Writes buffalo-samurai: It should probably be stated that every sensible man has in their heart the ultimate desire and wish for a condition of infinite abundance with peaceful harmony for their fellow man. It is my personal belief that the cause of all discord among men is the belief in how this situation can be…
Tag: property
The Stateless Equilibrium
Written by Predrag Rajsic for Mises.org. The stateless market society—a peaceful social arrangement based on voluntary relations among individuals in which the state is not present—is not a popular idea. Many people believe that this society would lack the capacity to define and enforce property rights, and that this would result in chaos, tyranny of…
Obsessed by Megalomania
Interview with Hans-Hermann Hoppe by German weekly Junge Freiheit. Are taxes nothing but protection money? The state a kind of mafia? Democracy a fraud? Philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe is not only considered one of the most prominent pioneering intellectuals of the libertarian movement, but also perhaps the sharpest critic of the Western political system. Professor Hoppe:…
How “Intellectual Property” Impedes Competition
Written by Kevin Carson, as published at the Center for a Stateless Society. Any consideration of “intellectual property rights” must start from the understanding that such “rights” undermine genuine property rights and hence are illegitimate in terms of libertarian principle. Real, tangible property rights result from natural scarcity and follow as a matter of course…
Rights That Aren’t
Written by Wheylous for The Voluntaryist Reader. Initially, the [American] Founders formulated the Constitution not to delineate the rights of the individual, but to restrict the powers of government. Soon thereafter, it was decided that the Constitution indeed needed to list some individual rights, so greedy was government for power. Hence, the Bill of Rights…
Personal Anarchy
Written by Michael Ziesing for The Voluntaryist, August 1991. Tell people you’re an anarchist and you’ll probably get a reaction. Maybe they’ll back away and/or run in sheer terror. (You may have a bomb and know how to use it, after all!) Or maybe they’ll spit in your eye and/or try to lock you up.…
Intellectual Property as a Form of Slavery
Written by fifth_imp for /r/Anarcho_Capitalism. I say that the notion of claiming an idea as property is absurd, and in fact constitutes a form of slavery. So, let’s break this down. What is an idea? Is an idea a tangible object? No, of course not. An idea is a pulse of electricity in your brain.…
Roderick Long
“Toward Freedom” is an Everything-Voluntary.com series sharing personal stories about the journey toward freedom. Archived stories can be found here. Submit your story to the editor. Originally published in I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians. I’ve been fortunate enough to have spent over half my life in the libertarian movement, and I am very grateful…
Intervention Begets Intervention
“Intervention is a limited order by a social authority forcing the owners of the means of production and entrepreneurs to employ their means in a different manner than they otherwise would.”
Monopolization of a Water Supply
Written by Wheylous for The Voluntaryist Reader. A charge occasionally levied against libertarianism is that a vital natural resource, such as a water supply, could be monopolized by an astute businessman, who could then hold society hostage with the threat of cutting off its ability of replenishing its bodily fluids. This is a most curious…