Below are some conditions or situations when coercion may be justified. They are designed to be concise yet comprehensive. I have defined terms as clearly as I can, but they may still be open to interpretation and judgement. Think about them and see if you can improve upon them or develop your own!
Tag: property
Cage Fight!
The wider an area you wall off, the less sense it makes if your goal is protection from your enemies. I don’t want to be trapped in an enclosure with the Clintons, the Bushes, Obama, Chuck Schumer, Joe Arpaio, or any other large-scale archator.
Property and Self
It seems to me that this is a central economic question confronting the human species, but to resolve it is to put statist and interventionist footprints all over the question. Voluntaryists are stuck on the fence of believing the resolution while being restricted in implementing much of its implications.
“Good Cops” and Other Imaginary Beasts
“Police officer” or “cop” are words used to describe people who commit specific acts. Just like “rapist”, “child molester”, or “mugger” are words to describe people who commit specific acts. It’s not really about the person, but about the acts the person chooses to commit.
Communism vs. Compassion
Many millions of well-intentioned yet muddle-headed people (along with a much smaller number of opportunistic megalomaniacs) have put forth a “philosophy” that has ended up getting tens of millions of people murdered. How could that possibly happen?
A Thought Experiment in Voluntaryism
The goal of the present thought experiment is to explore how much of existing social institutions, practices, and human relationships depend upon physical violence or the threat of it in order to function or exist.
Collective Ownership
If I am told that because I live in a certain place, being born there, I have a share in the collective ownership of the whole region, including other people’s private property, but that no one can opt out of the rules imposed on the land without moving away, this is not legitimate collective ownership.
On Getting Libertarianism Wrong
One of my mentors and favorite libertarian theorists, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, has once again gotten it dangerously wrong on libertarianism.
The Reformulation of Rights as Liberties
Everyone and their mom likes to posit that humans have rights, and they shan’t be violated. Some say the source of these rights are God, or the gods. Others say that our rights were bestowed upon us by nature. Others, by “government” (Oy!). Through my study of this concept and the evolution of where my thinking on it stood, I have decided, for now at least, that “rights” are just liberties.
Triggered into Statism
I see so many people who develop a big “but” after years of seemingly advocating liberty– until one thing comes up. For some it is some sort of sex; for some it’s “borders”; others find a different trigger.