One might object to the claim that threatening to shoot someone if they don’t give up their wallet is an act of coercion because the act of parting with one’s wallet is a voluntary choice. I think that’s true, as far as it goes, but that’s not what makes the threat coercive. What makes the…
Tag: death
On Food Labeling
A seemingly benign statist regulation is the requirement to describe on the labels of food what the ingredients are. Of course, every statist regulation is anything but benign, backed by the the threat of theft, imprisonment, and ultimately death that they are, but food labeling is desirable, it seems, by almost everybody in society. In…
No Justice for Kelly Thomas
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli, the two uniformed thugs who beat a homeless man to death, were today found not guilty of all charges. Inexplicably, the man whose life they ended is still dead, however…. How is it possible that an unarmed man ends up dead after a vicious beating, but those cretins…
Action, Life, and Learning
Send him mail. “One Improved Unit” is an original column appearing sporadically on 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. It is my understanding that the greatest contribution made by Ludwig von Mises to economic theory is his formulation of…
On Liberty and Security
The statist is someone who favors the aggressive monopolization of the provision of law and order by whatever group of individuals is able to successfully do so. The total statist is someone who favors the aggressive monopolization of the provision of every good and service. Either statist, because they support the unjustified initiation of aggression,…
On Values
Send him mail. “Food for Thought” is an original 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. He is not a member of any social network, nor does he…
Re: If Libertarianism Is Such a Great System
To argue that libertarianism/statelessness is invalid because it’s never been adopted (on a large scale) is similar to arguing that trying to find a cure for cancer is foolish because we’ve never lived in a world without it. When something (be it cancer or the state) has been consistently shown to be destructive and to…
On Honor and Edward Snowden
Honor, to me, is keeping your promises and staying true to your principles. Honor does not seem to be a very important part of the lives of Westerners. I only ever heard the term growing up in movies and, more recently, in book series like John Carter, Narnia, and the Lord of the Rings. If…
Hazlitt, Balko, “Private Sector”
Send him mail. “Finding the Challenges” is an original column appearing every other Wednesday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by Verbal Vol. Verbal is a software engineer, college professor, corporate information officer, life long student, farmer, libertarian, literarian, student of computer science and self-ordering phenomena. Archived columns can be found here. FTC-only RSS feed available here. It never…
But Who Will Maintain the (Rail)Roads?
Nobody asked but … It was indeed Black Friday for this trainload of people. The railroad is apparently, if the news story is to be believed, subject to several layers of governmental undersight. Alphabet agencies are arriving on the scene like sea gulls at the landfill, preparing to fill the air with CYA. One of…