Banking and the State

Written by Thorsten Polleit for Mises.org. The founder of the Medici banking dynasty, Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici (1360–1429), said to his children on his death bed: “Stay out of the public eye.” His words raise the question, “How much do bankers know about the truth of modern money and banking?” To develop a meaningful…

When Does Guidance Become Manipulation?

Written by Jan Hunt for The Natural Child Project. Many homeschooling parents have puzzled over the distinction between “guidance” and “manipulation”. As a parent strongly committed to “unschooling” (learner-directed homeschooling) with my son Jason, now 17, I have sometimes wondered if I should encourage certain activities in spite of a lack of interest on his…

Mark Thornton

“Toward Freedom” is an Everything-Voluntary.com series sharing personal stories about the journey toward freedom. Archived stories can be found here. Submit your story to the editor. Originally published in I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians. Geneva is a small town in the Finger Lakes region of western New York State. I was born and raised…

For Reasons of State

Written by Michael Bakunin, circa 1867, as published in The Voluntaryist, April 1992. We shall now examine what the State, thus constituted, should be in relation to other states, its peers, as well as in relation to its own subject populations. This examination appears to us all the more interesting and useful because the State,…