Editor’s Pick. Written by Gyorgy Furiosa. Mikhail Bakunin warned that if you make plans for after the revolution, you are a reactionary. Therefore, the following is a speculation to better understand the conflict between anarchist practices and what in our society is held to be the sacred right of property, with the aim of shedding…
Category: Free Markets
An Empirical Inquiry into Polycentric Power Structures
Editor’s Pick. Written by Wheylous. When anarcho-capitalists argue that protection should be provided in a private manner by companies instead of coercively by governments, opponents maintain that neighboring police agencies will start fighting amongst each other. The argument goes that one company will decide that it will make more money if it physically forces another…
Satoshi Nakamoto: Natural Elite to the Rescue
Editor’s Pick. Written by Doug French. Meanwhile, as the financial world melted down in 2008, a person or group of people developed the cyber-currency Bitcoin under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. This innovation epitomizes the natural elite in action. He, she, or they designed and created the original Bitcoin software, currently known as Bitcoin-Qt. This brilliant…
Ask A Different Question
Editor’s Pick. Written by Liberty. Libertarians are regularly asked questions about how a libertarian country would solve a certain social problem. That whole idea is a bit ridiculous but there is a quick solution to just about everyone of those questions. Questions that are asked are generally leading towards a statist solution. Despite the poor…
The Economics of Profiling
Editor’s Pick. Written by Walter Williams. Police Capt. Louis Renault, played by Claude Rains in the 1942 movie “Casablanca,” in the wake of the shooting of a Nazi officer, ordered his men to “round up the usual suspects.” Was Renault engaging in some sort of profiling? He may have been, but what is profiling? Let’s…
Do You Actually Support Free Markets?
Editor’s Pick. Written by Rollo McFloogle. I’ve been on a bit of a tear where I’ve been writing about some pet peeves of mine. But that’s okay, because it at least gives me something to write about. It also allows me to flesh out my ideas about why I have a problem with these things…
There Is No Political Solution
Editor’s Pick. Written by Michael Suede. In the end, there are only technological solutions. That means you don’t have to worry about politics as long as technology keeps progressing. Politics is a problem. Technology finds ways of eliminating problems.. ALL problems. Got a problem moving things? Man invents the wheel. Got a problem adding things?…
Commerce: The Permanent Rebellion
Editor’s Pick. Written by Paul Rosenberg. Commerce, by its very nature, is born free. And more than this, it forever fights to remain free. At almost every time and place, commerce evades regulations and controls; it serves its own will, not the wills of rulers. Markets spontaneously emerge at every opportunity, even when they are…
Intellectual Property Cannot Be Property
Editor’s Pick. Written by Joseph Diedrich. What is property? More specifically, at its essential theoretical core, beyond the artifice of legal fiat, what is property? Somewhat broadly, property is anything that satisfies each of the following requirements: property is scarce; property possesses objective (intersubjectively ascertainable) borders; and property has a determinable temporal genesis. The theory…
The Crime of a Commercial Exchange
Editor’s Pick. Written by Connor Boyack. When Jestina Clayton was threatened with legal action for braiding hair, bureaucrats made clear that her supposed crime was that she had been braiding hair for pay. Think about that for a moment: it was legal for her to braid hair for free, but as soon as money became…