Written by Mandy for the Natural Parents Network. I’ve often heard parents rationalizing punishments and rewards by citing the real world. When the kids grow up, they’ll be in the real world. In the real world, they’ll have to get a job and then, they had better be prepared. Punishments and rewards are everywhere, in…
Category: Editor’s Picks
Notes on War and Freedom
Written by Ramsey Clark, as published in The Voluntaryist, August 1992. War is more destructive of freedom than any other human activity. Any violation of civil liberties is easily justified in times of war and the threat of war, however unnecessary for security, harmful to its victims, irrational, unfair, or even detrimental to the war…
Ten Ways a Libertarian Society Would Be Different
Written by Jacob Hornberger for The Future of Freedom Foundation. How much would a libertarian society differ from the statist society in which we live? It would be radically different. Here are ten ways a libertarian society would be different: 1. No more welfare-state programs. A libertarian society would be one in which there is…
Play and (Don’t) Walk Away
Written by Nicole Olson for Unschoolers.org. Back in my mainstream days, I was an avid fan of the nanny shows. There were several on at the time, and they all boasted the same thing – that by using their techniques even the most wild of children could be tamed, that houses filled with chaos and…
The Best Way to Solve Your Child’s Problems
Written by Laura Markham for Aha! Parenting. Ever notice how kids don’t really want to hear your solutions to their problems? Teenagers, particularly, often react with downright hostility when we give them our good advice. That’s because they need to see themselves as capable. Every time we tell our child how to handle something, we’re…
Natural Law and Authority
Written by Michael Bakunin, circa 1871, as published in The Voluntaryist, June 1992. What is authority? Is it the inevitable power of the natural laws which manifest themselves in the necessary concatenation and succession of phenomena in the physical and social worlds? Indeed, against these laws revolt is not only forbidden, it is impossible. We…
What Would a Free Society Look Like?
Written by Sandy Ikeda for The Freeman. From time to time someone asks me what I think a genuinely free society would look like. How would it be organized, and who, exactly, would build the roads? I know I’m not alone. My answer is always: I don’t know, and neither does anyone else. In a…
Schools as Black-Holes
Written by Butler Shaffer for LewRockwell.com. There is an old joke about how knowledge accumulates in universities: students enter college, knowing everything, and graduate knowing nothing. In this way does knowledge continue to grow within universities. My years of experience in what is referred to as “higher education” inform me that there is more than…
Banking and the State
Written by Thorsten Polleit for Mises.org. The founder of the Medici banking dynasty, Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici (1360–1429), said to his children on his death bed: “Stay out of the public eye.” His words raise the question, “How much do bankers know about the truth of modern money and banking?” To develop a meaningful…
When Does Guidance Become Manipulation?
Written by Jan Hunt for The Natural Child Project. Many homeschooling parents have puzzled over the distinction between “guidance” and “manipulation”. As a parent strongly committed to “unschooling” (learner-directed homeschooling) with my son Jason, now 17, I have sometimes wondered if I should encourage certain activities in spite of a lack of interest on his…