Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category
Health care is not a right
Friday, February 26th, 2010Health care is not a right. No one has a right to health care. This has been said before and explained in better, more detailed terms than I'm going to here, but it bears repeating and needs explaining plainly and frequently. As difficult as it is to define abstract ideas ...
Quote of the day
Friday, February 19th, 2010All government is, after all, nothing more than an absurdity, a usurpation, and a crime, inflicted on the vast majority of peaceful people, without their consent, by the dictation of a select few men who have neither the wisdom, nor the virtue, nor the right to presume to rule over ...
David Henderson: in defense of Avatar
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010If you haven't seen Avatar yet, you should; the plot might be incredibly predictable and, actually, almost identical to that of Poul Anderson's novella Call Me Joe or Robert F. Young's novella To Fell a Tree, but what you get out of it is the best visual, graphical, cinematic experience ...
Because in a free society, people would attack each other without provocation or fear of punishment from a higher legal authority
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009A man returns home from drinking one night to find part of his house on fire. He warns everyone, wakes them up, helps them outside, then goes back inside to rescue someone who, he had just learned, was asleep upstairs. Do the police officers at the end of the driveway ...
Quote of the day
Sunday, October 18th, 2009"Government has never increased the standard of living of one single human being in civilization's history." —Steve Wynn, Fox News Sunday, October 11, 2009
Fish in a barrel 3
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009Nate Anderson of Ars Technica wrote, Licensed spectrum came into being for a reason. In the early days of radio, unlicensed radio stations in urban areas regularly got into "power wars" with rival stations, leading to plenty of static. Compared to this free-for-all, the licensing of radio stations in the US, ...
Misconceptions about libertarianism and Statism
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009I find that correcting misconceptions about libertarianism amounts more to correcting misconceptions about the State than anything else. Statists don't understand libertarianism because they don't understand their own philosophy. Libertarianism is individual liberty, personal sovereignty, voluntary association, and moral egalitarianism for all people. By "moral egalitarianism" I mean everyone is ...
Pirates: orderly anarchists
Saturday, July 11th, 2009Libertarian psychologist and Skepticblagger Michael Shermer has an interesting review of Peter Leeson's new book, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, in the July 9, 2009 issue of Nature. While neither Shermer, nor Leeson, nor I would defend pirate societies as the pinnacle of liberty and cultural progress, ...
Quote of the day
Sunday, July 5th, 2009"Minarchy is the theory that free market capitalism is best protected by a socialist monopoly." —Less Antman, in response to Sheldon Richman's post
Conservatism is fatally flawed
Sunday, June 14th, 2009Is capitalism fatally flawed? asks Paul McDonnold in the Christian Science Monitor. Recessions, like hurricanes, leave wreckage behind—bankrupt businesses, high unemployment, and sometimes even tattered philosophies. No, they don't. Inflationary booms leave bankrupt businesses and unemployment, not to mention devalued currency, behind. Recessions correct those mistakes. The only "tattered philosophy" I've ...
Quote of the day
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009From Roderick Long's chapter in Anarchism/Minarchism: The confused assumption that a legal framework must (or even can) be external to what it constrains tends to make political structure invisible except insofar as it is realised in familiar state-monopoly institutions. And this in turn helps to explain what anarchists often find puzzling: ...
Proposals for Baltimore’s vacant lots
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009Um, it's called squatting. Libertarianism took care of this issue more than a century ago.
Quote of the day
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009The law? Commander, laws change depending on who's making them. Cardassians one day, Federation the next. But justice is justice. —Odo, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, "A Man Alone"
Inequality is fatal?
Thursday, May 14th, 2009In the April 30 issue of Nature, the new book The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett is reviewed. Some excerpts from the review: Why are our chances of reaching a great age so affected by wealth and status? The obvious ...
Political quizzes
Saturday, May 2nd, 2009I recently took this political-spectrum quiz that actually seemed somewhat worthwhile and substantive, unlike a few quizzes of the same type that I've taken before. The same site has several more political quizzes that I haven't taken and don't plan to, but some of them also looked like they had ...
Other people’s thoughts on chaos and anarchy
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009Depends on what you mean by "chaos" and "anarchy"... There are two words that really separate us hard-core libertarians from small-government Republicans and civil-liberties-focused Democrats: Chaos and Anarchy. Libertarians love chaos and anarchy, while most Americans still cringe from these words. For most folks, chaos is some Road ...
On murder rates in Stateless societies
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009Professor Long is pretty much awesome. I would say that of all living political philosophers, his ideas and conclusions about liberty, government, economics, and society match my own (and, in fact, have helped me enunciate my own) more than any other. I don't consider myself very much of a cultural ...
Obamaism is Statism
Friday, April 10th, 2009Out of some strange curiosity I decided to peruse The New Yorker, probably because it is supposed to be a source of good artistic criticism, cultural-political commentary, and humor. One of the first things that caught my eye was "Obamaism" by George Packer. It is supposed to be a commentary ...
The eternal truth of market principles
Saturday, March 28th, 2009As I understand it, one of the great philosophical contributions that Ludwig von Mises made to the world was not simply to explain why governmental perturbation of market forces doesn't work, but to explain that it can't work—he explained how the things that the State can achieve are limited by ...
We need more competition, not consolidation, in food-inspection agencies
Thursday, February 26th, 2009My experience and my reading has convinced me that more freedom (less government) in a given industry or sector of the economy leads to more, cheaper, and better goods and services. Libertarians take this as a given. Despite the Statist objection to the possibility of competition between rival companies/agencies/organizations in ...
Water shortage does not equal water scarcity
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009I liked this column by Chris Brown for the Ludwig von Mises Institute because it echoed some points I made in two previous posts: Water shortages and water-trading between states and Scarcity is not shortage. Some excerpts (italics in original): The government has blamed the shortage of water on drought and ...
Zoning laws are the worse of two (or more) evils
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009I liked Charles Johnson's letter to the editor of the Las Vegas Sun, criticizing the Clark County government for forcing a local church to stop building, or reduce in size, three large crosses it was planning to erect on its property. The bellowing blowhard busybody brigade complains these crosses — built ...
Space junk
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009Debris from satellites and other random pieces of space junk are crowding the lower levels of outer space, to the extent that satellites and the Hubble Space Telescope are at risk for colliding with some of it at any given time (supposedly). I can imagine this problem will only get ...
Quote and links of the day
Saturday, January 31st, 2009On the off-chance that you haven't read them, I thoroughly enjoyed this critique of Noam Chomsky and other communist idiots and the ensuing discussion of it at Austro-Athenian Empire. Roderick Long's involvement makes just about everything into a stimulating discussion, if it wasn't already. The quote of the day was provided ...
Freedom-hating “nudger” appointed to regulatory post
Thursday, January 8th, 2009Skip Oliva writes about the appointment of Harvard law school professor Cass R. Sunstein as administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. This is one of the most important "regulatory" (murder/slavery-mongering) bureaucracies in the federal government. There isn't much I could add to Oliva's post. Except to link ...
Libertarian girls
Sunday, January 4th, 2009I have been meaning to write about this for a while. A former student of Walter Block wrote to him: I read an Economist article yesterday praising the government for bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and was shocked that such an august publication could be so short-sighted. I ...
Water shortages and water-trading between states
Saturday, December 27th, 2008My former state of residence, Georgia, is in a severe drought. It has been for years. It has gotten worse and worse over the last couple of years. Naturally, only government intervention in the water market can cause a true shortage. As far as I understand it, governments in the ...
The Kel Weaver Political Bit
Monday, December 8th, 2008My brother, whom I would describe as a Christian Fundamentalist Republican, once made a comment that I was "more right" than he was, simply because I wanted even less government than him. This seems odd to me, considering that I'm opposed to laws against gay marriage, drugs, or many other ...
What If…
Thursday, November 20th, 2008David Z over at No Third Solution has a series of posts in which he talks in great detail about taxes that show he is way more knowledgeable about economic issues than I am. They are quite long, and I will admit to not have read all of them completely yet ...
Minarchist states and basic necessities
Saturday, November 15th, 2008What are the most basic necessities of life, of survival? I'd say food, water, and shelter. In our modern world, a fourth good one to add to the list would be medicine. I think it's fair to say that without these four and certainly without the first three being available ...
Early English law screwed the masses to benefit the aristocracy
Thursday, November 13th, 2008In my ongoing and very occasional progression through Bruce Benson's masterpiece The Enterprise of Law, I am learning more and more about the origins of authoritarian (State-originated and -enforced) law and its usurpation of customary (community-originated and reciprocal-incentive-enforced) law in Medieval England. The main thrust of chapter 3 is that ...
Sheldon Richman on tacit consent
Sunday, November 9th, 2008Sheldon Richman wrote a good post about social contracts and tacit consent, which are attempts at justifications for Statism that cannot stand up to even the most basic and off-the-cuff libertarian objections. ...this got me thinking about the curious principle of tacit consent. Here are the thoughts I jotted down today. ...
Educating for Anarchism, Blagnet.net edition
Friday, October 31st, 2008Mike over at nostate.com has an occasional post entitled Educating for Anarchism, in which he posts real life exchanges of his political beliefs with others. Below, you will find an exchange with my brother in a Facebook message thread (which sadly, is the best means he has of keeping in ...
Immorality and control
Friday, October 24th, 2008I liked this post by Francois Tremblay about hierarchies and control. One of the good things about being a libertarian blagger is that you can have intellectual debates with other amateur (or, sometimes, professional) philosophers about real, substantive issues. The bad side is that libertarians often disagree over semantics and ...
Ownership key to saving fisheries
Monday, September 22nd, 2008Writes Radley Balko: "The BBC somewhat surprisingly publishes the answer to the continuing tragedy of the commons that is the world’s fisheries: property rights!
Authoritarian law engenders conflict, discourages voluntary interaction
Friday, September 19th, 2008From chapter 3 of Bruce Benson's The Enterprise of Law, "The Rise of Authoritarian Law": When government becomes involved in the enterprise of law, both the rules of conduct and the institutions for enforcement are likely to change. The primary functions of governments are to act as a mechanism to take ...
Thoughts on libertarianism and voting
Sunday, September 14th, 2008The anarchist argument against voting in democratic elections is that participating in the immoral system of determining right and wrong that is democracy (mob-rule) gives your tacit consent to the outcome of such elections; by voting, you demonstrate that you agree that mob-rule is a valid and just way of ...
Vote with your feet, not your mind
Thursday, September 4th, 2008In an astonishing departure from the norm, James Ostrowski blagged about something unrelated to Buffalo, NY, his father's career in Buffalo, NY, or his own amazing prescience in making political predictions. He's frustrated that the Democrats look as though they're about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory once ...
Customary law must be widely accepted and evolves for the better
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008After my long essay about customary "law" and the market of preferences, decency, and reputations in internet content providers, Tim Swanson posted a comment recommending The Enterprise of Law by the economist Bruce L. Benson. This book is about customary vs. governmental law and the market for law-enforcement services in ...
A glimpse of anarchic rights, laws, and socioeconomic organization in online communities
Sunday, August 24th, 2008This is one of the most interesting and thought-provoking news articles I've read in a while: Rights like free speech don't always extend online. It is about the different rules and restrictions established and enforced by online companies (Yahoo!, YouTube, MySpace, GoDaddy, etc.) and the consequences of their actions, their ...
Rights don’t need limiting by the State
Friday, July 25th, 2008For the life of me I can't find the blag post where I read this, but I'm pretty sure it was a post that Bob Murphy at Crash Landing linked to. Anyway, it was some Statist economics blag, and a commenter gave what he thought was a perfect example of ...
What libertarianism isn’t 2
Thursday, July 24th, 2008In summary: It isn't democracy, with good reason. In my last post I quoted an anti-libertarian commenter on some Statist blag who thought that libertarians wanted to do whatever they wanted to whomever they wanted whenever they wanted, and that no law or police force should stop them. I'll remind you ...
What libertarianism isn’t
Monday, July 21st, 2008David Z. at ...No Third Solution wrote a post that I really liked called The truth about what anarchists want. In response to some immature, lazy, and ignorant blaggers who really don't know what libertarianism is, or at least don't know what libertarians envision that libertarianism is ("They want to ...
African nature preserves and the tragedy of the commons
Tuesday, July 8th, 2008In the July 4, 2008 issue of Science, there was a news & views article about over-hunting and poaching of animals on nature preserves in Africa, due to the large increase in human populations surrounding the preserves. It seems the establishment of nature preserves attracts people to settle around them, ...
Kill switches and remote control
Friday, July 4th, 2008Bruce Schneier, the computer-security guru whom Brad at WendyMcElroy.com often links to, wrote a pretty chilling post on kill switches and remote control. This type of technology is an example of why government is not your only enemy, but its creation of the national-security state enables private companies and individuals ...
Brave Statists on Mises.org
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008As wrong as they are, I am quite impressed with several of the non-libertarians—and in fact outright socialists—who frequent the Mises blag discussion threads and offer their input as to why a Mises columnist or blagger was way off and why government is actually not so bad, and is necessary, ...
It must suck to be Matt Moore
Saturday, June 21st, 2008I know this is nearly one-month-old news, but I have been too busy to blag much lately, as you can tell. Fear not, I'll be back in full force soon. I have been meaning to blag about this for a while because it is so stupid and so maddening. Radley ...
Why I oppose monopolistic justice (sic) systems
Thursday, June 5th, 2008The only remaining halfway-decent argument against the unregulated free market that I've encountered is that private police, courts, and retribution systems would be unaccountable to the actual justice of natural law and result in an increase in unchecked use of force against innocents. This would happen, they say, because there ...
Francois Tremblay: Agorism, not political action
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008Francois Tremblay wrote an excellent open letter to all Libertarians, and that's with a capital L, meaning the ones who think of themselves as members of the Libertarian Party and act mainly to promote LP candidates. Typically capital-L Libertarians are minarchists who believe in the Constitution or some such. This ...
15th monthly market anarchist blag carnival
Sunday, June 1st, 2008The 15th monthly market anarchist blag carnival is up at Hellbound Alleee. I had never been to that site before, nor to several of the websites that had entries this month. Pretty sweet. I submitted my brief insights on California's gay-marriage decision and the relationship between marriage the State in ...