Maybe the Free-State freaks could move to Nauru instead. Only 10,000 population and just dying to be bought out…
The Four Pillars of Libertarianism
As Wendy McElroy, Fox News’ resident Libertarian pundit aptly summarized in a column for the Independent Institute, American political Libertarianism is based on Murray Rothbard’s synthesis of four schools of thought, the radical anti-statism of the individualist anarchists and wed it with Austrian economics, the foreign policy of the Old Right (isolationism) and the [...]
Twenty Year Old Libertarians
I find it amusing that this cartoon appeared on Toothpaste For Dinner immediately after the Ron Paul Defense Corp descended on my post about him and budgetary pork.
Two-Dimensional Political Quiz That Isn’t Libertarian
Two-Dimensional Political Quiz That Isn’t Libertarian
More On Libertarianism
Daniel Klein argued, at Cato Unbound, that minimum wage laws were coercive, based on the conception of coercion as “the initiation of physical aggression”.
Richard Chappell does an excellent job at Philosophy, et cetera of pointing out three conceptual errors in right-libertarian ideology that Klein falls prey to:
It neglects the coercion inherent in the very institution [...]
Libertarianism Discussion: Axiomatics
In my first post on this subject, I stated that:
1. Libertarianism is highly axiomatic: There’s a set of rules to be applied to evaluate what is proper, and the outcome given is the answer which is correct in terms of the moral principle of the theory. This leads [...]
Libertarianism Discussion: Introduction
To stem the flood of emails pointing out (rightly) that what I have written here, and previously, concerning ‘libertarianism’ bears no resemblance to what they understand as ‘libertarianism’, let me say that I am discussing a particular brand of American individualist-capitalist thought that some people there call ‘libertarian’ or even more mind-bogglingly ‘anarcho-capitalism’…
My post yesterday [...]
Thirteen Things That Are Wrong With Libertarianism
Yes, right libertarianism (or more correctly, propertarianism) is becoming more popular with those in I.T. and the “new economy” types, but I, for one, am not impressed.
As J.K. Galbraith said, “…[the libertarian] is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness“.
Regardless of [...]
What Shall We Do With Our Future?
Prospect Magazine asked 100 writers and thinkers to answer the following question:
Left and right defined the 20th century. What’s next?
The responses they received were overwhelmingly negative. Almost every respondent expected the world to stay as screwed up as it is, and most expected it to get worse. The list of the dichotomies they see [...]
Election Night, Part 3
Time Magazine, in their “election blog” blatantly calls the Democratic party “the socialists“. I need more popcorn!
As a side note for those who may not be aware of what exactly a “libertarian” is and why they may swing this election, a libertarian is what happens when a white boy grows up reading Ayn Rand and [...]
Subverting Rand
In my recent screed about Ayn Rand, I said then that I would ignore her twisting and redefining of language necessary to make her concepts of “selfishness” and “atruism” recognizable as she defines them. Now I will address them, in the best way possible, given the person I am discussing, by quoting her:
Altruism declares that [...]
Ethical Nihilists and Anti-Intellectualism
I have found it very hard, since I go about espousing certain ideas about frugality and living more simply and taking care of oneself, to avoid a group of people who label themselves various things (Libertarians, libertarians, Objectivists, “anarcho-capitalists” etc…) and would like to see me call myself that thing too. Discussion with these sorts [...]
The Tragedy Of The Tragedy Of The Commons
In 1968 Garrett Hardin published an article in Science entitled “The Tragedy of the Commons”, which built upon ideas originally developed by William Forster Lloyd in a parable published in 1833 in his book on population. Over the intervening half century, Garret’s metaphor has been widely misunderstood, largely as a result of people who have [...]
These are the ramblings of 