One Simple Shift to Turn Life Into an Adventure

When I was young, I would run barefoot through the jungles of Guam, being chased by bad guys, imagining I was on an Indiana Jones-style adventure. The world was filled with possibility, excitement, discovery, exploration, and a delicious sense of danger and the unknown lurking in the darkness. It was fun, play, and curiosity. Adulthood and the responsibilities of family and work all did their best to beat out this sense of adventure, and create a sense of routine and discipline in me. But I’ve always still become lit up by a sense of adventure.

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.

Only the Rich

The government gives an excludable good away for free: roads, parks, education, medicine, whatever.  Then some economist advocates privatization of one of these freebies.  Technocrats may offer some technical objections to privatization.  Normal people, however, will respond with a disgusted rhetorical question: “So only the rich should have roads / parks / education / medicine / whatever?”

Voluntary Provision of a So-called Public Good

This is the trouble with neoclassical welfare economics, amigos: it’s not a decent theory, but it’s a dandy rationale for government to coerce people right and left ostensibly in order to supply valuable public goods, many of which are mere boondoggles for government contractors and magnets for corruption of the legislators and bureaucrats who impose the projects on an often-unwilling public.