Written by Jim Davies for Strike-The-Root.com. What will marriage be like in the coming free society? Answer, of course: exactly what the contracting parties desire, neither more nor less. Marriage is a contract, governing relationships between two or more people. Its traditional terms are usually spelled out orally before witnesses, and involve forsaking all other…
Tag: contract
Marriage Equality and The State
Writes Pete Earle: Of course, every individual should be free to marry anyone – or as many other people – they want, on whatever basis they freely and mutually decide upon; they only need answer to themselves. Part and parcel to that, of course, is that no individual, group, or firm should be obligated to…
Principle = Practice
Send him mail. “Food for Thought” is an original bi-weekly column appearing every other Tuesday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by Norman Imberman. Norman is a retired podiatrist who loves playing piano, writing music, lawn bowling, bridge, reading, classical music, going to movies, plays, concerts and traveling. Archived columns can be found here. FFT-only RSS feed available here.…
Libertarianism, Coercion, and Lifeboat Situations
Is libertarianism a deontological or a consequentialist theory? It can be either, but it can also be both, which, as far as I’m concerned, is the best way to think about it. Does libertarianism say that it is immoral and criminal to use coercion against peaceful individuals in the so-called “lifeboat situations” (e.g., unless I…
Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society
Written by Stephan Kinsella for LibertarianPapers.org. Abstract: An ethic of self-ownership combined with Lockean homesteading of external resources provides a plausible grounding both for anarchist opposition to the state and for an attractive anarchist legal order. Such an ethic can be understood as specifying that each person prima facie has the right to control his…
Natural Consequences
Writes Matt Stocks: My wife and I recently went through a Love and Logic course. It was interesting because it was presented through the filters of statists with a belief in social contract, etc. We took the parts we felt were simply dealing with addressing a child not following the NAP and how do we…
Outlawing Jobs: The Minimum Wage
Written by Murray Rothbard, as published at Mises.org. In truth, there is only one way to regard a minimum wage law: it is compulsory unemployment, period. The law says: it is illegal, and therefore criminal, for anyone to hire anyone else below the level of X dollars an hour. This means, plainly and simply, that…
Who is a Libertarian?
Writes Stephan Kinsella: After much thought and debate about this topic over the last 25 or so years, here is my attempt at a lean, concise, precise definition of what a libertarian is: A libertarian is a person who believes that the invasion of the borders of (trespass against) others’ bodies or owned external scarce…
Do You Really ‘Owe’ Those Taxes?
Written by Anonymous, as sent to Voluntaryist.com. “The question is not whether or not theft is wrong but what is considered to be theft; in the same way, murder is universally forbidden but there are great differences between peoples as to what killing is considered to be murder.” – Garrett Barden and Tim Murphy, Law…
Waging War on Work
Written by Nicholas Freiling for Mises.org. Employment law is a mainstay of state economic policy. Few question its efficacy as a means to correct “market failures”—like unlivable wages for meaningful work—that would leave society in shambles. In fact, no serious debate exists among American policymakers about the benefits of such laws. Their utility is simply…