The Portland anarchists at PARC are out to fix more roads and serve their community, by voluntary action. Without government permission and at government dismay. Only few anarchists are bandana-wearing, Molotov cocktail-wielding protestors, while many are peaceful, liberty-loving people who want to help their community via voluntary association.
Tag: economics
Should We Have Faith The Market Will Provide?
Do you know where your lunch today came from? No, I don’t mean from what store; I mean do you know where the ingredients all originated? Who grew or harvested them? Who put them together? And where? Most of us (including me) don’t know, and don’t need to know.
A Conversation Between Voluntaryists: Responsible Voting?
One of the best things about voluntaryism is you never know who is a voluntaryist. Kentucky is a big-government, culturally-conservative state, where I was born and raised in. Then I found out I have a like-minded neighbor. Among the radical libertarians who have made the Bluegrass state their home is Kilgore Forelle. Over breakfast we came up with a voluntaryist thesis which we turned into this dialogue here on EVC.
Political Means and Economic Means
There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man…is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one’s own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others… I propose… to call one’s own labor and the equivalent exchange of one’s own labor for the labor of others, the “economic means”… while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the “political means.”
Change the World for Fun & Profit
Doing things like starting a business or pursuing a career in the arts is usually regarded as selfish and greedy. And even when we do support the people who pursue these things, we’re still hesitant to think of them as revolutionaries and freedom-fighters in the same way that we’d think of politicians and philanthropist.
What is Fascism?
As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful competition, and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary Marxism, with its violent and socially divisive persecution of the bourgeoisie. Fascism substituted the particularity of nationalism and racialism—“blood and soil”—for the internationalism of both classical liberalism and Marxism.
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.
A Voluntaryist Begins The Proust Questionnaire
I recently encountered the Proust Questionnaire. It is a regular feature in “Vanity Fair” magazine, where it is answered by a guest celebrity. When I got about halfway through I thought, “Voila! This would be a good architecture for an interview with a very objective voluntaryist.”
There’s Nothing Special about International Trade
“One of the important applications of the principle of comparative advantage is international trade. To an economist there is nothing really special about international trade; individuals make trades when both of them expect to benefit, whether they live across the street, in different states, or in different countries.”
Why Free Immigration Is the Moderate, Common-Sense Position
Far from being utopian, saying “Immigration is a human right” is just the moderate, common-sense position that when natives and foreigners voluntarily interact, strangers are morally obliged to leave them alone unless the overall consequences are clearly awful. Even if the stranger happens to be the government – and the government happens to be popular.