A big congrats to Dale in Indiana for taking a principled stand against the predators and getting a prosecutor to withdraw their false charges. Not only am I really grateful Dale sent me the documentary proof (during the show!), but he called into the show to give his first hand account of what happened in court.
Tag: justice
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.
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.
The Preposterous Belief That “Wage Slavery” Has Anything to Do with Slavery
This “wage slavery” argument is very convincing. It is potent because all human beings already accept that every one of us is, indeed, compelled to work (in one sense of the word) until one has enough wealth. The “thing” that compels people to work, is reality. No one, not even the richest man, can escape the fact that, if one just consumes and consumes resources without doing anything productive, one will eventually starve and die. This circumstance of reality applies to everyone.
Taxation Isn’t Only Theft, It’s Destruction
Where the state is, there also is the growth of the state. Why does a state’s scope enlarge? One theory is that interest groups seek to use the state’s taxing power for their own benefit. I would like to suggest a complementary theory. When the power to tax is conferred upon rulers, many harmful incentives necessarily are conveyed with it. These encourage the rulers to expand their destructive acts.
The Trouble With Socialist Anarchism
Written by Per Bylund. The new movie “V for Vendetta” has provoked public discussion of the meaning of anarchism. Murray Rothbard was an advocate of the stateless society, but he was never accepted by the anarchist movement and is still considered more a “capitalist lackey” than anarchist thinker. Indeed, anarcho-capitalism has always been considered an…
Compulsory Education
Everyone loves learning. The thing is that not everyone likes studying and what’s even more frustrating is to be told how we should study, why we should study etc. Making education available to everyone is benevolent but making education compulsory for everyone is something that we are so used to that we do not see the blatant problem with it – the deprivation of freedom that prevents the flourishing of precisely those who have the most potential in society; children.
Debunking Common Government Claims
It’s very rare to have parking bureaucrats respond to our defense with anything other than a curt, “DENIED”. So when I got the following from a friend I was really surprised. Not surprised at the content, just because there was a detailed response at all. Since it’s full of fallacies, and short of evidence, I thought it worthwhile to debunk.
The Five Institutions of the Market Economy
Let us see what the basic institutions of the market economy are. We may subdivide them for convenience of discussion into (1) private property, (2) free markets, (3) competition, (4) division and combination of labor, and (5) social cooperation. As we shall see, these are not separate institutions. They are mutually dependent: each implies the other, and makes it possible.
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Libertarian Infighting
One of the first things people realize upon becoming acquainted with libertarianism is how much libertarians fight amongst themselves about questions that seem highly esoteric and about which very few normal people would care. Esoteric though they may be, understanding these questions is central to understanding why we libertarians believe what we do.