Not being absolutely clear about the above distinction is tantamount to not being able to separate important truths from pernicious falsehoods, which is especially fatal in the face of life and death events, and which plays right into the hands of pseudo-economic charlatans and their political allies.
Author: Jakub B. Wiśniewski
“You are what you value. I value: individual liberty, economic common sense, logical rigour, clarity of thought, intellectual integrity and quiet charity.”
Welfare States Encourage Bad Economic Thinking
In the absence of sound economic thinking, which explains why particular resources end up in the hands of particular members of extended social order, there appears a tendency to invent arbitrary pseudo-reasons as to why one’s position in this order is not as satisfactory as one would like it to be.
The Missing Link between Truth and Goodness
In addition to being economically inefficient and ethically unjustifiable, statism is also aesthetically revolting: it suggests that complex social challenges can be addressed by the crudest principle of “might makes right”, or, to put things metaphorically, that broken quantum computers can be fixed by repeatedly pummeling them with a caveman’s club.
The Free Market is Always Regulated
The free market is by definition regulated by the interactions of consumers and producers – producers regulate each other’s plans through the process of entrepreneurial competition, while consumers regulate the plans of producers through the exercise of their sovereign buying decisions.
A Vaccine Against Orwellian Superstition
If there is one lesson that everyone should learn from studying even the most elementary economics, and if there is one major intellectual gift that sound economists gave humanity, then it is precisely this vaccine against Orwellian superstition, according to which destruction contains any productive value.
Sustainable Liberty and its Normative Flavors
There is no such thing as “conservative libertarianism” or “progressive libertarianism” – they are mirages rooted in category mistakes. Liberty shackled by “conservatism” quickly dies under the weight of superstition and prejudice. Liberty hollowed out by “progressivism” quickly dissolves into nihilism.
Non-Aggression, Liberty, Justice, and Prudence
By their fruits you will know them: the soundness of one’s commitment to justice is continually validated by the test of prudence.
There is No Conflict Between “Left” and “Right”
There is only conflict between personal liberty and different forms of tribal enslavement.
Self-Governance, Rationality, and Secession
Contemplation is a form of internal emigration or mental secession, and every contemplative knows how valuable it can be for the life of the mind. Libertarian secession – a striving for full sovereignty over one’s private property and the physical space delimited by it – is a natural extension of the contemplative impulse from the realm of pure throught to the realm of action.
Judgmentalism, Objectivity and Moral Refinement
When used prudently, far from standing for crude moralizing, judgmentalism indicates moral refinement, manifested in the ability to exercise soft pressure where anything stronger would itself be morally impermissible.