Kids need to play. It seems like an obvious statement, as central to childhood as eating peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches and chasing fireflies. For generations, parents have known that a play-filled childhood is essential for healthy physical and mental development. They didn’t need to read the latest research findings on play. They didn’t need experts to…
Tag: order
It’s Time to Free All Speech Again
No matter how you feel about Alex Jones and his Infowars media brand, this wasn’t good for free speech. It was the escalation of a war that has been building for some time, where voices running counter to the political biases of the dominant social media empires are being silenced.
Trade War, War on Trade, and War for Trade
There is no such thing as a “trade war”, since trade is by definition a peaceful, mutually beneficial activity. However, there is such a thing as the war on trade – that is, the war on the entrepreneurial ethos, cheap and high-quality goods, and peaceful international relations.
On Income Inequality
Advocates of economic egalitarianism, those who fight against so-called “income inequality” fail to understand what achieving their goal entails.
On Selfishness II
I recently listened to the Soho Forum debate on the virtues of selfishness between libertarian Gene Epstein and Randian objectivist Yaron Brook. It was my impression that Epstein believes the word “selfishness” is too morally tainted in both historical and contemporary usage to be useful to free market enthusiasts, while Brook believes the word can and must be redeemed as a counter to the morally bankrupt idea of “selflessness”. I believe that both debaters were correct.
Generosity is a Permissionless Enterprise
You don’t need to have a credential in order to meet a human need. “Love thy neighbor as thyself” was not prefaced with “if you have the proper certification.” You don’t have to go through an audition, an application process, or an adjudication committee to find problems that need solutions. Generosity is a permissionless enterprise. You…
The Voluntaryist Premise
Once a person adopts the label of voluntaryist (or the like) for their political identity, they assume, with good reason, the following premise: human suffering is terrible and should be prevented; aggression and coercion necessarily create human suffering. This premise leads the voluntaryist to hold a number of hypotheses with varying degrees of accuracy in some form or fashion within their minds at all times. Here are several of those hypotheses.
Social Credit Ratings Won’t Work
Social credit rating systems like those portrayed in Black Mirror and The Orville are not built on objective, verifiable facts. Quite the contrary; they are built on subjective, unverifiable opinions.
Moral Exculpation for an Action
One may obey “the law” out of prudence, in order to avoid the syndicate’s punishment of those who fail to comply with its dictates. But such prudential action is independent of morality and cannot serve as a surrogate for it.
The Most Fundamental of Flaws
Your property rights end at your property line, and not at the government’s political “borders”, trampling and crushing all private property in the process. Believing otherwise is just communism wrapped in Holy Pole Quilt, which is all borderism is anyway.