I just got back from a five-week visit to Spain. The first four weeks, I was teaching labor economics at Universidad Francisco Marroquín while my sons took Spanish-language classes on Islamism, Self-Government, and the Philosophy of Hayek. Then we rented a van and saw Cordoba, Seville, Gibraltar, Fuengirola, Granada, and Cuenca.
Tag: prison
Statists Defend Their God
The storm threatening New Orleans led to a discussion of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina wherein I pointed out how much worse government (and foolish reliance on government) made the disaster. A statist in the conversation tried to paint government employees as good-intentioned but crippled by the bad behavior of the storm’s victims.
Life on the Tax Farm
We produce so that others may consume. We are given the illusion of influence and of choice. We are told that we matter. We are told we can change things. It’s all a lie, a fallacy, a grand delusion designed to keep the slaves quiet and contented, believing their servitude to be a choice.
School Will be Remembered Like Leeches and Cigarettes
How did humans learn stuff the other several thousand years of civilization? How were 80% of colonial Americans literate with no standardized institutional schooling, and when books were rare and costly and most jobs didn’t even require reading? How did people invent stuff, start businesses, write books, create great art, and expand the corpus of human knowledge for thousands of years without certified teachers and grades and degrees?
War Crimes Pardons: A Terrible Memorial Day Idea
As I write this, news reports indicate that Trump intends to celebrate Memorial Day by pardoning several other Americans convicted of (or accused of and not yet tried for) war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s a horrible idea for several reasons.
Letter from an “Anti-School Teacher”
I recently read The Case Against Education and it explained so much of what I see. Like many new graduates who do not know exactly what they want to do but want to do something that helps people, I became a teacher right after college. I have spent the last year teaching math at a high school in Chicago. Observing how unlikely it was that the decisions we make increase our students human capital, I wondered how it could be of benefit to the students. Your book helped me answer that question.
Two Cheers for Denver: Let’s End the War on Unapproved States of Consciousness
On May 7, voters in Denver, Colorado narrowly approved a measure de-criminalizing “magic mushrooms” — mushrooms containing the consciousness-altering compound psilocybin. The measure, National Public Radio reports, “effectively bars the city from prosecuting or arresting adults 21 or older who possess them. In the ballot language, adults can even grow the fungus for personal use and be considered a low priority for Denver police.”
Schools or Bars?
Someone was showing me a satellite photo of a place where I used to live. A place where I honed a lot of my outdoor skills. Now the entire area behind my former house, which used to be wooded, has been replaced by a gigantic high school. Yes, I get that nothing stays the same. But there are good changes and bad changes. This is a bad one.
Tom Woods: The Economics of the Police State (39m)
This episode features a lecture by historian and Austro-libertarian Tom Woods from 2014. In the modern United States, federal laws are now so numerous and written so broadly and vaguely, that it is nearly impossible to make it through the day without breaking at least one of them. And through it all, an enormous government apparatus of prisons, prosecutors, police, and bureaucrats remains well-funded, powerful, and nearly impossible to oppose in court.
Julian Assange: An Opportunity for the US and the UK to Change Direction on Press Freedom
The most important outcome here is a free Julian Assange. The bonus material would be explaining why: He’s a political prisoner and journalism is not a crime.