Studying religion teaches us a tremendous amount about human psychology: our eagerness to embrace doctrines that outsiders consider nonsense, our pretentious overconfidence and hyperbole, our willingness to oppress and even murder over objectively trivial issues.
Tag: libertarian
Utah Case Highlights Need for Separation of Medicine and Law Enforcement
In July, Salt Lake City detective Jeff Payne violently abducted Alex Wubbels, a nurse at University of Utah Hospital. Most accounts don’t put it that way — they use the word “arrested” instead — but Wubbels was released without charges because Payne’s actions were clearly an extra-legal physical power play by a police officer who was angry at not getting his way.
Don’t Want to Live in a Free Society
People want creature comforts; they want entertainment; and they want the illusion of security, which the government supplies.
The Liberal Spirit and Its Opposite, Alt-Rightism
Maybe a few self-described libertarians cling to the idea that property is essentially about exclusion, but they are fated to hit a wall: liberalism is a spirit as well as a set of ideas, and it cannot be turned against itself. It fosters human solidarity, not separation. Libertarianism, like its precursor, is an answer to the question: under what conditions do reasoning social animals best flourish? In answering that question the way it has, liberalism offers no home to sowers of division.
Episode 078 – Mish’s Journey (1h43m)
Episode 078 welcomes Mish Ochu to the podcast to chat with Skyler about his journey to voluntaryism. Topics include: Being born and partially raised in Nigeria, the entrepreneurship of his parents, immigrating to London, his parents being pursued by the Nigerian government solely because of their wealth, immigrating to the United States and landing in Austin, Texas, private to public schools, libertarian/anarchist seeds, college years, starting a professional essay writer business to help other college students, moving to Houston, Texas, teaching himself to code, being apolitical, jury nullification, deer ass slapping, active listening, playful parenting, Stefan Molyneux, meeting his wife, getting married, having kids, and circumcision.
Libertarian Solutions: How to Keep Americans Safe From The Next Big Hurricane
When it comes down to it, it’s a matter of voluntary choices vs. coercion. If no one would voluntarily insure a building in a flood plain for a low premium, then forcing us to do it is always going to lead to a perverse, wasteful, and in this case, even potentially deadly result.
Preparedness versus “Price-Gouging”: Don’t Hold Out for a Hero
Living as I do in another hurricane-prone area (Florida) where I got a small taste of the phenomenon from Hermine last year, and having seen my share of tornadoes, blizzards, floods, earthquakes, etc. in other places, it seems to me that hoping for such heroics should be the last rather than the first resort.
Hurricane Harvey: About That Wall…
It may be weeks before the storms end, the waters recede, and basic utilities are restored. But this, too, shall pass — and then begins the rebuilding. Who’s going to do that rebuilding?
WikiLeaks: Hostile is as Hostile Does
When the US Senate Intelligence Committee declares WikiLeaks “hostile,” the obvious question is “hostile to whom?” WikiLeaks is allied with the American people, while the US intelligence community — and, for the moment at least, the US Senate Intelligence Committee — is our enemy.
Finer Clay
“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”