I live in a Kentucky community through which passes US Highway 127. Decades ago, folks who live along this way, from Grayling MI to Chattanooga TN, decided to have one big yard sale, from stem to stern along this road. It is a spectacle!
Tag: police
Tribalism and Economic Nationalism – Cut from the Same Cloth
Why would anyone underestimate the benefits of interacting with foreigners? It might be because they are, well, foreign. Combine this bias with an ignorance of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” (spontaneous order) and a suspicion that exchange is zero-sum rather than positive-sum, and you have the making of an economic nationalist.
May Cops Defend Innocent People from Attack?
Fred asks a couple of questions about cops and violence, saying they won’t be answered by folks of my sort because they’ll trigger cognitive dissonance.
About Those “Bad Apples”
Let’s pretend that the problem with cops really is “just a few bad apples” like cop supporters continually insist. What does an apple seller do with any bad apples he discovers in a barrel of apples?
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.
“Filthy Parasites”
Cops benefit by deriving nutrients at the host’s expense. When a cop buys food with his paycheck, he is getting nutrients at his host’s expense, since the money used to buy the food was stolen from the hosts (you and me). His food purchase (and every other purchase he makes) reduces the amount of resources you have with which to benefit yourself. His existence costs you.
Tailor Your Ideology Into Relevance
PROPOSITION: Until libertarians tailor their ideology and their actions to accommodate the common people’s nativism, nationalism, ethnic bigotry, and support for U.S. imperialism abroad and police brutality at home, they can never gain enough adherents to become a serious factor in American political life.
Letting Gangsters Get Away with Being Violent Assholes
Let’s be clear about something: cops almost never get suspended, fired, or charged, merely for being violent, abusive, murderous psychos. Cops see each other doing that constantly, and do nothing about it.
US Has One of the Cruelest Injustice Systems in the World
The cynical “tough on crime” political strategy combined with rampant over-criminalization has led to a country where more than one in four people has a criminal record.
The One Thing That Makes Government a Problem: Cops
Next to cops, presidents are nothing. “Laws” are nothing. Corrupt prosecutors (but I repeat myself) are nothing. Power-crazed judges are nothing. Bureaucrats are nothing. The State is nothing. Cops are the one thing that makes government a problem for Rightful Liberty and those who exercise it. Nothing else even comes close– no matter how evil and reprehensible other things may be.