The Trouble With Politics

Politics is of its very nature is biased in favor of intervention and planning. Even in its “minarchist” or “night-watchman” version, politics is based at root on the idea that some decisions must be made coercively and imposed on unwilling minorities – or even majorities, as the case may be. This is contrary to the principle we observe in private life every day: the consent of both parties is necessary for a transaction to take place.

Estonian Civilians Voluntarily Trained in Insurgency

One of the new chapters for the third edition of The Machinery of Freedom discusses the question of how a stateless society might defend against a state, which I regard as the hardest problem for such a society. One of the possibilities I raise is having people voluntarily train and equip themselves for warfare for the fun (and patriotism) of it, as people now engage in paintball, medieval combat in the Society for Creative Anachronism, and various other military hobbies.

Steve Patterson

Four years ago, I became an anarchist, and I’ve never looked back. My political philosophy now runs through my veins. But this wasn’t always the case. I used to be a young, apathetic conservative. Then, I was introduced to libertarianism, which slowly turned me into an anarchist. This might sound crazy, but I assure you, it’s quite reasonable, and many people share my same story.

Headlines II

Nobody asked but . . . Now here is a reasonable headline for the instant case discussed previously, “Ohio Supreme Court rules on police officer accused of having sex with a minor.”  The headline and a reasonably well-written account of the actual case appear here.  The crux is that prosecutors, who choose to proceed under…

Futurism, Rugby, The Winning Fallacy

Send him mail. “Finding the Challenges” is an original column appearing every other week, usually on 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, pre-TSA world traveler, domestic traveler. Archived columns can be found…

On Rights III

It has become fashionable among the philosophical circles I run in to proclaim something along the lines of “Rights don’t exist!” The reasoning usually focuses on the fact that no person or group can point to a right that they claim they have. Even the so-called right to life or right to self-defense are nonexistent,…