It is very common to assert that the advocates of the purely free market make one fundamental and shaky assumption: that all human beings are angels. In a society of angels, it is commonly agreed, such a program could “work,” but not in our fallible world. The chief difficulty with this criticism is that no libertarian—except possibly those under Tolstoyan influence—has ever made such an assumption.
Tag: rulers
Taxation Isn’t Only Theft, It’s Destruction
Where the state is, there also is the growth of the state. Why does a state’s scope enlarge? One theory is that interest groups seek to use the state’s taxing power for their own benefit. I would like to suggest a complementary theory. When the power to tax is conferred upon rulers, many harmful incentives necessarily are conveyed with it. These encourage the rulers to expand their destructive acts.
Psychoanalysis and Pathological Voting
Politics is just an ongoing Rorschach test. Government rulers and media puppets paint pictures of the world, and the great majority of people respond with their own insecurities and fears by supporting psychopaths who promise to slay the monsters from their nightmares.
Master Yourself
Why Would Anyone Want a President?
Apart from employees of the executive branch, or active-duty members of the military who have been called into service by Congress, no American really has a “president.” The office was intended to be peripheral to the daily concerns of Americans, rather than the central focus of their existence. What a wonderful thing it would be if Americans of all persuasions adopted the motto “Not My President” – and then learned to regard the state itself with the proper mixture of hostility and contempt.
Voluntaryism – Don’t Tread On Anyone
If free people do nothing to fight for the freedom of everyone, then all will soon be enslaved. If those with even a modicum of freedom do not fight for every last inch they can gain back from the perilous grasp of tyranny, then tyranny will reign over all.
Democracy Is War by Other Means
Democracy is war by other means. Superficially, it is waged with ballots instead of bullets. At the end of the day, those ballots become bullets. Elections load real guns and aim them at real people. If you disobey the commandments handed down by elected officials, beefy men with shaved heads and Ray-Ban sunglasses will come to take you away. If you resist them, hot lead will fly. Elections are scrambles for control over the service weapons that propel those rounds. In such contests, every faction is trying to point the gun barrels at someone else.
The Trouble With Politics
Politics is of its very nature is biased in favor of intervention and planning. Even in its “minarchist” or “night-watchman” version, politics is based at root on the idea that some decisions must be made coercively and imposed on unwilling minorities – or even majorities, as the case may be. This is contrary to the principle we observe in private life every day: the consent of both parties is necessary for a transaction to take place.
Choosing Our Cage
I shared the video of the honey badger that keeps finding his freedom again and again with the title “Be the Honey Badger” and here I sit bitching and moaning about the cage I find myself in, possessing real means of escaping.
What Teaching in China Taught Me About Freedom and Individuality in the World
Working in education gave me unique insight into the parts of culture normally hidden from outsiders and casual tourists. It also gave me a deep resentment for those who maintain their culture at the cost of corrupting young minds. To see children be made into vessels for arbitrary cultural values on a massive scale would be the fire that would consume me.