The most controversial belief of libertarians (and partisan Libertarians) is the belief that you’re generally both more entitled and more qualified to run your life than someone else is. Who considers that belief controversial? “Mainstream” politicians and their supporters.
Tag: government
Pardoning Assange Would be the First Step Back Toward Rule of Law
On April 11, the ongoing saga of journalist and transparency activist Julian Assange took a dangerous turn. Ecuador’s president, Lenin Moreno, revoked his asylum in that country’s London embassy. British police immediately arrested him — supposedly pursuant to his “crime” of jumping bail on an invalid arrest warrant in an investigation since dropped without charges but, as they admitted shortly thereafter, actually with the intent of turning him over to US prosecutors on bogus “hacking” allegations.
Anarchy Just Is
Statists and ancoms, too often, ask, “How does anarchy work?” or “How does your version of anarchy work?” They somehow think that because I am an anarchist that I am obligated to explain it to them as a system, like a tractor or ice cream. I am under no such obligation — in fact, my own conception of anarchy evolves from day to day.
The Government is Hard at Work Keeping Tax Preparation Complicated and Expensive
“Congressional Democrats and Republicans,” reports ProPublica, “are moving to permanently bar the IRS from creating a free electronic tax filing system.” Specifically, the House Ways and Means Committee just advanced a bill perversely called the “Taxpayers First Act.” If passed by Congress and signed into law, it would become illegal for the IRS to “compete” with private sector tax preparation services like H&R Block and Intuit (the owners of TurboTax) by allowing taxpayers to skip those middlemen.
Theft and Coercion Shouldn’t Be Your Default
There are paths to solving “climate change”, if it needs to be solved, which don’t give government additional power. Paths using economic means rather than political means. Why are they not promoting those paths?
The History of History
It would be interesting, though very difficult, to study how history changes. I don’t mean how the sequence of human events changes from the present into the future, I mean how the past changes. Since it exists only in memory from our present perspective, the stories we believe about the past are the past. But those stories aren’t fixed. They change all the time.
Giving Up on Alchemy
I could be wrong, but I suspect alchemy gradually evolved into science because of alchemists keeping the stuff that worked and tossing out the stuff that didn’t. The magic failed, but the occasional experiment succeeded, It was a process. No one intended to abandon alchemy; it just happened over time. In a parallel way, politics is alchemy; libertarianism is science.
Sorry, Scott: “Climate Change” is a Power Grab
On a recent podcast, Scott Adams almost had a meltdown when confronted by the evidence that many of his listeners believe “climate change” hysteria is all about a power grab by those promoting it. He says this means people have been hypnotized by the media they get their news from.
Awareness Often First Step Towards Liberty
Harriet Tubman, the 19th Century abolitionist, is quoted as saying, “I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed more if only they knew they were slaves.” It’s the libertarian’s dilemma. People don’t like to notice their chains even when that’s about all it would take to break them. It’s too painful to admit they aren’t as free as they should be, so they don’t.
The Medical Industry Sucks
It doesn’t have to suck. There’s nothing about medicines and treatments and diagnosis and surgery that needs to suck by nature. It’s pretty awesome stuff. But the quality of the experience is almost always awful.