In the book, the absence of adults to model and nurture responsibility is palpably felt. Adults matter to children. They guide, protect, tend, reassure, and mediate. The lack of calm, care, and stability that adults offer children is what ultimately triggers the boys’ downfall. Of course, the great lesson from this great book is that it isn’t just children who would descend into brutality when calm, care, and stability are missing; it’s all of us.
Tag: governance
Freedom Begins in the Mind
There is no such thing as a ‘free country’ or a ‘free state’ because freedom is not an attribute of a country or a state. There are free individuals and a group of free individuals could comprise a free society, but freedom is fundamentally incompatible with centralized or even external governance. Stop wasting your time trying to create a free country and focus on actually being free.
Maybe It’s Time for Libertarian Countries
Contrary to the fears of the skeptics, a libertarian country could provide anything people want. There could be roads, parks, and libraries. The poor could be cared for and people kept safe. Everything provided voluntarily instead of at the barrel of government guns. If you want to make sure only those who paid for a service use it, charge user fees or sell memberships. It would be more ethical, and probably cheaper, than the current system.
The Essence of the Ruling Class
If you have government, you have a ruling class, by definition. No, I’m not talking about governance, the sort we see in managing property, a business, a charity, or any other private organization. A ruling class are those who calls themselves “government” or “the state”, or in some times and places “the church”, the organization(s) in society whose sole purpose of existing is to make and enforce rules, the first of which involve the generation of “revenue”. While that’s what the ruling class does, that’s not what the ruling class is. Here is the essence of what the ruling class is.
#KnifeFree? #Spineless!
Knives are what make us human, technology-wise. To try to stop people from carrying knives is to forbid them from living as humans. A knife ban is even less legitimate than a gun ban, and a gun ban isn’t legitimate at all.
Two Types of Laws; The Voluntaryist Perspective on Politics
The best way to understand the voluntaryist perspective on politics is to realize that there are only two types of laws: 1) those that prohibit crime, and 2) those that prohibit liberties.
Celebrity Presidents, Voluntary Governance, & Benign Bigotry (28m) – Editor’s Break 047
Editor’s Break 047 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics: celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Dwayne Johnson running for President of the United States, the importance of governance in a voluntary society, what “duly elected” means and non-voters being credited for a vote of non-confidence, dealing with anger, especially as it concerns raising children, and why attacking bigotry should take a back seat to attacking prickish behavior and violence.
The Optimal Level of Government Intervention
Neoclassical economists have made many studies of various aspects of what they call “the optimal level of government intervention in the economy.” All of these studies are highly problematic.
Chaotic Order
I’ve already mentioned that too much chaos AND too much order are both deadly. But here’s another observation: too much order– specifically too much government (which I consider to be any external governance at all)– becomes deadly because it creates too much chaos for individuals.
The Voluntaryist Constitution, an Oxymoron?
Trey Goff had an interesting article published at Mises.org outlining what he is calling a “voluntaryist constitution.” Can such a thing even exist? I don’t believe it could exist as anything more than an ideological creed. I thought it’d be fun to scrutinize the so-called voluntaryist constitution from my particular voluntaryist perspective.