Throughout my tenure as an anarchist one thing has always set me apart from everyone else: my beliefs around the concept of property and ownership. These are some real foundational beliefs for me, because it is based on them that I evaluate various things like “capitalism”, “socialism”, “communism”, even “economics” writ large. My beliefs on ownership are ones that I have largely kept silent about, but recently I have been feeling the need to sit down and elucidate my thoughts on the subject. So here it goes.
Tag: history
Voluntaryism is the Love for Humanity
As a Voluntaryist my love and compassion extends to the totality of the human race. I make no preference or distinction towards any one group of people. We do not have women’s problems, black problems, rich problems, poor problems, Islamic problems, Christian problems, Hispanic problems, Mexican problems, Korean problems, or Russian problems. We have human problems because we are all human beings! Recognize your common heritage with your fellow human being. This is the source of true prosperity and peace.
Happy New Year 2017 Things I Wanna Spread
A new year is upon us. Many people wait until January to reform their lives. To many people, the arrival of the new year is the catalyst for change and improvement. Why wait for a socially acceptable time for taking steps towards the betterment of yourself?
Why Children Protest Going to School
Why all this protest? Education is a good thing, right? Children need to become educated to do well in society. Society goes to tremendous expense and trouble to provide schooling—lots of it!—for every child (whether they want it or not). Are these kids just spoiled ingrates?
Key To Conflict Resolution: Property Rights
The association of humans with their subjective choices is only natural, and identifying how these choices fit in as a part of social cooperation leads to reciprocity and a mutual recognition of property rights and human rights. Both human rights and property rights are understood in that context of reciprocity.
Why Consolidating Force is a Stupid Idea
You can’t just wish away the capacity for violence. Nor can you deprive aggressors of the means of violence except by way of good people having the ability and willingness to use defensive force. You, personally, don’t have the right or the ability to decide which of the other several billion people on the planet possess the means to use force, including deadly force. And feeling anxiety about that doesn’t make it untrue.
Minimum Wage? Won’t Someone Think of the Children!?
I was quite proud of my 12 year-old recently. She bought her own iPad with money she had saved from babysitting her younger sisters (a joint-effort with her 13 year-old sister) on the nights that I have class. It reminded me of my first job working at the gun range where my dad shot skeet & trap. I earned about $55/week, paid the same way; in cash. I would do simple stuff, like load targets, ‘pull’ for shooters, maintain the grounds, etc. At its core, the minimum wage is a coercive extraction of resources from one party to be given to another.
Spanking As a Prejudice Against Children
It’s been said that kids benefit from a good spanking. Some people justify this practice by claiming that today’s kids’ are getting out of control, and need to be punished more severely. Some folks might be surprised to learn that this generational view has been expressed throughout our history with regard to a number of specific populations of people within our society.
My Political Objectives
A month ago I shared my result of “The Political Objectives Test” by Hello Quizzy. I was branded an “anarchist” with the summary beginning with this very true statement, “Liberty is so overwhelmingly important to you that you wish to eliminate anything that can interfere with it.” I found the test to be rather helpful in contrasting my views with others on the various topics it questioned me about. For that I wanted to present the questions here with emphasis (underlined) on the statements I selected, followed by some commentary and resources.
What’s a Secular Heretic to Do?
Secular and religion-based political systems can bear an uncanny resemblance. Observing their respective dogmas, catechisms, and sacraments, we might even wonder, with William Cavanaugh, whether the divide is as sharp as we commonly think. Recent events certainly call the distinction into question. We see that a secularist can be as much a fanatic who is willing to denounce heresy and impose his will through violence as any religionist.