Nobody asked but … Let’s use future third Mondays in February as a target date for celebrating the removal of the Constitutional office of POTUS. So far we have had 44 failures out of 44 attempts (although Thomas Jefferson was a great man in most other respects, Calvin Coolidge spoke eloquently on the merits of…
Tag: future
Why We Can’t All Just Get Along
Send him mail. “Win-Win World” is an original column appearing sporadically on Thursdays at Everything-Voluntary.com, by Russell L. Roth. Russell is a 30-year marketing veteran and graduate of Jay Snelson’s “Science of Human Interaction” course (he calls it “Win/Win 101”). He has owned and operated businesses in advertising, real estate and internet marketing. He holds…
More Fallacy, Schooling, Perspective
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. We are…
Words Poorly Used #25 — Sacrifice
People often talk about making a sacrifice for others, or subsuming their individuality to an external cause, as a positive. But what they are doing is choosing to behave in a certain way. Others will refer to sacrifice as something positive expected of others — commanders will say that they had to sacrifice so many…
Logic Fallacies, No Regrets, Hard Winter
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. This week…
On Monopoly
If one’s business were immune from competition, what incentive does he have to increase quality, lower prices, and innovate change? What incentive does he have to decrease quality (thereby lowering his costs), raise prices, and stifle change? What happens to these incentives if this business owner may also force others to buy his goods or…
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…
Am I Ruining My Kid’s Life?
Editor’s Pick. Written by Leo Babauta. Yes, you absolutely are. Because not getting a high school education like everyone else means your kid will know nothing useful, and be unready to get a job and unsuited for life. OK, sarcasm aside, let’s take a look at this question sincerely. It’s a legitimate worry, because unschooling…
Hindsight Or Foresight — Always 20/20
Nobody asked but … I don’t have much patience with either hindsighted speculation or crystal ball gazing. Very few of these time travel accounts bear the mark of Occam’s Razor. I don’t concur that Pearl Harbor was a conspiracy, but the facts are eloquent without overcooking the detail. And there is nothing really surprising there…
Crime and Punishment in a Free Society
Would a free society be a crime-free society? We have good reason to anticipate it. Don’t accuse me of utopianism. I don’t foresee a future of new human beings who consistently respect the rights of others. Rather, I’m drawing attention to the distinction between crime and tort — between offenses against the state (or society) and offenses against individual persons or their justly held property.