“Well mostly I want people to be free, and mostly I want government leaving people alone, but in this case, for the good of society, I think it’s necessary for government aggression to be widely used, because the alternative is too scary!”
Tag: society
Libertarianism is Self-Empowerment
One of the things I have been trying to do with this blog is look at why libertarianism isn’t widely accepted by the masses and how it can effectively be sold. In one entry I used Isaiah Berlin’s discussion of the Hedgehog and the Fox to argue that libertarians were hedgehogs in their thinking whereas Joe Public thinks like a fox.
Legalizing Weed Has Done What 1 Trillion Dollars and a 40 Year War Couldn’t
The $1 trillion War on Drugs launched by President Nixon in 1971 created the Mexican drug cartels, now legalizing weed is killing them.
Government Doesn’t Serve Community
The best way to serve the community is to do the best job you can, being useful, and not violating anyone’s life, liberty, or property while doing it. Avoiding violations is the bare minimum to qualify as service. Master this and the rest will fall into place, even if you don’t get the same praise and recognition as those who draw attention to themselves.
Authority and Morality
The decisions people make and the directions that people go in may in the end not serve them or lead to the kind of results that they want, but that is for each person to discover on their own. Advice can be given, suggestions can be made, but ultimately each person must walk their own path themselves. To try to play games of authority is to attempt to ignore all of this.
It’s Either Bullies or Balance Sheets
A wise man once told me that in this life, you can obey balance sheets or bullies. In the end, those are the only two paths. He was drawing attention to an unavoidable reality in a world of scarcity. All scarce things must be allocated among competing ends. This can be done top-down by people in control, or it can be accomplished bottom-up with the signaling system that emerges from voluntary exchange. The two approaches don’t mix well.
Groupthink Makes You All Stink
When the bulk of what you read, watch, think, listen to, and talk about is shaped by mainstream thinking, you’re in danger. You’re in danger of losing the very thing that offers you the opportunity to make a difference in this world: your individuality.
Free Market Capitalism Saves Lives
It is not only that Free Market Capitalism has raised our level of comfort and given us enormous product variety, but also that many people throughout the world have come to depend on these technological innovations for their very existence. The wealthier society sees technology as luxurious but unnecessary and superfluous. The poorer society sees technology as an oasis in a vast desert.
The Many Benefits, for Kids, of Playing Video Games
Video games have been under attack by the fear-mongers ever since they first appeared, and the attacks have not diminished. If you Google around the Internet using harmful effects of video games as a search phrase, you will find all sorts of frightening claims. If you look into the actual research literature, you find very little if any evidence supporting the fear-mongers claims, and considerable evidence against those claims.
Anarchism as Constitutionalism
Trying to refute anarchism by pointing to undesirable instances of anarchy is about as bad an argument as trying to refute Bidinotto’s advocacy of government by pointing to the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. Whether a state is horrendous or decent depends in large part on its constitutional structure; whether an anarchic society is horrendous or decent likewise depends on its constitutional structure.