As a result of the above experiences, I wrote a book on how to start a new political party that can actually win partisan elections. If you are unhappy with what the Democrats and Republicans have to offer, get yourself a copy. Odds are good that you will find it interesting and possibly useful

Free Speech and Online Sanity

Over the years I have created multiple sites promoting creative win-win solutions to current social and economic problems. I used to be able to get some traction promoting these sites and people were interested. Then, in 2020 both the search engines and the social networking services started throttling anything which doesn't fit the Corporate Narrative. (It wasn't just Trump and right wingers who were throttled.)

So I decided to build a better service. Advertisement funded sites like Facebook and Twitter have a perverse incentive to be addictive and mind-numbing in order to make you see more ads. And they need to censor content to please advertisers. I am building a service which allows you to keep up with friends, contacts, bloggers, etc. without scrolling through a mind-numbing feed.

Conntects -- Connect in Context. This is a social networking platform which allows you to keep up with your contacts without getting frazzled or dealing with Fear of Missing Out (FOMO).

You can use Conntects as a blogging platform or to host fora as well.

Features include:

My Active Political Sites

Green and Free

With all political civility gone and riots in the streets, I am getting back into the political game. I'm working on applying the ideas in my Business Plan for a New Political Party to launch a new movement, which may turn into a new party. I thought about going Upper Left (more freedom and equality), but the Left has become dangerously humorless these days. So I'm going Eco Conservative with a bit a populism thrown in. It's actually a reversion to where I was back in high school.

Anyway, I'm working on a manifesto as both book and web site. The web site is Green and Free. Some of the articles there will be turned into chapters of a manifesto if all goes according to plan.

Holistic Politics

My biggest idea site is Holistic Politics. I use the term "holistic" in a technical sense, not in a New Age sense. All too often political factions are out to promote a particular value, such as freedom, the environnment, helping the poor, promoting morality and so on. There are trade-offs between these values. However, in the fight over which values are more important, many synergies get overlooked. It is possible to dramatically cut the size of government and increase equality; socialism is not necessary to reduce the power of the rich. It is possible to grow the economy and preserve the environment. It is possible to empty half the prison cells and reduce crime and promote Christian values.

And if you are trying to reach me, try the contact page there. Email is your best bet for prompt response.

My earliest site is The Enhanced Precision Political Quiz in 2D. Back in 1999 I had concluded that the World's Smallest Political Quiz was too small. The small size made it impossible to detect moderate libertarians. So I developed a longer quiz for old Windows machines and in 2001 made a web version. This site also has a collection of old essays on Libertarian political strategy, many of which are applicable to third parties in general.

The main quiz is rather dated, and I have personally moved on from the Nolan Chart paradigm. But you might find my voting system experiment of interest.

Sites I Used to Run

Once upon a time, I was chairman of the Libertarian Party of Buncombe County, N.C. The word "bunk" comes from "Buncombe", and if you saw the wild mix of political factions there, you would see why: hippies, hardcore conservatives, fundamentalist Christians, New Agers, and even a former NAACP leader with a penchant for waving the Confederate flag.

This was a great place to live and a great place to promote new political ideas. But still, the LP was a hard sell. The party disbanded a few years ago, and now an entirely new group is having a go at it. So I have nothing to do with the current site. To see what it was like when I was running the site see here.

After seeing what could be done with hard work, press coverage, etc. most of us in the Buncombe County LP decided that it was the overly radical LP Platform that was holding the party back. So, we launched the Libertarian Reform Caucus, in an attempt to convert the LP from a club of borderline anarchists to a real political party. I was the webmaster for the first couple of years, and led a successful effort in 2006 to scrap most of the old LP platform. The membership oath and bad branding remained; however, so I handed over leadership of the Caucus to others and left the LP entirely.