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…

Dogma and Win-Win Theory

Send him mail. “Food for Thought” is an original column appearing every other Tuesday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by Norman Imberman. Norman is a retired podiatrist who loves playing piano, writing music, lawn bowling, bridge, reading, classical music, going to movies, plays, concerts and traveling. He is not a member of any social network, nor does he…

Property vs. Intellectual Monopoly

Editor’s Pick. Written by Dan Sanchez. Property must be distinguished from monopoly. They are often conflated because they both involve exclusive rights. But they are importantly different. Property is an exclusive right to use a particular means. Monopoly is the exclusive right to use any means in a certain way. Property is the exclusive right…

Secession and Voluntaryism

Send him mail. “One Voluntaryist’s Perspective” is an original column appearing most Mondays at Everything-Voluntary.com, by the founder and editor Skyler J. Collins. Archived columns can be found here. OVP-only RSS feed available here. Secession can take many different forms and involve different quantities of people, but is secession always compatible with voluntaryism? And more,…

On the Aereo Case

The Supreme Court of the United States will soon decide the fate of broadcast-streaming service Aereo. Pulling a broadcast from the air with your own equipment, and then streaming it over the Internet, again with your own equipment, to customers receiving it with their own equipment, is an example of everyone using their own property…

What If…?

Some are now giving credit to the “militia” who showed up at Cliven Bundy’s besieged Nevada ranch this weekend for turning back the federal enforcers, but I’m afraid I remain unconvinced. What would have happened if the gang of tax-fattened government hitmen had actually unleashed the fury of their amassed weapons of war against the…

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…

On Secession

As much as I love the idea of secession, of people in a given territory breaking political ties with the larger territorial state, there is one major drawback: secession dissenters within the seceding territory being forced to break ties with the old state and live under the new state. Many “loyalists” were murdered and/or driven…