Archive for April, 2008
Biofuels demonstrate Bastiat’s broken window fallacy
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008This seems to me an excellent example of the broken window fallacy, or the law of unintended consequences: U.N. expert calls biofuel a "crime against humanity" because of all the food it wastes and the price increases it causes, when there are already shortages and high prices of food in ...
“But the State has to protect the children!”
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008"Or else stupid and negligent parents would cause all sorts of harm to them!" It is an understandable position, one I used to take in my darker, minarchist days. However, it is hard to deny the reality that often, the harm that a parent does to a child is not even ...
Can anarchism save Somalia?
Sunday, April 27th, 2008"Good government" is a paradox. Any people so decent as to be capable of implementing it would be better off without it, and any people so rotten as to need it would be incapable of implementing it. —unknown Somalia's condition, its history, and the attempts by the U.N. and U.S. to impose ...
Girl suspended for not pledging to the flag
Saturday, April 26th, 2008I give fascist neocon warmonger and all-around State lover Neal Boortz a hard time on this website, but he introduced me to (what he referred to as) libertarianism, and it led to my adoption of pure libertarianism, so I should give him a little more recognition. He has several solid ...
Democracy disgraced
Friday, April 25th, 2008After the debate in Philadelphia between Obama and Hillary, ABC moderators George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson were widely and harshly criticized for the way they ran the debate; specifically, the questions they spent the first 45 minutes on. Viewers, writers, and Obama's camp complained that voters did not hear anything ...
Bionic eye returns sight to blind
Thursday, April 24th, 2008This bionic vision system consists of an ultra-thin electronic receiver implanted into the eyeball, which receives a signal transmitted by a special pair of glasses that the patient wears. Pfff, I don't know who would want that; I'd much rather wear a gold, semicircular visor that looks like it came ...
Even Cartoons Get It
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008Why are you looking at me like that? You act like you haven't seen me in a while or something. This past Sunday, lacking anything to entertain myself, I tuned into an episode of King of the Hill. The fates must have been smiling upon me that day because it turned ...
On escaping from cults
Monday, April 21st, 2008I guess I'm just a total and complete liar. This is my fourth consecutive post relating to the raid and kidnapping at the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints ranch in Eldorado, Texas. I seriously, honestly did not expect to make more than one post in the near future about the events, and ...
Statolatry on the radio
Monday, April 21st, 2008A quibble I have with women, by and large, as regards their moral-political thought processes is that they are too hesitant to take a definitive side, to make a polarizing statement, to pronounce a strong (negative) judgment of people, ideas, or institutions. I made sure to say "by and large" ...
More rational thoughts on FLDS kidnapping
Sunday, April 20th, 2008I have decided I am an inadequate blagger. This is because I don't have enough time for writing and can't focus and materialize my thoughts into excellent blag posts, unless I take a lot of time for it. So I just link to other, (semi)professional writers who do it much ...
Insightful thoughts on the Eldorado polygamy compound raid
Saturday, April 19th, 2008I felt the need to chime in about the potential rights and certain wrongs of the raid by Texas police of the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints polygamist ranch in Eldorado, but I think Wendy McElroy expressed thoughts very similar to my own much better than I could have. If I have ...
I hate hippies!
Saturday, April 19th, 2008On Chris Lander's web page Stuff White People Like, there are primarily two types of blag posts: entries into the ever-growing list of stuff white people like, and news items that exemplify white people liking those things. So far, the most famous and well-liked entry in the list of stuff ...
The capitalist reformer of Estonia
Saturday, April 19th, 2008Mart Laar, prime minister of the former Soviet republic of Estonia from 1992 to 1994 and from 1999 to 2002, won the 2006 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty from the Cato Institute. The Cato Institute's description of him says, Laar realized that the only way for Estonia to weather ...
Emma Goldman
Saturday, April 19th, 2008The subject of today's featured article on the home page of Wikipedia.
Obama’s wrong and so are (some of) his critics
Sunday, April 13th, 2008Barack Obama created a little stir with two of his speeches recently, at least among those of us who still haven't been bewitched by his ostentatious oratory. First, in San Francisco, he said, "So it's not surprising then that [when voters] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or ...
The Great Depression, the current recession, and the importance of your vote
Sunday, April 13th, 2008If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal. —Emma Goldman Many comparisons have been made, at least by Austro-libertarian economists, of the Great Depression to the current inflationary recession. The reason the two periods are compared is that both recessions were caused by the same things: the Federal Reserve and ...
Hated attorney thinks he’ll get a biased jury
Saturday, April 12th, 2008When he's on the stand for illegal-campaign-donation and obstruction of justice charges. Article from the Detroit News. As much as he probably deserves some kind of punishment for all the defendants whose rights he's violated over the years, any charge relating to "excessive" campaign donations and almost any charge relating to ...
Vox Day writes something interesting
Saturday, April 12th, 2008In a rare departure from his self-glorifying discussions of his latest book and egotistical condescension towards atheists, scientists, feminists, and all non-Christian non-Creationists, Vox Day talks about politics and makes it funny at the same time: "You've got to put the video game away once in a while." - Barack Obama You know, ...
Michio Kaku: Time-travel, teleportation will happen
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008Michio Kaku is so bad-ass it makes my head hurt. I have no political/libertarian spin for this in any way, but I'm still posting it on my blag instead of my livejournal—that's how cool he is. In an interview with the Telegraph, he predicts that time-travel, Star Trek–like teleportation, and near-perfect ...
Harry Reid doesn’t know what force is
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008Aaron Kinney at Radical Libertarian posted this video of Senate majority leader Harry Reid insisting that income taxation is not forcible. His comment on the video was: "Harry Reid is a confused, stupid man."
Put your imagination to a useful end
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008It is easier to show the disorder that must accompany reform than the order that should follow it. —Frédéric Bastiat I wish Statists would apply their vivid and active imaginations to the moral, psychological, and economic benefits that we would reap if we lived in free societies, instead of to their tired, ...
Democrats support the Drug War
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008Semi-libertarian Radley Balko's latest column is about the Imperial Federal Govrernment's Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant program, which, according to the Department of Justice's website, "is a partnership among federal, state, and local governments to create safer communities." In other words, it is part of the State's grand program ...
2008 Pulitzer Prize winners
Monday, April 7th, 2008Well, I'm not on the list, so I guess I'll keep my day job and keep blagging for at least another year.
Statism is Utopian
Monday, April 7th, 2008Francois Tremblay wrote a little essay titled Statism is Utopian, explaining why it is incorrect to label anarcho-capitalism as Utopian and why Statism is the societal system that is least likely to generate a good outcome for most people—certainly the system least likely to be remotely just or moral (which ...
Orwellian Real ID tyranny
Sunday, April 6th, 2008After Anthony Gregory's announcements on the LRC blag and Mises blag introducing the Independent Institute's new blag, The Beacon, I realized that my recent lament that Gregory has only recently resumed regular blagging was misinformed; he has apparently been writing for that blag since October and was, in fact, its ...
My biggest fear
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008The governmental injustice that gives me the most nightmarish flashes, the most cold sweats, the most nerve-wracking fear, is socialized medicine. Reading this news item made the realization that Americans are going to be victims of socialized medicine sooner rather than later hit me quite hard: Most U.S. doctors back ...