If Men Were Angels

Although I admit that the outcome in a stateless society will be bad, because not only are people not angels, but many of them are irredeemably vicious in the extreme, I conjecture that the outcome in a society under a state will be worse, indeed much worse, because, first, the most vicious people in society will tend to gain control of the state and, second, by virtue of this control over the state’s powerful engines of death and destruction, they will wreak vastly more harm than they ever could have caused outside the state.

Is the Non-Aggression Principle Self-Negating? You Decide!

A person named Jared emailed me out of the blue about a week ago with the following letter. It contains a request for feedback followed by an argument that the Non-Aggression Principle as made popular by Murray Rothbard was self-negating on the grounds that the creation of private property is an act of aggression. What ensued were several letters back and forth in which we both flesh out the other’s argument and offer our critique. In the end we understood each other better, but alas no consensus was reach.

The Broken Infant Fallacy

The period between birth and roughly the age of five is troublesome for central planners. As long as children remain dependent on their parents — and not “society,” as controlled by the state — there’s a risk of them developing habits that will become impossible to break once they enter a state-sanctioned institution, i.e. Kindergarten.

A Parental Right?

Whenever I hear people saying things like “Unschooling obviously wouldn’t work for everyone, but parents should have a right to choose what’s best for their kids,” or one of the hundred other variants on that same sentiment, I always feeling a niggling sense of unease. It’s never a statement I’ve agreed with. But until recently, I wasn’t entirely sure why it bothered me!

Liberty Above All Else

There are many good reasons to oppose the state, but for me, the most compelling (and most fundamental) is my belief in liberty. Liberty first. Liberty above all else. My belief in liberty does not end with advocating the abolition of the state, however; I likewise advocate the realization that all claimed authority over anyone but oneself is illegitimate.

Child Labor In School And Out

School-days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn’t take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not.

The Dangers of GIGO

Many pundits, politicians, and other wannabes take a few excellent ideas – such as computing and cybernetics – admix them with goals untested by reason, logic, or history, and trumpet the dawn of a New Age, where everything shall be Controlled to Perfection.