You and I are constantly told we should “leave it to the professionals.” We are presumed too incompetent to do it ourselves and are told we need to pay someone to do it for us, so we don’t get hurt. Except… there is one profession that if we choose to hire a professional practitioner, we could be “arrested.” In this case, we are told we must only use amateurs and shouldn’t hire a professional.
Tag: business
Net of the Long Knives? Neutrality Advocates Put it in Reverse
On July 12, a number of prominent companies joined in the “Internet-wide Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality.” Among them were GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google, and CloudFlare. All four companies issued pious statements about the dangerous possibility of Internet Service Providers cutting off access to perfectly legal content. A little more than a month later, all four companies (and others) are themselves doing exactly what they warned us ISPs might do unless a “Net Neutrality” law forbade it: They’re cutting off access to perfectly legal content (yes, neo-Nazi speech is legal in America).
May Cops Defend Innocent People from Attack?
Fred asks a couple of questions about cops and violence, saying they won’t be answered by folks of my sort because they’ll trigger cognitive dissonance.
Statists are Crybabies
How many times have you been minding your own business, just talking to other liberty lovers, when some statist troll pops up and says: “Show me how your imaginary anarchist society will work!” or some other version of “It can’t work!” It happens to me all the time.
Markets
A trip to a local food market will tell you more about a geographic spot than I could possibly relate in a blog entry. I love supermarkets, new and used book stalls, flea markets, art galleries, sidewalk vendors, newsstands, tradesperson workplaces, restaurants, fairs, craft shows, auctions, theaters (movie, stage, concert, and opera).
Challenging Societal Defaults
The problem with mass schooling is that it is not serving children well. It kills creativity, punishes individuality, and pathologizes difference. As mass schooling expands and becomes more restrictive, there is mounting evidence that it is causing serious psychological harm to many children. In addition to these troubling outcomes, mass schooling simply isn’t working. Children aren’t learning.
Individualist, Voluntaryist, and a Human Being
I believe that if your actions neither pick my pocket nor break my leg, they’re none of my business. I believe in peaceful coexistence, voluntary transactions, and free markets.
What’s In Your Bag?
When I buy baked goods or produce at Wegmans, the cashiers don’t even bother to look in the brown paper sack. They simply ask me, “What’s in your bag?” – and ring up whatever I declare. How can profit-maximizing businesses treat me so well?
Not Everyone is Worth Minimum Wage
Advocacy of any minimum wage is predicated on the economic ignorance that every employee’s value is worth at least that minimum. I was thinking on the drive home that a $15 minimum wage would apply to the two imbeciles who wasted my time this morning.
They Keep Using That Phrase, “Net Neutrality”
As the FCC considers repealing the 2015 Net Neutrality rule, its supporters are desperate to associate bad things with its absence. So desperate that Demand Progress is advertising examples of Net Neutrality as violations of Net Neutrality.