Send him mail. “One Improved Unit” 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. OIU-only RSS feed available here. I have recently discovered a major weakness of mine. I have heretofore been aware of it, but justified it…
Tag: conflict
Obsessed by Megalomania
Interview with Hans-Hermann Hoppe by German weekly Junge Freiheit. Are taxes nothing but protection money? The state a kind of mafia? Democracy a fraud? Philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe is not only considered one of the most prominent pioneering intellectuals of the libertarian movement, but also perhaps the sharpest critic of the Western political system. Professor Hoppe:…
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…
Stephan Kinsella
“Toward Freedom” is an Everything-Voluntary.com series sharing personal stories about the journey toward freedom. Archived stories can be found here. Submit your story to the editor. Originally published in I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians. Unlike many libertarians who dally with socialism before seeing the light, I have never been attracted to leftism. Indeed, although…
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.
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…
The Power of Non-Violent Resistance
Guest post by Jerry M. Tinker. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, August 1987. As many writers have noted, the basic thesis, or strategy, upon which Gandhi’s satyagraha and all non-violent resistance rests is that all structures of power – government and social organizations – always depend upon the voluntary cooperation of great numbers of people…
The Inflation of Rights
Guest post by Sir Alfred Sherman. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, April 1987. In this essay I wish to argue that the inflation of rights, in the sense of hypertrophy of claims on society that the state is responsible for levying, is inherently self-defeating. It is bound to generate conflicts of rights that will end…
Why I Detest the State
Guest post by Clem Johnson. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, February, 1987. About a year before he died, Albert Einstein wrote this warning: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophies.” In paraphrase, such a statement could describe even dire consequences: “From tribalism…
The Evils of Power Over Others
Guest post by Auberon Herbert. Excerpted from his 1908 essay “A Plea for Voluntaryism” found in The Voluntaryist Creed. Endless are the evils that power brings with it, both to those who rule and are ruled. If you hold power, your first aim and end are necessarily to preserve that power. With power, as you fondly imagine, you possess all…