Nobody asked but … My alter ego, Verbal Vol, is in the midst of penning a series on logic fallacy in his bi-weekly columns, Finding the Challenges. But today I ran across an excellent article by Max Borders, Effectively Irrational: 30 common fallacies used against libertarians. These will give you excellent examples of how logic…
Tag: logic
Words Poorly Used #37 — Logic
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. — Mark Twain And a logic fallacy, unencumbered by facts, can jet around the Earth three times while logic is still gathering facts. A politician can create a meme while it takes at least one legislative cycle to…
The Tardigrade, Time Bandits, Another Fallacy
Send him mail. “Finding the Challenges” is an original column appearing every other Wednesday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by Verbal Vol. Verbal is a software engineer, college professor, corporate information officer, life long student, farmer, libertarian, literarian, student of computer science and self-ordering phenomena. Archived columns can be found here. FTC-only RSS feed available here. This column…
Yes, Privatize the Water Industry
Esther Bergdahl of PolicyMic.com laments the World Bank’s recommendation to privatize the water industry. “Privatizing water — or, more precisely, the infrastructure that cleans and delivers it — is bad for the consumer.” And monopolies aren’t? Right now, a, gasp!, corporation, in this case a monopolist corporation, ie. the state, is already managing the water industry.…
Billboards
Nobody asked but … I passed two billboards on the way to work this morning. I have been passing one of them for maybe a year now, and it asks “Heaven or Hell?” Today there was another one, a recruiting billboard for the US Marine Corps. The new one (USMC) headlines the bold word “COMMITTMENT,”…
On Rights II
A graphic I recently saw explained “how rights work“. It described how rights are secured as a matter of consensus by members in society. It made some really good points about a complex idea. While there is the logically-defensible consideration of rights, there is also the matter of popular acceptance. Both are important perspectives on…
The Values of a Voluntaryist
Send him mail. This article combines two columns written by the editor, Skyler J. Collins, in March 2013. Those columns are “My Reasons for Voluntaryism” and “Voluntaryism as a System of Values“. As an individual, I speak only for myself. Looking over the last few years, I can see that what has been the primary…
On Morality
Let us once again visit etymological roots. Morality is “moral qualities,” so what is moral? From the Latin moralis meaning “proper behavior of a person in society.” Alright, let’s keep going. What is “proper”? “Adapted to some purpose, fit, apt; commendable, excellent.” In the context of moralis, behavior most adapted to, fit, or apt for life…
Remaining Unconvinced
Send him mail. “One Improved Unit” is an original column appearing sporadically on Monday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by the founder and editor Skyler J. Collins. Archived columns can be found here. OIU-only RSS feed available here. In a January 2014 column titled “Down with Conviction!” I argued that if one is committed to the pursuit of…
On Rights
The concept of “rights” can mean different things to different people, but what does it mean etymologically? Right comes from riht (West Saxon) or reht (Anglican), and has several meanings. In the context of voluntaryism, it means “what someone deserves; a just claim, what is due; correctness, truth; a legal entitlement, a privilege,”. It seems…