June 2011
78 posts
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The Anti-statist Mindset
“To answer the last of these questions first - of course there were wars and crime. Has there ever been a society statist or otherwise - without war and crime? But Irish wars were almost never on the scale known among other civilized* European peoples. Without the coercive apparatus of the State which can through taxation and conscription mobilize large amounts of arms and manpower, the...
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“The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually...”
– H.L. Mencken (Letter to Upton Sinclair, October 14, 1917)
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libertarians asked: Is there any libertarian-POV writing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? The sources I find are so biased and contradictory.
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“As noted, the government is the ultimate judge in every case of conflict,...”
– Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Idea of a Private Law Society
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“Finally, the question may be raised: Are corporations themselves mere grants of...”
– Man, Economy and State by Murray N. Rothbard
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Central planners bailing out central planners →
As ABC Newsradio reports, ‘Warnings are growing about the catastrophic economic effects of countries like Greece defaulting on its debts. Overnight the Bank for International Settlements warned that Greece and other countries like it mired in debt need to increase interest rates and slash debt. Germany has put up a lot of the funds to prop up ailing economies, but there’s growing...
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libertarians asked: Do you know of any private legal/justice systems in past societies? I was reading something last night that discussed one in specific, but of course now I have no idea what the article is, and I forget the name of the society.
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Chicken Run on Libertarian Society →
freebroccolli:
Ginger: You know what the problem is? The fences aren’t just round the farm. They’re up here, in your heads. There’s a better place out there, somewhere beyond that hill, and it has wide open places, and lots of trees… and grass. Can you imagine that? Cool, green grass. Hen: Who feeds us? Ginger: We feed ourselves. Hen: Where’s the farm? Ginger: There is no farm. Babs:...
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coeus-deactivated20120628 asked: Ok, I think it's fair to say that we voluntaryists are the most attractive out of the political bunch, amirite?
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Mises Made Easier →
A Glossary for Human Action. Quality.
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“Nearly all philosophers today are paid out of taxes. They live off money stolen...”
– Hans Hermann-Hoppe
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“It is an old story, and history shows it repeated every generation. The trade of...”
– H.L Mencken, “The Mississippi Flood,” The Baltimore Sun, May 23, 1927.
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The Nature of Economics
It is well-known that Austrians disagree strongly with other schools of economic thought, such as the Keynesians, the Monetarists, the Public Choicers, Historicists, Institutionalists, and Marxists… The ultimate difference from which all disagreements at the levels of economic theory and economic policy stem… concerns the answer to the very first question that any economist must ...
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Government Depression Policy: Laissez-Faire
If government wishes to see a depression ended as quickly as possible, and the economy returned to normal prosperity, what course should it adopt? The first and clearest injunction is: don’t interfere with the market’s adjustment process. The more the government intervenes to delay the market’s adjustment, the longer and more grueling the depression will be, and the more difficult will be the road...
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Natural Law
Consider the universal status of the ethic of liberty, and of the natural right of person and property that obtains under such an ethic. For every person, at any time or place, can be covered by the basic rules:
ownership of one’s own self,
ownership of the previously unused resources which one has occupied and transformed; and
ownership of all titles derived from that basic ownership...
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“He who lives by prediction is destined to die by prediction. In addition to...”
– The Hermeneutical Invasion of Philosophy and Economics by Murray N. Rothbard
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Conversation at a Grocery Store →
As I was leaving our neighborhood grocery store, I was met by two college-age women who told me that they were working for Greenpeace, and would like to have my support.
“To do what?,” I asked.
“To help save the rainforests, protect endangered species, and end pollution,”...
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“Is this the “moral,” “social” relationship for which we...”
– Down With Primitivism by Murray N. Rothbard
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The Solution: Private Law Society
Daily Bell: How would law and order be provided in this society? How would your ideal justice system work? Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe: In a private law society the production of law and order - of security - would be undertaken by freely financed individuals and agencies competing for a voluntarily paying (or not-paying) clientele - just as the production of all other goods and services. How this...
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Watch“Learn Free” is about unschooling which is an educational philosophy that states children learn best by not attending traditional school, but rather through their own interests and by living life.
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Limited Government? Cont.
hipsterlibertarian:
Very agreed on your second point; disagreed on most of the statements in your first. Rothbard’s “epic” refutation hardly strikes me as a refutation at all, and I’ve written before at length about why I don’t find the social contract and minimalist government itself inherently problematic. I’m not going to go into it all again (so other [beloved] anarchist...
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“All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented record of the...”
– Society Without A State, Murray N. Rothbard
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“The anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to forecast the shape of...”
– Society Without A State, Murray N. Rothbard
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“Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de...”
– Murray Rothbard, Society Without A State
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Hacking?
libertarians asked:
Hey, I was reading the IP posts between shecallsmeartemis and rhyeking, and I began to think about hacking. I looked back into the Mises forums and saw you’d responded to the thread so I figured I’d ask you. 1. Would hacking someone’s computer be ‘trespassing’ despite the intangibility of the information on the hard drive, or would ...
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Monopolies are bad
…Furthermore, the purely free-market, stateless society would contain within itself a system of built-in “checks and balances” that would make it almost impossible for such organized crime to succeed. There has been much talk about “checks and balances” in the American system, but these can scarcely be considered...
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Correcting Common Libertarian Misconceptions →
Stephan Kinsella delivered the speech “Correcting some Common Libertarian Misconceptions” at the 2011 Annual Meeting, Property and Freedom Society (May 27-29, 2011). The video is here, and the powerpoint presentation (must check out).
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WatchHometown Tama - A BIG winter swell hit the Australian east coast at the end of last week. Conditions on Saturday along the Australian east coast were epic - a clean offshore breeze, monster sets rolling in, tourists and Sydneysiders perched along coastal vantage points whilst experienced surfers took on the massive pacific swell.
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Limited Government?
coeus:
Q. But here’s another question: How do you prevent a minarchist government from accelerating in power and growing? It seems to me that this was the purpose of the US Constitution - to limit government power- but I see that this has changes over time. What is to truly limit a minarchist government, then?
hipsterlibertarian:
A. This is an incredibly important question,...
