Guest post by Jerry M. Tinker. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, August 1987. As many writers have noted, the basic thesis, or strategy, upon which Gandhi’s satyagraha and all non-violent resistance rests is that all structures of power – government and social organizations – always depend upon the voluntary cooperation of great numbers of people…
Tag: evidence
Jury Nullification in America
Guest post by Chris Bassil. Last month (September), a man named Alvin Schlangen was tried in a Minnesota court for violating a state law against the sale of raw milk. The case against Schlangen, which dealt with what reasonable people will recognize as a relatively inconsequential transgression, was made on the basis of a series…
Freedom: A Truly Unknown Ideal
What is truly new is economic freedom. As Molinari pointed out in the 19th century, this can really only be traced back two hundred years. Governments have always existed in one form or another. Let’s get rid of “the political means” once and for all if you want to achieve something new.
The Fundamentals of Nonvoting
Our rulers know they are illegitimate. Voluntaryists know they are illegitimate for a myriad of other reasons, but what I wanted to examine here is the voluntaryist’s position to abstain from electoral politics. The following arguments are the fundamentals of the nonvoting position.
Is Voting an Act of Violence?
Guest post by Carl Watner. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, April 2000. Hans Sherrer, a subscriber to The Voluntaryist, sent me an essay entitled “Voting Is An Act of Violence,” which began with the statement “Voting is the most violent act someone can commit in his lifetime.” How true is this? First, let us define our…
Can Voluntaryism Fix the Machine?
Guest post by Alex R. Knight, III. The much vaunted libertarian journalist and commentator H.L. Mencken once wrote: “I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.” I don’t consider it a stretch at all to say that this is how any voluntaryist worthy of…
It’s Time To Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money – Or That It Even Makes Money
Guest post by Rick Falkvinge. One of the most persistent myths about the copyright monopoly has been that it’s needed to make money. This assertion turns out to be false for a very large number of observed cases, but the plural of anecdote is never statistics. So let’s look at some sound statistical evidence for…
The Genesis of the State
Guest post by Hamsterdam Economics. According to Franz Oppenheimer, the state is generated in a series of six stages. One or more of these stages may be omitted and still allow for the genesis of a state, as Oppenheimer attests with aid of historical evidence (his historical citations are way too involved to reproduce here,…
The Best Way
Guest post by Kerri Dame. I was inspired to create this blog post following a conversation with some of my lovely, intelligent, compassionate girlfriends the other day, wherein I was surprised that they all seemed to truly believe that physical punishment (spanking) is a necessary part of parenting. Because each child is different, sometimes they…
Spanking is Far Worse than Simply “Beating Up” Someone
I absolutely love this rant by throwaway-o on the anarcho-capitalism subreddit. Here it is in full: Starting from the most fundamental basics: “spanking” (a term used to describe a certain particular form of initiation of violence) is an initiation of violence, and therefore it is an obvious and open violation of the NAP. There is…