Big Business: Recasting the Anti-Hero

My main criticism: Tyler is so pro-business that he often forgets (at least rhetorically) to be pro-market.  He spends minimal time calling for moderate deregulation – and even less calling for radical deregulation.  So while he effectively calls attention to everything business does for us, he barely shows readers how much business could do for us if government got out of the way.

Confessions of a Blogging Opium Eater

With a nod to Thomas De Quincey, I have had to deal with the consequences of an addiction once again.  As a life long University of Kentucky basketball fan, I now must look forward to a long, cold summer.  I will have fleeting moments, perhaps in the NBA playoffs, perhaps when they contest the Rugby World Cup to see who can deny the New Zealand All Blacks. But this all got me thinking about the nature of undying love, freedom, individuality, and consequences, from the POV of a voluntaryist. 

Reflections on The Sopranos

I just finished re-watching the entirety of The Sopranos, HBO’s classic Mafia drama. I saw it season-by-season when it originally aired (1999-2007), and I still hew to the allegedly philistine view that the ending was not only bad, but insulting. Overall, though the show’s reputation is well-deserved. Here are the top social science insights I take away.

Apology for a Trainwreck

The ethnographies of Oscar Lewis paint a bleak picture of lower-class life.  The thousands of pages of published interviews in books like Five Families, The Children of Sanchez, Four Men, and La Vida show a relentless trainwreck of impulsive sex, unplanned pregnancy, child neglect, child abuse, drug addiction, drunkenness, degenerate gambling, intra-family violence, near-random violence, parasitism, and gross financial mismanagement. …

Time to Break Government Addiction

When an addict’s supply is cut off, it’s usually an agonizing journey through withdrawal to the other side of the addiction; where the poison finally loosens its grip on the person, giving him a new chance at life. I’m not talking about a chemical dependency this time, but a far more deadly condition: government addiction.

On Voluntaryists IV

One notable difference between voluntaryists and coercivists are the former’s insistence on tackling issues from their root, largely dug deep in a coercive foundation. Coercivists prefer to hack away at the branches with nary a concern for whose lives and liberties they may be violating.