November 2011
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Halloween and Value
I just returned home from trick or treating with my family and my oldest daughter’s friends (and their families).
The first thing she did when she got to her room was tip her bucket over to soak up her bounty. So I grabbed my youngest daughter’s bucket (which is really my wife’s since the young one is still breast feeding) and dumped out its contents nearby to compare.
Now,...
October 2011
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“That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any...”
– John Stuart Mill
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“I find myself more and more relying for a solution to our problems on the...”
– John Maynard Keynes, ten days before he died
So if Nozick’s doubts later in life spawned such fervor this summer (see here, here, here, and here), then what can be understood of Keynes’ reconsiderations? Particularly since Keynes was infinitely more influential to his eponymous statist...
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City cop was late for his second job. Decides to... →
Beautiful.
-
Update: Seemed clear to me that my “beautiful” comment was referencing the fact that in this rare occasion, those who carry themselves above the (often unjust) laws they enforce may actually be held accountable to keeping them themselves. Speeding, in and of itself and not in a reckless way that directly endangers others, is really more of a pre-crime and not necessarily...
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“I never hurt nobody but myself and that’s nobody’s business but my own.”
– Billie Holiday
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From Phoenecia to Hayek to the 'Cloud' →
Knowledge is dispersed and shared. Friedrich Hayek was the first to point out, in his famous 1945 essay “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” that central planning cannot work because it is trying to substitute an individual all-knowing intelligence for a distributed and fragmented system of localized but connected knowledge.
So dispersed is knowledge, that, as Leonard Read famously...
Ron Swanson vs. the State →
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“By what process could a transfer among two persons give rise to a legitimate...”
– Robert Nozick. Anarchy, State and Utopia. (via ahistoryofquotes)
WatchRichard Epstein on Income Inequality
I would have discussed more about how government’s crony capitalist system does unjustly tip scales in favor of the politically connected (and I would have probably avoided quoting Licnoln), but there’s some good stuff in here.
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The Occupiers and the State →
Like the Tea Parties, the Occupy movement comprises a hodgepodge of voices, some of which are aimlessly calling for change, some with good rhetoric but not so good an agenda, some who simply favor one faction of the bipartisan American state, and some who would replace current policy with something much worse. The folks in both camps who rail against corruption but oppose key pillars of the free...
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“[W]e ought not to lodge [powers] as evidently to give one order of men in the...”
– Richard Henry Lee
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“Man wants liberty to become the man he wants to become. He does so precisely...”
– James Buchanan
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The Importance of Failure →
Without denying the value of perseverance, and recognizing that the slogan “never give up” can be useful in overcoming certain obstacles, we must keep in mind that failure can act as a guide to more worthwhile activities. For example, in 1921 Walt Disney started a company called the Laugh-O-Gram Corporation, which went bankrupt two years later. If a friend of Disney or the government hadn’t let...
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Smash the Evil 1%! →
The “occupy” protest movement is thriving off the claim that the 99 percent are being exploited by the 1 percent, and there is truth in what they say. But they have the identities of the groups wrong. They imagine that it is the 1 percent of highest wealth holders who are the problem. …
But there is another 1 percent out there, those who do live parasitically off the...
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If Arguing That The World Is Complex, Don't Be...
cerebralicious:
shanemorris:
Libertarian political ideas are easy. That’s what makes them so attractive to young minds. That’s why we see so many “Tumbltarians” here. Everything is black and white, and answers are definite.
Oh, c’mon, have you seen one of our arguments about the problem of externality, the legitimacy of preemptive warfare, animal rights, or whether or not libertarianism is...
“The individual is the unique unit of consciousness from which all evaluation...”
– Jim Buchanan and Geoff Brennan
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“[T]he reason I didn’t respond to LAliberty was because he did that whole “break...”
– - a blogger
The post in question.
So, let’s understand this: the blogger’s objection is that I was too thorough in my response. That, because I chose to break down his argument into segments in order to properly and exhaustively rebut it, he objects on the grounds of “messiness...
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Re: Left-turn Libertarians
atomicsocialist:
laliberty:
atomicsocialist:
Left-turn Libertarians - Libertarians who make a big stink out of small issues, i.e. the no left turn on red laws. Instead of toting anti-war, pro-civil liberties positions, these libertarians love to whine about traffic laws and other issues of the sort that make sense and save lives but are “OMG BIG GOVERNMENT INFRINGEMENT” Based on this post...
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Meanwhile, Wall Street Still Occupies Obama →
As usual, rhetoric…
“The protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works,” President Obama said last week when asked at a news conference about the “Occupy Wall Street” events.
…is trumped by reality.
New figures show President Obama continues to pull in huge donations from the financial sector, with...
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Liberty Haiku #19
Rebels and Anarchs
Furious liberation
Humanity’s soul
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Before He Delivered For Voters, Paul Delivered... →
[W]hen Ron Paul first set up shop in 1968, he was the only obstetrician in town. Eventually Paul got so busy he took on a partner.
Jack Pruett, who was then fresh out of his obstetrics/gynecology residency, says when he first sat down in Paul’s office, he was told there were two stipulations he would have to agree to before joining the practice. “He said, ‘No. 1 is we will not perform any...
“It has now come to light that, like the Commission that governed the American...”
– Laurence M. Vance
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The Principled Consistency of Ron Paul →
Ron Paul is a consistent man. … He’s been convinced for decades of the dangers of fiat money (money backed only by confidence in the government that creates it), the supreme importance of the individual, the primacy of personal liberty as a political principle, and a laissez faire approach to the economy. …
Paul[’s] ideas are ideologically consistent. They spring from a set of...
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Teacher's Union Member Teaches 1 Day and Qualifies... →
Two lobbyists with no prior teaching experience were allowed to count their years as union employees toward a state teacher pension once they served a single day of subbing in 2007, a Tribune/WGN-TV investigation has found. Steven Preckwinkle, the political director for the Illinois Federation of Teachers, and fellow union lobbyist David Piccioli were the only people who took advantage of a...
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“It seems more reasonable to suppose that there is no ruling class, that we are...”
– David Friedman
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“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men...”
– Ayn Rand
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“All the things we did just one generation ago are now deemed irresponsible,...”
– Karen De Coster
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“When a corporation loses 100 cents of every dollar it loses, and is permitted to...”
– Henry Hazlitt
The Austerity Myth: Federal Spending up 5% This... →
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“Governments and the military purport to protect the public from enemies, and if...”
– Laurance Ladabie (via statehate)
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The Ron Paul budget →
Ron Paul [has released] an 11-page “Restore America” plan that’s full of budget cuts and spending freezes. The plan is here (Download RestoreAmericaPlan) and a 6-point summary from Paul supporters is below:
1) Cuts $1 trillion in one year and more in following years through attrition.
2) Reduces other funding to 2006 levels.
3) Eliminates 5 cabinet secretaries (Energy,...
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“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the...”
– Ernest Hemingway
The Hoover-as-Laissez-Fairist Myth Marches On →
In the New York Times today, columnist Joseph Nocera* quotes a book published in 1940 on Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression:
Herbert Hoover was “leery of any direct governmental offensive against the Depression,” writes Allen. “So he stood aside and waited for the healing process to assert itself, as according to the hallowed principles of laissez-faire economics it should.”
OK, let’s...
“I remember hearing one lecture… by P.J. O’Rourke where he was addressing a...”
– Penn Jillette
“To me it seems as if this whole effort [begun in earnest in the mid-20th century...”
– Friedrich A. Hayek
“We must, therefore, emphasize that “we” are not the government; the government...”
– - Murray Rothbard (via haereticum)
Democracy is incompatible with freedom.
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Occupying the Wrong Location
jeffmiller:
… [I]t’s all well and good to demonize the people [who] work down on Wall Street until you actually meet one of them, and realize that these are actual people with actual families who might actually do some actual good. Everything about the OWS movement is adversarial, from the name (occupy is something we do when we’re being terrible to other nations), to the 99% slogan (a...
“I don’t like war, I like peace — and we should have a lot more peace and a lot...”
– Ron Paul
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Forget The Argument From Efficiency
statehate:
anarchei:
Note: The following article was originally posted on Lost Liberty Cafe however the site is no longer available. See the archived article here. This article was followed by Argument From Morality.
Stefan Molyneux:
For three main reasons, freedom can never be won by arguing for economic efficiency. Such efficiency is always debatable, inevitably rests on technical details...
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