There’s nothing wrong with collective bargaining from the voluntaryist perspective. Where labor unions go wrong is in their use of coercion. When collective bargaining breaks down and employers wish to hire competing labor, that is well within their liberty to do so.
Category: Two Cents
On Bootstraps
Libertarians are often strawmanned as uncaring assholes who think that all that is necessary for anyone, even the most unfortunate among us, need to do to succeed in life is to pull themselves up by their own “bootstraps”.
On Civil Liberties
I think that I finally have the concept of “civil liberties” figured out. So long as the state has coercively prohibited a peaceful activity for every race, gender, sexual orientation, and religious belief equally, then civil liberties have not been violated.
On Qualified Immunity
Of all the things I’m pessimistic on, the abolition of the doctrine of qualified immunity is probably at the top. I do not expect to see any significant progress made on abolishing this horrible statist practice in my lifetime, or the lifetimes of my children.
On Police Brutality IV
George Floyd did not find himself with a knee on his neck for almost 9 minutes because Derek Chauvin is a racist. No, he found himself being killed because Derek Chauvin, and his many cohorts, are authoritarians.
On Parenting
An insight I had recently is on who we are raising as parents. We are not raising children, rather, we are raising adults. Childhood is a very small part of life for us. It only constitutes the first 15 years, or so. The importance of this insight, that we are raising adults, is a reminder that how we engage with our children and the behavior we model will determine the type of adults that they will become.
On Police Brutality III
It’s difficult to emphathize with a protest against racism if empathy, at it’s core, is projection. To my knowledge, I have never been the victim of racism, nor have I ever victimized another on the basis racism.
On Riotous Looting
One of the many foundational reasons for the strong possibility of police brutality is the fact that people have either willingly or under coercion outsourced their own security to a group of people who claim not to have any duty to provide it.
On Police Brutality II
Society needs antitrust enforcement against the police and their bosses, the state. At some point this monopoly goes too far and ends up shooting itself in the foot, but make no mistake, the police are not your friend, nor are they your protector.
On Stoicism III
A thought occurred to me recently that I attribute to my study and practice of Stoicism. I drive all around a small metro downtown area (Salt Lake City) for six hours a day delivering food. I am often stopped at a green light by a homeless person walking more or less swiftly across my path.