Send him mail. “Insight for the Young and Unrestrained” is an original weekly column appearing every Thursday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by Gregory V. Diehl. Gregory is a writer, musician, educator, and coach for young people at EnabledYouth.com. Archived columns can be found here. IYU-only RSS feed available here. Spiderman’s superhero mantra that “with great power comes…
Tag: intervention
Workers, Workers, Everywhere, But Not A Place to Work
Send him mail. “Food for Thought” is an original bi-weekly column appearing every other Tuesday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by Norman Imberman. Norman is a retired podiatrist who loves playing piano, writing music, lawn bowling, bridge, reading, classical music, going to movies, plays, concerts and traveling. Archived columns can be found here. FFT-only RSS feed available here.…
The Myth of Market Failure
In the language of economics, a market failure is, as David Friedman writes, “a situation where each individual correctly chooses the action that best accomplishes his objectives, yet the result is worse, in terms of those same objectives, than if everyone had done something else.” As a rule, the pursuit of individual good in the market brings no such negative result. On the rare occasions when rational individual actions lead to regret by those same individuals, the result is labeled “market failure.”
Re: Bitcoins as Bubble, or Not
Writes Pete Earle: I don’t know if Bitcoin is in a bubble or not. I gave a few reasons for and against the idea here and voiced other concerns here, but in the final analysis it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because individuals choose to get involved with Bitcoin; unlike dollars, pounds, euro, or the…
Voluntaryism: One Creed to Unite Them All
Send him mail. “One Voluntaryist’s Perspective” is an original bi-weekly column appearing every other Monday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by the founder and editor Skyler J. Collins. Archived columns can be found here. OVP-only RSS feed available here. The voluntary principle, that relations should be voluntary, or not at all, separates voluntaryism from other political philosophies in…
The Minimum Wage Harms the Most Vulnerable
Crocodile tears are flowing again for low-income people. In his State of the Union address, President Obama proposed raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 an hour. A debate is shaping up between those who support the proposal and those who favor keeping the wage where it is today. But there are good grounds — for the sake of the poor — to repeal the minimum wage altogether.
Becoming a Man of the World
Send him mail. “Insight for the Young and Unrestrained” is an original weekly column appearing every Thursday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by Gregory V. Diehl. Gregory is a writer, musician, educator, and coach for young people at EnabledYouth.com. Archived columns can be found here. IYU-only RSS feed available here. A few months ago, I was living in…
Beyond Patriarchy: A Libertarian Model of the Family
Written by Roderick Long, as published at the Center for a Stateless Society. The family is one of the issues that divide liberals from conservatives. In general, conservatives tend to see private associations — the family, the church, the corporation — as bulwarks of freedom against the state. Few conservatives question the need for a…
Notes on War and Freedom
Written by Ramsey Clark, as published in The Voluntaryist, August 1992. War is more destructive of freedom than any other human activity. Any violation of civil liberties is easily justified in times of war and the threat of war, however unnecessary for security, harmful to its victims, irrational, unfair, or even detrimental to the war…
Government Undermines Social Cooperation
Here is the standard false alternative beloved by politicians seeking to justify their own violence-based power. The fallacy is clear when stated this way: Since individuals acting in isolation aren’t capable of doing many things they want done, government should take charge and see that they are done.