Xeriscaping, ornamental and vegetable gardening, etc. are increasingly popular alternative approaches to yard use. But for those of us who really want to be done with lawns, an important first step is getting governments off of them.
Category: Blogs
The official Everything-Voluntary.com blog.
Rebel, but Make It Responsible
Did the past year signal the end of liberty, or just put a few more nails in its coffin? Is liberty under a greater threat these days or is it only a matter of perception? I hope it’s the latter, even though I suspect it’s the former. I plan to pry some of those coffin nails out before it’s too late to salvage what we’re losing. I hope you’ll help.
Immigration and Housing: The Meaning of Hsieh-Moretti
Now that we correctly understand Hsieh-Moretti’s results, let’s put them in context.
America Unchurched: A Sign of the Times
For the first time in its more than eight decades of surveying Americans’ religious attitudes and practices, Gallup reports, church members constituted only 47% of the US population in 2020 — down 23% since 1999, prior to which the percentage seldom dipped below 70%. Why the precipitous drop, and what might it portend for the … Continue reading America Unchurched: A Sign of the Times
Where Property Rights Begin
Your bodily autonomy– no matter where you stand– is the beginning of property rights, but not necessarily the end. Hopefully, your property rights don’t end there, but for some people, they do.
On Individualism
I’m reading a terrific anthology of individualist thought edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore. One essay was written by Oscar Wilde and focuses on individualism being the least selfish among alternatives. Let me put it this way: I am an individualist first, voluntaryist second.
Targeted Advertising Violates No Liberty
The point is that when advertisers acquire information about potential customers and narrow the pool, they benefit others besides themselves. We need not start off suspicious of such a practice. One thing markets do best is produce information, and generally speaking, access to consumer information is a good… What’s the bigger threat: a company that buys information we’ve given up in order to sell us things, or the state, which ultimately seeks to control us?
On Exploitation
There’s a very simple test you can apply to determine whether or not a market transaction is exploitative: If the transaction is made voluntarily and offers a better alternative to the parties involved, the transaction is not exploitative; If the transaction is made coercively and offers a worse alternative to one of the parties involved, the transaction is exploitative.
The Great Political Stagnation
The last 25 years have delivered amazing economic and technological progress for humanity. *Political* progress, in contrast, is hard even to detect during this period.
Never Give Anything to Government
This past year has been hard on liberty.
It started with world-wide government overreaction to a pandemic. This was still going strong when some focus shifted to choosing a politician to run your life.
Recently, as the pandemic hype began to fizzle i…