Joe Dehn

Joe Dehn was born in New York and lives in Sunnyvale, California. Dehn earned a degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[1]

Joe Dehn did not complete [the profile publisher]'s 2026 Candidate Connection survey.

Joe Dehn did not complete [the profile publisher]'s 2024 Candidate Connection survey.

Campaign website

Dehn’s campaign website stated the following:

Issue: Drug War

The so-called "War on Drugs" is in reality a war on people. It's certainly true that people can use drugs in ways that are dangerous and make their own lives worse. However, drug prohibition is more dangerous than drugs themselves and comes with a staggering cost in both money and human lives. The War on Drugs is a continuing threat to individual liberty, to domestic order, and to peace in the world. Furthermore, it has provided a rationale by which the power of the state has been expanded to greatly restrict our right to privacy and to be secure in our homes.

There has been a lot of political activity recently relating to "legalization" or "decriminalization" of marijuana. The sentiments behind this are mostly good, and some of the changes have helped some people. But there are three big problems with this: (1) the "war" against many other drugs is still going full steam, (2) these changes haven't led to a free market, even for marijuana, and (3) the federal government continues to interfere with marijuana, against the explicit wishes of voters in the various states.

There are ways to help people who get into trouble using drugs. But these services can best be provided through private action, by people who care about the individuals involved and by medical professionals. The War on Drugs doesn't help bring this kind of positive change, and in many cases it makes it harder for the victims to find their way to getting help.

What we should be demanding from Congress is an end to this counter-productive and expensive "war".

End the classification of marijuana and other drugs that makes them subject to federal regulation.

Abolish the Drug Enforcement Agency and the components of all other agencies that have as their primary function the hunting down of drug users, sellers, and producers.

Free from federal prisons anyone convicted of non-violent drug-related "crimes".

Issue: Education

Education is too important to be left to the government. A free society needs individuals who learn to think for themselves. Producing cookie-cutter adults out of children with different interests and abilities may seem like a cost-effective way to do things, but it isn't good for our kids or our nation. And it isn't even cost-effective! The costs of the current education system have been growing faster than inflation for decades.

The incentives for producing a good result at a reasonable cost are all wrong in a system where government controls everything, including paying for it. It sounds good at first – everybody gets the service "for free". But that just means that everybody pays, more and more every year, and nobody is really in control.

More money (higher taxes) is not the answer. That has been tried, over and over again. That's how we got where we are today, with government schools that cost more to operate per student than private schools and produce results that should be embarrassing to all involved. And it's not the fault of any one group. There are many good teachers in public schools, but they can't do their best in a system that is over-regulated. Advances in technology should be leading to both more effective teaching and lower total costs – instead they have mostly been turned by this dysfunctional system into a series of expensive boondoggles that only profit certain favored companies and leave schools with equipment that is obsolete almost as soon as it is installed.

The current K-12 educational system is fundamentally flawed because it is based on what is essentially a socialist model. It is failing to meet our expectations for the same reason that agriculture and manufacturing kept failing to meet expectations in the old Soviet Union. Minor "reforms" or better "planning" will not yield the improvement we really need. The whole system needs to be replaced by one based on a free-market model.

These problems started at the local level, and were made worse by state governments, even before the federal government got involved in a big way. Mostly they need to be addressed at the state and local level. But the federal government can at least try to avoid making the problems worse. To that end, here are some steps Congress can take:

Get the federal government out of the business of financing and subsidizing schools at all levels. "Free" money is never free – it just encourages state and local educational bureaucracies to spend money less efficiently than if they were responsible for raising it. And, more important for the long term, subsidizing failure makes it harder for alternative providers who could produce better results to develop and grow.

Abolish the Department of Education. This bureaucracy educates nobody, and just makes it more difficult for meaningful changes to be accomplished at the state or local level.

Get the federal government out of the business of providing or guaranteeing student loans. Through these programs the federal government has, very much in the manner of a drug pusher, gotten both college students and colleges hooked on borrowing that leads to poor choices.

End all federal sponsorship/endorsement of curricula, standards, and text books. These can be better developed and promulgated by private groups, such as professional societies, and by businesses, left free to try different approaches and spur each other on through competition to produce the best product – or more realistically, many different products meeting the needs of different children and families.

Issue: Health Care

Everyone can see we have a problem with health care. In some ways, America's health care industry is the envy of the world, leading in technology and with some of the best facilities anywhere. At the same time, costs are soaring, making even basic services unaffordable to some and a significant burden on others -- and on our country as a whole. As Warren Buffett has often commented, it's become like a "tapeworm" on our economy.

The advances are coming from the work of our biotechnology and other high-tech companies (many of them right here in Silicon Valley), the researchers at our universities, and of course the many dedicated and skilled health care practitioners. But the benefit of these advances is being held back by the way health care services are managed, delivered, and paid for.

Some say this is a failure of the free market, and call for more government involvement. But we do not currently have a free market in health care. This is one of the most heavily regulated industries in our entire economy! Almost everybody in the United States has their health care paid for either directly through a government program or through insurance programs that have their current form because of regulation, subsidies, and tax policies. At the same time, government policies limit the supply of medical professionals, and drive up the cost of equipment and drugs. And individuals are powerless to control any of this, because they don't even understand what they are paying. Yes, it's a complicated mess that needs to swept away. But "single payer" or "Medicare for All" isn't the answer -- and in the long run would make things even worse.

The right answer is to get the government out of the way so that the basic economic principles that have led to lower costs in almost every other industry are allowed to function.

De-couple health insurance from employment by eliminating the special tax treatment of health insurance, while at the same time increasing the standard deduction by a similar amount. This will enable consumer choice, make the market for insurance more competitive, and eliminate the need to switch providers when switching jobs. Employers will be happier too, not having to worry about any of this!

Increase supply of services by cutting back limits imposed or enabled by government policy. More doctors, more nurses, allowing medical services to be offered by new classes of providers enabled by new technology, eliminating "certificates of need" that limit competition among hospitals -- these and other steps will create a competitive environment that will drive down costs.

Introduce real competition in the pharmaceutical industry too, by repealing laws that limit the ability of patients to purchase drugs across state lines and from other countries.

Clearly separate the "welfare" aspect of government health policy from the rest. There will always be people who need help paying for health care, just as there are people who need help paying for food. But decreasing costs for everybody through competition will help these people too, and make it more practical for those who want to provide such help through private charity to do so.

Whatever remains of government programs to pay for health services for specific segments of the population -- the poor, the elderly, veterans, etc. -- those should not be confused with, and should not be allowed to distort, the market for the entirely separate service of "insurance". Health insurance should be left to the private sector and deregulated so that individuals will be better able to select the kind of coverage that fits their needs, and not forced to pay for services that they don't want.

Issue: Immigration

The Declaration of Independence famously proclaims that "all men are created equal". It doesn't say "people born in the United States have more rights than other people".

This has always been a nation of immigrants. People born in other parts of the world have contributed their energy and culture to make America what it is today. Almost everyone living here now is either an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants.

Most politicans today are uncomfortable with immigration. They don't all talk about it using the same language, but they all agree that it needs to be controlled. They have forgotten that bold claim "created equal" that was such a central feature of the document on which this country was founded.

They have also forgotten the basic idea of democracy, a principle that many of them claim to consider more important even than liberty – that it should be the people living in a geographic area who get to decide who governs them, and how. Allowing the government to decide who can live where is turning that idea on its head! And the government has not, in fact, managed to prevent immigration – what it has done, instead, is brand a large number of human beings as "illegal" or "undocumented", without the rights of the rest of the population, against whom discrimination is not only legal but required. No democracy can survive with such a large and growing population of disenfranchised subjects.

As a Libertarian, I respect the rights of all people, no matter where they were born. The right to move about and seek a better life for oneself and one's family is a fundamental right. I look forward to a day when all the present restrictions are gone. I don't expect that to happen immediately, but it should be our goal.

In the meantime, I support the following common-sense reforms:

Eliminate all caps on "H-1B" and similar visas. People with the education and skills to be attractive to employers are exactly the sort of people we should be happy to have come here and stay here – it's crazy to keep them out.

Allow anyone who has been living in the U.S. for at least five years, and who hasn't committed a serious crime against some actual victim, to become a citizen. The current system that forces millions of people who are just trying to live peaceful lives to stay in hiding for decades and without the prospect of becoming full members of our political and economic community is an outrage to the very idea of a democratic society.

Privatize "refugee" and "asylum" immigration. Americans are generous people, and many want to help save people suffering from war and other troubles in other countries. But there are hundreds of millions of people all around the world who might be deserving of such help, and it's not the business of the U.S. government to decide which of them should be saved and which not. It's also not right to force taxpayers to pay for bringing such people here and supporting them once they get here. Instead, let's allow private charities, other organizations, and individual Americans to make those choices and to support those choices voluntarily with their own funds.

Dismantle the apparatus that has been built up over the years to hunt down and persecute immigrants whose only "crime" is not having the government's permission to live and work here.

Issue: Science

I support the separation of science and state. Science is too important to allow government to manage or control it.

Science is a process by which we increase our understanding of the natural world, always seeking better models, not a set of facts that can properly be the subject of legislation or edict.

Government has no business endorsing scientific theories or findings. Throughout history, attempts by authoritarian institutions to impose "official" views on scientific questions have interfered with progress. Famous examples include suppression of the heliocentric model of our solar system and the promotion of the Lamarckian theory of evolution. Our society today is not exempt from repetition of such follies.

Similarly, government should not endorse or attempt to discredit scientists or scientific organizations. Experts in various scientific fields are best identified by their peers. The general public should not be misled by titles or honors bestowed by politicians and bureaucrats.

I have personally had a strong interest in science my entire life, but I do not see taxes as the proper way to support scientific research. In addition to the basic injustice of taking money by force, from people who may have other priorities, to pay for something that I personally consider worthy, government funding of research creates perverse incentives that can lead to waste of resources, while discouraging research that might lead to both better understanding of nature and practical new products and methods.

Research should be privately funded by businesses, universities, and other institutions that allow those interested in various fields and scientific questions to pool their resources for this purpose. Government can best facilitate this by lowering taxes, on both businesses and individuals, to allow non-government institutions to put more of their resources into this important activity.

Issue: Taxes

High levels of taxation are a burden on individual citizens, a drag on our economy as a whole, and a continuing source of injustice. Discontent about taxes was one of the reasons our country was founded, and it is one of the primary jobs of our representatives in Congress to protect the people from being over-taxed.

Ideally, our goal should be to replace as many tax-supported functions as possible with ones based on market solutions and voluntary actions, which would allow for dramatic cuts or even the elimination of many taxes in effect today. Meanwhile:

I will not vote for any tax increases, tax rate increases, or "surcharges". Taxes are already too high. That's true for personal income taxes, corporate income taxes, "payroll" taxes, excise taxes, and tariffs.

I will support any proposal to reduce income tax rates across the board, or to "flatten" them by reducing the higher rates, as long as it doesn't increase taxes for any other group.

I will not vote for any new taxes – including any National Sales Tax or Value Added Tax (VAT).

Although new taxes are sometimes offered with the promise that they will replace existing taxes, things are extremely unlikely to work out that way. If any new tax is instituted, it will most likely at best be coupled with a reduction in some other tax which will then start creeping up again – and in the long run we'll end up with higher taxes overall than before.

Although some argue that we should increase rates for some people in the name of "fairness", I do not believe that shifting the burden from one class or special interest group to another is the answer. Current levels of taxation are already unfair to average working people because they would be better off being able to spend the money that they earn themselves. And the wealthy are already paying far more than their share of total taxes. The so-called "1%" are currently paying more in federal income taxes than all of the bottom 90% combined!

Taxation is inherently unjust, because it takes people's money without their consent. There is no way to make the income tax "fair" by taking more of anybody's income. The only way to make income taxes "less unfair" is to reduce them for everybody, to the point where they are not a significant burden on anybody.

Other taxes should also be reduced or, better yet, eliminated. The tariffs imposed by the Trump administration but now being continued by the Biden administrations are a kind of tax that hurts American consumers – and in the long run also American businesses as other countries respond with similar actions. Congress should act to roll back these tariffs, and to remove the president's ability to impose them unilaterally.

How can we avoid increasing taxes, given current spending levels, without continuing to add to the national debt?

We can't! The correct solution is to lower the level of spending – both to eliminate the deficit and so that taxes can also be reduced.

Issue: Transportation

Transportation infrastructure is an essential component of our economy, and must be developed in the most cost-efficient way and with the future of related technologies in mind. Unfortunately, the way this has been done in the past has often fallen short of this ideal. Financing and managing major infrastructure through the federal government has led to misallocation of resources, because the political process simply is not a good way to manage economic activity.

Even the past projects that are widely seen as having been "successful", in that they created something we use today, may not have been the best use of the resources involved – we see what was created, but we don't see what was not created because resources were diverted from them.

Financing projects through federal taxes also creates perverse incentives for state and local governments, who must fight each other for this "free" money. Of course that money isn't free at all – the federal government doesn't create wealth, it just takes it from us and redistributes it. But state and local governments are put in a position where they must play this game, for fear of not getting "their share" of the money that was originally taken from their own citizens.

We can see the disastrous results right here in California with the failed "high speed rail to nowhere" project that has squandered billions of dollars in tax money, lining the pockets of politically-connected consultants and contractors, with no prospect of ever producing a service that will be of practical use to the average traveler or commuter. All that money could have been, and should have been, spent on something more useful.

Meanwhile, advancing technology has opened up new ways to address real transportation needs. We are on the verge of a revolution in transportation, with electric vehicles soon to become predominant, self-driving cars close to a reality, and air taxis on their way. This is not the time to be wasting tax money on massive new projects that may well become outmoded before they are even completed.

This is, rather, a golden opportunity to move the financing of transportation back to the private sector. To cut gas taxes and let investors build roadways and bridges that will pay for themselves, to let Elon Musk build his hyperloops, to enable those who believe in rail to make investments without fear of tax-subsidized competition, and to let these and possibilities not yet even imagined compete to provide the best solutions for our transportation needs.

Issue: War and Peace

The only legitimate purpose of the U.S. military establishment is the defense of this country and its people from attack by other countries. It's the job of Congress to implement this principle, by approving funds and passing other laws that regulate the military services. It's also the job of Congress, should it become necessary, to declare war.

Our military establishment has expanded far beyond what is necessary to serve this purpose. Our "defense" budget is now larger than the next five biggest combined -- even though the U.S. represents less than 5% of the world's population, and only about 6% of the land area. There are U.S. bases on every continent. It has become an end itself, consuming a huge amount of resources, adding to the level of taxation and to the national debt.

And if that weren't bad enough, the habit of meddling in the business of other countries has continued to make enemies of people around the world. There hasn't been an actual "declaration of war" since 1942, but Americans have been fighting other people in the name of this country all around the world almost continuously for the past several decades, with every president claiming the power to send them there with or without any specific approval by Congress.

It is up to Congress to put a stop to this, by establishing policies that will make us more secure in a sensible way:

It is not the job of the U.S. military to serve as "world policeman". People in other parts of the world have the responsibilty for maintaining and paying for the defensive capabilities that are appropriate to their own circumstances. The president should not be permitted to send troops, ships, bombers, missiles, drones, or other forces, or otherwise engage in acts of war on behalf of other countries, unless specifically authorized by an act of Congress or a formal treaty for mutual defense ratified by the Senate.

The U.S. should not be involved in any way in civil wars – wars between factions / parties / ethnic groups / religious groups within other countries. Americans who believe that one side or the other is deserving of support, or who want to help the victims of war with humanitarian assistance, should be allowed to do that. But the U.S. government should not be taking sides, and the U.S. taxpayers should not be forced to pay for it.

The U.S. should not enter into mutual defense treaties or otherwise maintain permanent alliances with dictatorships or other totalitarian regimes. Ideally we should be able to defend ourselves without formal alliances with any other country – but to whatever extent alliances turn out to be of practical use in making multiple countries collectively safer more cost-effectively, such alliances should be made only with countries that share our values. To provide support to regimes that don't support our values is to undermine our values – and creates the serious risk that we will end up fighting on the wrong side in a future conflict.[2]

—Joe Dehn’s campaign website (2024)[3]

Joe Dehn did not complete [the profile publisher]'s 2022 Candidate Connection survey.

Campaign website

Dehn's campaign website stated the following:

Issue: Drug War

The so-called "War on Drugs" is in reality a war on people. It's certainly true that people can use drugs in ways that are dangerous and make their own lives worse. However, drug prohibition is more dangerous than drugs themselves and comes with a staggering cost in both money and human lives. The War on Drugs is a continuing threat to individual liberty, to domestic order, and to peace in the world. Furthermore, it has provided a rationale by which the power of the state has been expanded to greatly restrict our right to privacy and to be secure in our homes.

There has been a lot of political activity recently relating to "legalization" or "decriminalization" of marijuana. The sentiments behind this are mostly good, and some of the changes have helped some people. But there are three big problems with this: (1) the "war" against many other drugs is still going full steam, (2) these changes haven't led to a free market, even for marijuana, and (3) the federal government continues to interfere with marijuana, against the explicit wishes of voters in the various states.

There are ways to help people who get into trouble using drugs. But these services can best be provided through private action, by people who care about the individuals involved and by medical professionals. The War on Drugs doesn't help bring this kind of positive change, and in many cases it makes it harder for the victims to find their way to getting help.

What we should be demanding from Congress is an end to this counter-productive and expensive "war".

End the classification of marijuana and other drugs that makes them subject to federal regulation.

Abolish the Drug Enforcement Agency and the components of all other agencies that have as their primary function the hunting down of drug users, sellers, and producers.

Free from federal prisons anyone convicted of non-violent drug-related "crimes".

Issue: Education

Education is too important to be left to the government. A free society needs individuals who learn to think for themselves. Producing cookie-cutter adults out of children with different interests and abilities may seem like a cost-effective way to do things, but it isn't good for our kids or our nation. And it isn't even cost-effective! The costs of the current education system have been growing faster than inflation for decades.

The incentives for producing a good result at a reasonable cost are all wrong in a system where government controls everything, including paying for it. It sounds good at first – everybody gets the service "for free". But that just means that everybody pays, more and more every year, and nobody is really in control.

More money (higher taxes) is not the answer. That has been tried, over and over again. That's how we got where we are today, with government schools that cost more to operate per student than private schools and produce results that should be embarrassing to all involved. And it's not the fault of any one group. There are many good teachers in public schools, but they can't do their best in a system that is over-regulated. Advances in technology should be leading to both more effective teaching and lower total costs – instead they have mostly been turned by this dysfunctional system into a series of expensive boondoggles that only profit certain favored companies and leave schools with equipment that is obsolete almost as soon as it is installed.

The current K-12 educational system is fundamentally flawed because it is based on what is essentially a socialist model. It is failing to meet our expectations for the same reason that agriculture and manufacturing kept failing to meet expectations in the old Soviet Union. Minor "reforms" or better "planning" will not yield the improvement we really need. The whole system needs to be replaced by one based on a free-market model.

These problems started at the local level, and were made worse by state governments, even before the federal government got involved in a big way. Mostly they need to be addressed at the state and local level. But the federal government can at least try to avoid making the problems worse. To that end, here are some steps Congress can take:

Get the federal government out of the business of financing and subsidizing schools at all levels. "Free" money is never free – it just encourages state and local educational bureaucracies to spend money less efficiently than if they were responsible for raising it. And, more important for the long term, subsidizing failure makes it harder for alternative providers who could produce better results to develop and grow.

Abolish the Department of Education. This bureaucracy educates nobody, and just makes it more difficult for meaningful changes to be accomplished at the state or local level.

Get the federal government out of the business of providing or guaranteeing student loans. Through these programs the federal government has, very much in the manner of a drug pusher, gotten both college students and colleges hooked on borrowing that leads to poor choices.

End all federal sponsorship/endorsement of curricula, standards, and text books. These can be better developed and promulgated by private groups, such as professional societies, and by businesses, left free to try different approaches and spur each other on through competition to produce the best product – or more realistically, many different products meeting the needs of different children and families.

Issue: Health Care

Everyone can see we have a problem with health care. In some ways, America's health care industry is the envy of the world, leading in technology and with some of the best facilities anywhere. At the same time, costs are soaring, making even basic services unaffordable to some and a significant burden on others -- and on our country as a whole. As Warren Buffett has often commented, it's become like a "tapeworm" on our economy.

The advances are coming from the work of our biotechnology and other high-tech companies (many of them right here in Silicon Valley), the researchers at our universities, and of course the many dedicated and skilled health care practitioners. But the benefit of these advances is being held back by the way health care services are managed, delivered, and paid for.

Some say this is a failure of the free market, and call for more government involvement. But we do not currently have a free market in health care. This is one of the most heavily regulated industries in our entire economy! Almost everybody in the Uni