Editor’s Pick. Video by ReasonTV.
Tag: economics
Unschooling Ourselves
Send him mail. “One Improved Unit” is an original bi-weekly column appearing every other 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. Over the last 12 months, I’ve read a total of 57 fiction books, and I’m on the premier of…
The Market is a Beautiful Thing
Market advocates tend to respect the intellect of their fellow human beings. You can tell by their reliance on philosophical, moral, economic, and historical arguments when trying to persuade others. But what if most people’s aversion to the market isn’t founded in philosophy, morality, economics, or history? What if their objection is aesthetic?
Economics, Not Engineering
Editor’s Pick. Written by Sandy Ikeda. Let’s say we lived in the kind of world in which the government could eliminate some well-recognized social problem, say violent crime, by simply passing a law. Although you may like that particular outcome, the question is, would you want to live in such a world? While some might…
The Myth of Market Failure
In the language of economics, a market failure is, as David Friedman writes, “a situation where each individual correctly chooses the action that best accomplishes his objectives, yet the result is worse, in terms of those same objectives, than if everyone had done something else.” As a rule, the pursuit of individual good in the market brings no such negative result. On the rare occasions when rational individual actions lead to regret by those same individuals, the result is labeled “market failure.”
Voluntaryism: One Creed to Unite Them All
Send him mail. “One Voluntaryist’s Perspective” is an original bi-weekly column appearing every other Monday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by the founder and editor Skyler J. Collins. Archived columns can be found here. OVP-only RSS feed available here. The voluntary principle, that relations should be voluntary, or not at all, separates voluntaryism from other political philosophies in…
Libertarian Homeschool Curriculum?
Something I want to like, but can’t: a Ron Paul designed homeschooling curriculum. Why can’t I? Because curriculum = force, and I oppose compulsory education, even when it’s on topics I agree with, like liberty and Austrian School economics. Compulsory education, ie. indoctrination, is wrong. Plain and simple. It’s sort of an oxymoron, really. Libertarian…
The Motives of Public Officials
Editor’s Pick. Written by Scott McPherson for FFF.org. It is not uncommon for critics of the free market to allege that for-profit providers of services have an interest, not in solving problems, but rather in prolonging them. Why would the medical industry cure cancer, heart disease, or AIDS, for example, when it would just be…
To Anyone With Kids
Writes Robert Phillips, on my book Everything Voluntary: I was already familiar with the Voluntaryist argument for anti-statism, freed-market economics, etc.–and this book certainly did them justice. However, the reason I picked it up was to read the essays on non-violent parenting and unschooling. I found it very compelling; and so, I highly recommend this…
Entrepreneurship and Social Cooperation
We may laud the market order as an indispensable arena for large-scale social cooperation, but let’s not forget that people cannot cooperate with one another if they don’t know that the potential for mutually beneficial exchanges exists.