Written by Michael Ziesing for The Voluntaryist, August 1991. Tell people you’re an anarchist and you’ll probably get a reaction. Maybe they’ll back away and/or run in sheer terror. (You may have a bomb and know how to use it, after all!) Or maybe they’ll spit in your eye and/or try to lock you up.…
Tag: coercion
10 Differences Between the State and the Mafia
1. The state is the largest apparatus of violence, aggression, and coercion within a given territory. The mafia is composed of all the smaller ones. 2. The state is the most well-organized apparatus of violence, aggression, and coercion within a given territory. The mafias’ inferior organization makes them less influential and their reach more restricted.…
The Case Against Democracy: The More Things Change, The More They Remain the Same
Written by Carl Watner for The Voluntaryist, August 1990. Democracy. For many, the word sums up what is desirable in human affairs. Democracy, and agitation for it, occurs all over the world: the Pro-Democracy movement in China during 1989; the democratic reform movements taking place in Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R. resulting in the breakup…
In Praise of Profit
In the last two weeks, I presented a defense of key libertarian concepts — the market, private property, and competition — in a way intended to make them palatable to people who believe in individual liberty yet have something like an aesthetic aversion to the market economy. Today let’s examine profit, another concept that has an unpleasant taste for some people who might otherwise be attracted to libertarianism.
The Myth of Political Freedom
Written by Carl Watner for The Voluntaryist, December 1988. How is it that citizens of the Soviet Russia become imbued with the political ideas of the United States Constitution? Why are Americans knowledgeable about the political freedoms outlined in the Constitution of the U.S.S.R.? The answer to these two questions is relatively simple. In both…
The Future Economic Destruction
Written by Dan Amoss for Laissez Faire Today. All government-directed economic activity grows at the expense of the private sector. And the election suggests that government coercion will drive even more U.S. economic activity in the future. This is a shame, because freely adjusting prices, competition, and innovation elevate living standards. Mandates, price controls, and…
Peace or Politics
Guest post by Frank Chodorov. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, October 1988. Peace is the business of Society. Society is a cooperative effort, springing spontaneously from man’s urge to improve on his circumstances. It is voluntary, completely free of force. It comes because man has learned that the task of life is easier of accomplishment…
Crime and the Voluntaryist
Send him mail. “One Voluntaryist’s Perspective” is an original bi-weekly column appearing every other Monday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by the founder and editor Skyler J. Collins. Archived columns can be found here. OVP-only RSS feed available here. The primary means to solving problems for the voluntaryist are always nonviolent and peaceful. Persuasion, education, protest, boycotts, nonviolent…
A Commitment to Voluntaryism
Guest post by Dan Dougherty. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, April 1988. The tactics may vary – they may be violent or nonviolent – but as long as the goal remains the exercise of power over other people, then the politics of confrontation will always sow the seeds of the next rebellion.You cannot improve the…
Fallacious “Rights”
Guest post Alex Perales. Since you own yourself and it would be wrong for someone to force you to do something, it follows that you then have the right to your own life and the right to live free of coercion so long as you do not infringe on the rights of others. The only…