“Sorry, libertarians. You are wrong. We know laissez-faire doesn’t work, because it means there are no rules. You have to have some government, just not centralized control, because that doesn’t work, either.”
Tag: libertarian
Randolph Bourne
Bourne packed a lot of ideas into his short life, and did much writing for someone who was repeatedly canned for being so forthright with his ideas. Today, his legacy includes the Randolph Bourne Institute and its instrument, Antiwar.com. Furthermore, Bourne is famous for the very durable quote, “War is the health of the State.”
I’m Shocked — Shocked! — that Wealthy Parents Love Their Kids Too
The public heartburn over Loughlin and Huffman seems less about them bribing their kids into good schools than about them being able to AFFORD to bribe their kids into good schools. Suppose the scandal had unfolded in a different way. What if, instead of rich people writing checks they could afford, it was working class parents scraping together money they really couldn’t afford, or trading menial work or even sexual favors a la Mrs. Gump, for illicit “admissions assistance?”
Social Media Companies “Struggle” to Help Censors Keep us in the Dark
According to CNN Business, “Facebook, YouTube and Twitter struggle to deal with New Zealand shooting video.” “Deal with” is code for “censor on demand by governments and activist organizations who oppose public access to information that hasn’t first been thoroughly vetted for conformity to their preferred narrative.”
Will Elizabeth Warren Take on the Biggest Monopoly of All?
For a “progressive” presidential candidate, US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is remarkably, well, conservative. Her proposals are neither new nor of the “democratic socialist” variety. In fact, her aim is, as Matthew Yglesias puts it at Vox, “to save capitalism” with stock proposals from the first half of the last century.
Chelsea Manning: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished Again
One of the 21st century’s greatest heroines is behind bars again, held in contempt by federal judge Claude M. Hilton for refusing to help prosecutors trump up charges against the journalists who published information she paid dearly for giving them.
Being Considerate
This is something I try to always keep in mind. I don’t want to make a bad impression on “the public” unless it happens to be an important issue where I need to take a stand, whether people like it or not. Those don’t really crop up all that often in my day-to-day life.
Don’t Panic: The Retail Apocalypse Isn’t Disaster, It’s Progress
Nearly 30 years after it became widely publicly accessible, the Internet is in the final stages of killing off physical retail as we once knew it. But it’s not killing the economy.
Wish List Politics: Green No Deal
The resolution calls, fuzzily, for “a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal,” but it doesn’t advertise that as a cost. It calls such a “mobilization” an “opportunity” and claims that its named predecessors “created the greatest middle class that the United States has ever seen.”
Tom Woods: Our Wise Overlords Are Just Here to Serve Us (51m)
This episode features a lecture by historian and Austro-libertarian Tom Woods from 2010. He is speaking at a Mises Circle event in Colorado Springs titled, “The Delusion of Good Government”. Purchase books by Tom Woods on Amazon here.