Advocates of the “buy local” movement claim doing so betters the local economy. The economics and reasoning behind this claim are misguided at best. Here are three areas the locavore’s rationale is wrong.
Tag: history
12 Articles Every Aspiring Economist Should Read
Nothing stirs up controversy in the digital age quite like a list. But lists, especially ones that provide an easily accessible way to learn essential information, have their purposes. Below, I offer 12 articles that I think every aspiring economist should read. Before we get to the list, let me say a few things about how I created it.
Learning: It’s Not About Education
For the very youngest children, learning is constant. Their wondrous progress from helpless newborn to sophisticated five-year-old happens without explicit teaching. They explore, challenge themselves, make mistakes, and try again with an insatiable eagerness to learn. Young children seem to recognize that knowledge is an essential shared resource, like air or water. They demand a fair share. They actively espouse the right to gain skills and understanding in a way that’s useful to them at the time.
Steve Patterson
Four years ago, I became an anarchist, and I’ve never looked back. My political philosophy now runs through my veins. But this wasn’t always the case. I used to be a young, apathetic conservative. Then, I was introduced to libertarianism, which slowly turned me into an anarchist. This might sound crazy, but I assure you, it’s quite reasonable, and many people share my same story.
The State is a Tool, for Justice?
What this conversation and exploration of this social Democrat’s ideas and thought processes taught me was that the issue for most people is not a moral or ethical one. It’s an economic one. What the world is missing is sufficient understanding of economic law and logic.
Agorism – Solution Oriented Action
This article was originally posted @ the Salt Lake Freedom Hive. The concept of Agorism is one of the many concepts that will be discussed often here in the Freedom Hive. Not only discussed, but practiced and promoted with the hope of inspiring others to adopt the ideas of Agorism and counter-economics. While researching human…
What Teaching in China Taught Me About Freedom and Individuality in the World
Working in education gave me unique insight into the parts of culture normally hidden from outsiders and casual tourists. It also gave me a deep resentment for those who maintain their culture at the cost of corrupting young minds. To see children be made into vessels for arbitrary cultural values on a massive scale would be the fire that would consume me.
Indoctrination and Mind Control
Indoctrination, in the Webster II New College Dictionary is defined as “to teach to accept a system of thought uncritically”. Mind Control is a more intensive form of the same thing, requiring some form of physical or mental torture. Indoctrination and mind control can be used to instill a system of ideas before an individual has been subjected to any belief system or it can be used to change the system of beliefs already accepted by an individual.
Burn-in
Nobody asked but … Burn-out is a well-known problem. It happens when reason is overheated by passion, but further when that ardor generates friction. Like a meteor entering an atmosphere, our enthusiasm begins to consume itself. There is a cost, paid in self-destruction, when one meets ignorance and apathy on every path, anger and aggression…
Kids for Kash, Dictator Fallacy, Combinatorics
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. I will…