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?
Tag: change
The Data Don’t Matter
My kids have some clear challenges and opportunities because of their digital immersion. None of those changed because someone did some research. My kids’ unique screen time pros/cons existed before I read stats from a study, and they exist after.
Fearing “Terrorism”
My biggest fear has already become reality: the loss of one of my kids. I won’t say I exactly survived because not all of me did. I’m somewhat changed. Maybe those around me see it; maybe it’s all tucked inside and they don’t. Either way, I’m still here.
Law as a Tool to Get What We Want
Imports threatening domestic production? Raise tariffs! Cheap labor threatening labor unions? Enact a minimum wage! Businessmen without scruples ripping off easy prey? Occupational licensure! Boogeyman at the front door? Increase the “defense” budget! Your neighbor is sodomizing his friend in the privacy of his home? Ban all the gays!
Influences III
If I were a guest on a podcast or an interview broadcast, when asked about my major influences, I would stick close to the names repeated by voluntaryists — Spooner, Bastiat, Jefferson, Mencken, Mises, Hazlitt, Rothbard, Higgs, and Woods. But in this more expansive context, I can stretch out to discuss the influences who made me a voluntaryist before I knew I was one, before I knew to read the internal literature of the voluntaryist, libertarian, individualist mainstream. Three such influences are Alan Turing, Dan Carlin, and Ruth Rendell.
Crops, Currency, and Crypto
Peoples in places with a single staple grain, harvested at the same time once each year, were easy for states to subjugate and coerce. Partly for this reason, most humans resisted extensive grain farming, even several thousand years after it had been invented, and opted instead for what Scott calls a complex ‘web’ of nutrients.
The Eternal Dilemma: Revenge or Forgiveness?
I’m obviously going to argue against revenge, so I should just say that now rather than acting like it’s going to surprise you. Instead, let me present my arguments against revenge, then offer up a different approach.
I am…
…a libertarian because I believe in maximizing liberty and minimizing aggression. I recognize the maximum amount of liberty requires there be no one who can violate liberty free of rightful consequences.
The Division of Labor is Valuable Even in a Perfectly Equal World
If I can imagine a single scenario in which two people with zero difference in skill or preference can both benefit from the division of labor and exchange, my answer was correct and the professor was wrong. (This was like 10 years ago. Still, can’t let it go.)
My Children Deserve My Time and Attention
I don’t want my children feeling superior to others, that they are owed something from them. I want them to learn that persuasion and negotiation, kindness and acceptance, are the best ways to make and keep friends. That when they view others as an opportunity for mutual benefit, as versus someone to be used and then discarded, they will develop better, stronger, and longer-lasting relationships with others.