People: Resource or Burden?

People do not merely consume and pollute. They also create; they produce. They find ways to turn negatives into positives. For example, the methane gas produced by landfills is now turned into energy. Ores which were of no economic value, now produce valuable minerals. People find ways to produce more efficiently. Today’s computers are vastly more powerful than those of a decade or two ago, and are also smaller; they use less material; they consume less energy per amount of work; and they further allow us to reduce the use of materials and energy for other purposes, in a virtuous cycle.

Rule Yourself

Recently another sociopath took power of the greatest criminal institution in the world, the US federal government. Another megalomaniac sits on the throne and will attempt to dictate how you can live your life. The problem is not whether this person is black, white, male, female, Christian, Jewish, rich, poor etc. The problem is that the throne and the institution exists at all AKA the State.

If Men Were Angels

Although I admit that the outcome in a stateless society will be bad, because not only are people not angels, but many of them are irredeemably vicious in the extreme, I conjecture that the outcome in a society under a state will be worse, indeed much worse, because, first, the most vicious people in society will tend to gain control of the state and, second, by virtue of this control over the state’s powerful engines of death and destruction, they will wreak vastly more harm than they ever could have caused outside the state.

The Role of War in a Voluntaryist Society

Most voluntaryists understand that war is one of the most terrible, wasteful, horrific tools at the state’s disposal. There can be no doubt that the death, devastation, and warping of the mind caused by war are terrible evils. But the question remains: “Is war ever justified?” Before a coherent answer can be given, we should first define war. If war is defined as a purely statist activity, then war is never justified for the simple reason that statism is never justified. However, if we include private, large-scale military operations in the definition of war, then war could be justified under certain specific conditions.

What is Freedom?

Using the dictionary definition of freedom, we can then start looking at freedom not from a philosophical perspective, but from an objective scientific perspective. Regardless of one’s moral view, we can all agree that someone in chains does not have freedom. Meaning that there is an object in their way restricting their movement. The hard part is what happens when they are released from their chains. If the newly freed individual is hungry and has no money to purchase food, are they free?

How to Unschool

1. Give your love generously and criticism sparingly. Be your children’s partner. Support them and respect them. Never belittle them or their interests, no matter how superficial, unimportant, or even misguided their interests may seem to you. Be a guide, not a dictator. Shine a light ahead for them, and lend them a hand, but don’t drag or push them. You will sometimes despair when your vision of what your child ought to be bangs up against the reality that they are their own person. But that same reality can also give you great joy if you learn not to cling to your own preconceived notions and expectations.

Adolf Hitler: How Could a Monster Succeed in Blinding a Nation?

Is it still possible in today’s Germany to escape the realization that without the mistreatment of children, without a form of child-rearing based on violence to inculcate blind obedience, there would not have been a Hitler and his followers? And thus not millions of murdered victims either? Probably every thinking person in the post-war period has wondered at some time or other how it could have happened that a human being devised a gigantic machinery of death and found millions of helpers to set it in motion.