Government is an automatic failure, from top to bottom, front to back, side to side, and beginning to end. A free society couldn’t possibly fail any harder. At this point, clinging to The State because you can’t think how the alternative would work is just a mental problem.
Category: Blogs
The official Everything-Voluntary.com blog.
Once a Communist Backwater, Georgia Discovered the Benefits of Free Markets; Now It Risks Abandoning Them
Georgia (the ex-Soviet Republic, not the U.S. state) is now a remarkable success story. Its economy is growing at 5 percent per year, and the country ranks ahead of the United States in economic freedom. Yet, 20 years ago, Georgia was even more miserably poor than the rest of the former Soviet Union. So, what can America and the rest of the world learn from Georgia’s progress?
It Looks Like Americans are Starting to Ignore Mask Mandates; Good
We’re still hearing a lot about “mask mandates” in COVID-19 era America, but my experiences (and those of acquaintances) over the last few days suggest that the supposed mandates have functionally become mere advisories.
Safety Can Be Hazardous to Our Health
Risk is integral to life, social life included. As Thomas Sowell puts it, there are no solutions, only trade-offs–you can’t do only one thing. So each of us does cost-benefit analyses all the time in everyday life.
Infant Industries and the Dubious Benefits of Barriers
While I was teaching at the John Locke Institute, our Summer School sponsored a debate on free trade between Daniel Hannon and Terence Kealey. Kealey rested his case for protectionism squarely on the classic infant-industry argument. Kealey’s version: While free trade does indeed improve efficiency at the moment, the long-run effect is to suppress economic growth in poorer countries. Why? Because you don’t improve at doing things that you don’t do.
1984 in 2021: We’re Doing Big Brother’s Job for Him
The political class’s openly stated desire for a Ministry of Truth to suppress “misinformation” on social media notwithstanding, there’s little evidence that it needs any such brute mechanism to let it have its way with the facts. Circa 2021, mainstream media spend most of their ink and bandwidth uncritically regurgitating, and affirming their faith in, the political establishment’s preferred narrative of the moment.
Libertarianism Works in Real World
When you take a libertarian and whittle away everything nonessential — all the philosophy and politics — what is left is the understanding that no one has the right to use violence against those who aren’t harming someone else, and no one has the right to violate the property rights of others.
Locke Vs. Lockdowns: Has America Lost Its Way?
In my 2019 book, “Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom”, which gained even more traction throughout 2020 and 2021 as schools closed and homeschooling soared, I trace the roots of non-coercive, self-directed education back to the Enlightenment and, particularly, to the writings of philosopher John Locke.
When You Thought You Had The Opposition Beaten
The headline on Reddit said “Conservatives are turning school boards into a battleground for culture wars. Struggling to push their agenda in other arenas, conservatives are bringing their buffet of grievances to schools – turning board meetings into an endless parade of ignorance, misinformation and just plain hatred.” That is a lie.
The Big Deal About Masks
What’s the big deal about masks? In exchange for slight inconvenience and discomfort, we save lives. Basic human selfishness explains why many would fail to comply. Anti-authoritarian scruples might lead some to oppose government mask mandates. But how could anyone sincerely disagree with the principle that wearing masks is a good thing?