As the FCC considers repealing the 2015 Net Neutrality rule, its supporters are desperate to associate bad things with its absence. So desperate that Demand Progress is advertising examples of Net Neutrality as violations of Net Neutrality.
Tag: libertarian
Law as a Tool to Get What We Want
Imports threatening domestic production? Raise tariffs! Cheap labor threatening labor unions? Enact a minimum wage! Businessmen without scruples ripping off easy prey? Occupational licensure! Boogeyman at the front door? Increase the “defense” budget! Your neighbor is sodomizing his friend in the privacy of his home? Ban all the gays!
Episode 076 – Chris’s Journey (1h40m)
Episode 076 welcomes Chris Jenkins to the podcast to discuss his journey to voluntaryism, with Skyler and Morgan. The topics covered include: Cash Flow, the game, the Robert Kiyosaki and Jeff Berwick encounter, his paralegal career, his K-12 public schooling experience and being labeled slow, forced into Resource classes and not allowed out, his complete disinterest in all things school, his LDS mission to Philadelphia and Dover, his wife and kids, their schooling experience, his neo-conservative days during the 2008 election, first paying attention to Ron Paul in 2012, his interest in affiliate marketing, becoming a libertarian in 2012 and an anarchist in 2013-2014, the attacks he suffered by the City of Bountiful over his rental property, why having people close to you with different opinions can make for enlightening discussions, and his favorite podcasts.
State Intrusions into the Market
There is a tendency among certain libertarians (and among critics of libertarianism) to question how some problem they believe is currently being alleviated by the state would be dealt with in a free society. What they typically fail to comprehend is that the vast majority of problems which the state pretends to mitigate are actually caused primarily if not entirely by the state and its intrusions into the market.
Influences III
If I were a guest on a podcast or an interview broadcast, when asked about my major influences, I would stick close to the names repeated by voluntaryists — Spooner, Bastiat, Jefferson, Mencken, Mises, Hazlitt, Rothbard, Higgs, and Woods. But in this more expansive context, I can stretch out to discuss the influences who made me a voluntaryist before I knew I was one, before I knew to read the internal literature of the voluntaryist, libertarian, individualist mainstream. Three such influences are Alan Turing, Dan Carlin, and Ruth Rendell.
Sustainable Liberty and its Normative Flavors
There is no such thing as “conservative libertarianism” or “progressive libertarianism” – they are mirages rooted in category mistakes. Liberty shackled by “conservatism” quickly dies under the weight of superstition and prejudice. Liberty hollowed out by “progressivism” quickly dissolves into nihilism.
I am…
…a libertarian because I believe in maximizing liberty and minimizing aggression. I recognize the maximum amount of liberty requires there be no one who can violate liberty free of rightful consequences.
Known By Those Who Consider You the Enemy
It is said that if you are libertarian, and being consistent, those on the Right will call you a “Leftist” and those on the Left will claim you’re part of the “Right.” It seems to me, in some cases at least, I must be doing things right.
Aggression Justifies More Aggression?
“Well of course, as a libertarian I would ideally want the market to handle everything, but as long as government taxes, regulations and licensing make health care so expensive, we can’t give up Medicare and Medicaid!”
The Liberty of Man
The consistent libertarian is not “hostile to family, to religion, to tradition, to culture, and to civic or social institutions,” but he is also not necessarily supportive of any particular version of these things.