A Member Profile in Liberty: Jeff Moe

Jeff pictured with one of LulzBot’s 3D printers.

Jeffrey Moe
Loveland, Colorado

Jeff Moe resides in Loveland, CO, where he is Founder and CEO of Aleph Objects Inc., an open hardware company that manufactures the LulzBot line of 3D printers. Outside of his business and political activism, Jeff enjoys spending time with family located in the U.S. and Argentina, as well as his extended family of pets: three chickens, two dogs, and a cat.

When asked about the event that triggered his political awakening, Jeff recounts that, “In 1988 I cast my first presidential ballot for George H.W. Bush and, having read his lips, quickly learned that he had no intention of following through on his word.” That lesson pushed Jeff to become a libertarian and learn more about Ron Paul.

As an entrepreneur and business owner, Jeff has become all too familiar with the “omnipresence of the state,” as he puts it. Of the legislative battles currently on C4L’s agenda, Jeff has a particularly close eye on C4L’s battle to defeat the so called “Marketplace Fairness Act,” more accurately titled the National Internet Tax Mandate or Internet Sales Tax.

Jeff has extensive experience in online commerce, first setting up a website for online sales in 1994 for a previous business, and he’s painfully aware of existing compliance challenges. Jeff explains the current burden his business faces, “We are very active online and sell through our website, and through a lot of other resellers. We have shipped to 80 countries. We collect, file, and remit taxes in the City of Loveland, Larimer County, the states of Colorado, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Washington State, Canadian Federal, every province in Canada, and every country in the EU. Want to do the paperwork?! And that is just for sales taxes. There are plenty of other taxes, and far more paperwork. Adding more places for us to file would add to the pile of non-productive work we would have to do. At this stage, we (LulzBot) would be able to handle the burden, but it would place a major barrier to entry for many new businesses.”

Another issue of passion for Jeff is ending the war on drugs. He has been a long-time activist for sensible drug policies and was involved in Colorado’s efforts to legalize marijuana for medical and recreational use, “In 2012, Colorado passed Amendment 64, a state constitutional amendment legalizing marijuana for medicinal and recreational use. Colorado is one of the very few places in the world where this is true. Along with Washington State and others, this is becoming a larger nationwide and even worldwide issue. Ending the war on drugs is on the horizon. It has been too long.”

Above all, the most important issue to Jeff is instituting an American foreign policy that puts peace first, “War is the most important issue. What is the opportunity cost of a trillion dollars in a decade? Unfathomable. How about trillions over a few decades? Not to mention the cost of life. What could have been done (without the loss of human life and resources)?”

Despite all the harm our government has caused and the current challenges we face, Jeff is energetic for the future and encourages C4L members to be persistent in the defense of liberty.

“Our role is to keep pushing against the state until it is properly contained. What keeps me optimistic is the changes I have seen since 1988. We have a sitting Senator filibustering in protest of the NSA and battle drones, there are large campus movements both ‘left’ and ‘right’ with huge common ground… and, finally, candidates for liberty are actually winning!”

The preceding profile appeared in the most recent issue of Campaign for Liberty’s quarterly publication In LIBERTY. Interested in receiving the next issue of In LIBERTY? Join the Patriot Club today!