Episode 323 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics: billionaires, what they do with their wealth and how to properly redistribute it through an increase to market competition; the difference between liberty and freedom and how unfree America really is; the value in his study and practice of Stoicism as it concerns driving around town for work; who the police are and why they aren’t your friend and protector; and more.
Tag: wealth
Hate Speech, Inheritance, Morality, & Anarchism (36m) – Episode 322
Episode 322 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following questions from Quora: “If we move to suppress “hate speech”, whom do we trust to define it?”; “Do you think rich kids deserve their wealth?”; “Why is there morally good and morally bad?”; and “What do you think about anarchism?”
Take Care of Your Tools
“Capital goods” are the materials that create wealth. And when what you have to work with are your machetes and your shovels and your chainsaws, those are your capital goods. If you can take care of those, maybe you will take care of the bigger capital goods (with more potential for wealth creation).
Aphorisms in Honor of Liberty, Part One (20m) – Episode 309
Episode 309 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following aphorisms written by Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski: “A bad economist believes that he knows what to do to make the world prosperous. A good economist believes that he knows what to do to let the world make itself prosperous.”; “A barbarian believes in coercion as a means to establish cooperation. A civilized person believes in cooperation as a means to eliminate coercion.”; “A civilized person believes that what matters is not whether wealth is equally distributed, but whether it is justly acquired. A barbarian believes that the latter depends on the former.”; “Achieving peace of mind is the dual process of maximizing self-awareness and minimizing self-consciousness.”; “A commercial culture is a tautology. A political culture is an oxymoron.”; and “A civilized person uses reason to evaluate his instincts. A barbarian uses reason to justify his instincts.”
Debunking the ‘Privilege’ Fallacy
To begin with, let’s just acknowledge that the term “white privilege” is a racist and disparaging term that endeavors to shame and ‘other’ white people based on their race. We must also recognize that such needless race shaming is based on myths and lies.
On Billionaires
Assuming that billionaires are any sort of “problem” (I don’t), the solution is not to take their wealth and redistribute it to others. No, the solution is to remove any and all barriers to compete with them entrepreneurially.
Well Done, Billionaires
The dominant narrative that billionaires are greedy and big companies like Amazon are monopolistic, exploitative tyrants is not only misguided but deeply troubling for the future of prosperity and human progress.
On Feminism
When I think of feminine energy, I think creation. Like birth, Spring, and newness, feminity is this and many other things. As such, markets are feminine, because markets are the result of the latticework of creative actions.
State Priorities, Not State “Capacity”
In the last few years, social scientists have started heavily appealing to “state capacity” to explain the wealth of nations. Why do some countries prosper? Because they have great state capacity. Why do others flounder? Because they have crummy state capacity. What do floundering countries need to do in order to prosper? Build state capacity, naturally.
Bruce Benson: The Evolution of Law (48m)
This episode features a lecture by academic economist Bruce Benson from 1997. He talks about the origin and subsequent development of legal systems. He starts by reviewing Franz Oppenheimer’s distinction between two means to wealth- economic and political- and theorizes about the development of cooperation in society and the creation of systems of private property.