Although the public choice school of political economy has been demonized in a new work of putatively progressive fiction masquerading as intellectual history, good-faith leftists (if they don’t already regard themselves as libertarians) may be surprised by how their cause could benefit from the insights of James Buchanan, et al.
Tag: consent
Consent Should Be Obvious
The standard for consent should be a high level of obviousness. For example, this daredevil was gored nearly to death by bulls and has stated explicitly that he plans to partake in the experience again.
At Someone Else’s Expense
You can’t seriously make the point that stopping theft or an attack on the innocent costs the archator. He might wish you believed that so he could guilt you into staying out of his way, but it’s simply not reality. Stopping someone from violating you doesn’t burden them.
Who Will Build The Roads? Anarchists.
The Portland anarchists at PARC are out to fix more roads and serve their community, by voluntary action. Without government permission and at government dismay. Only few anarchists are bandana-wearing, Molotov cocktail-wielding protestors, while many are peaceful, liberty-loving people who want to help their community via voluntary association.
Failing to Illicit Their Ire
I find it disheartening that some people resent and condemn the slow relinquishment of superstitious and puritanical prohibitions against voluntary pleasure, yet fail to acknowledge the blatant immorality and wanton destruction perpetrated by the state.
An Extraordinarily Evil “Citizen”
The real “bad idea” here is giving people the political opportunity to meddle in the lives of others, and punish them when they don’t cooperate with their own violation. No good group would condone such evil.
10 Points that the Pro-Spanking Crowd Totally Missed
Instead of addressing everyone’s comment individually, I will just write a post responding to all the defenses of spanking children. Which is pretty easy because there are only a handful that I hear over and over again. My hope is that I can shed a little more light on this topic and help radically shift the mindset that these people seem to be deeply conditioned in.
Why Free Immigration Is the Moderate, Common-Sense Position
Far from being utopian, saying “Immigration is a human right” is just the moderate, common-sense position that when natives and foreigners voluntarily interact, strangers are morally obliged to leave them alone unless the overall consequences are clearly awful. Even if the stranger happens to be the government – and the government happens to be popular.
Defending a Free Nation
Most societies, at least in this century, handle the problem of national defense by having a large, well-armed, permanent military force, run by a centralized government, funded by taxation, and often (though not always) manned by conscription. Is this a solution that a free nation can or should follow?
Anarchy and Islam
I’ve met Muslims of every school of anarchist thought from anarcho-socialists to national-anarchists. Prominent among them are Hakim Bay’s “ontological anarchism” and Yakoub Islam’s “post-colonial anarcho-pacifism” but this is my story.