People are not all the same, and they make different choices because they have different values, circumstances, and levels of understanding. Sometimes those choices are peaceful and wise; sometimes they are not. So what are the best ways to promote good choices and cooperation while preventing and providing resolution for conflict?
Tag: corruption
“Police Corruption” is Meaningless
If your purpose, or at least the real-world manifestation of your “purpose,” is evil, how can the word “corrupt” even have any meaning to your situation?
The Turmoil and Suffering from the Transition to Freedom
When people consider a genuine transition to a free society, many always speculate that the turmoil and suffering of such a transition would be so horrible that no humane person would wish to bring it about.
Editor’s Break 031 – Another Reason Not to Take Government Handouts (10m)
Editor’s Break 031 looks at libertarians taking government handouts, and why doing so might be foolish.
Complaints and Poor Choices
People who make the choice to be involved in government stuff, and then sit around complaining about it, seem to me like someone who sticks their foot in an ant bed and keeps complaining about being stung.
Influences III
If I were a guest on a podcast or an interview broadcast, when asked about my major influences, I would stick close to the names repeated by voluntaryists — Spooner, Bastiat, Jefferson, Mencken, Mises, Hazlitt, Rothbard, Higgs, and Woods. But in this more expansive context, I can stretch out to discuss the influences who made me a voluntaryist before I knew I was one, before I knew to read the internal literature of the voluntaryist, libertarian, individualist mainstream. Three such influences are Alan Turing, Dan Carlin, and Ruth Rendell.
We Are the Economy They Want to Regulate
The question is not whether the market should be regulated, but who should regulate it. And the only two choices are: 1) market participants through the exercise of their free and peaceful choices or 2) politicians and bureaucrats relying on the threat of violence to impose their will.
Police Culture Poisons the Individual
While a good guy could become a cop, the culture poisons the individual. The incentives of government, monopolies, unions and feeling camaraderie with others in the same culture all concentrate themselves into a situation that cops must be immoral and indecent to remain cops.
Why the Schism?
The debates and arguments continue. Both sides can’t understand why their opponents can’t see their own point of view. The battles between Progressives/Liberals and Libertarian/Conservatives are the most vociferous. Why does such contentiousness exist? Here is my analysis. It boils down to some specific realizations.
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.