Post by Kent McManigal. I don’t care about Hunter Biden’s so-called tax crimes or gun crimes, no matter how clear the evidence may be. I have no love for the Bidens, but I don’t believe there is even one legitimate tax or anti-gun rule. Not one. Accusing someone of breaking one of those fake laws is completely pointless.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Thomas L. Knapp. Those of us who came to adulthood before 1991 grew up in constant knowledge of our own prospective annihilation on, at most, a few minutes’ notice. It wasn’t a good feeling.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Sheldon Richman. Nothing is more powerful than the profit motive, something that even opponents of the market readily concede.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Kerry McDonald. If you ask today’s microschool founders, they will tell you—without hesitation—that microschools are here to stay.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Thomas L. Knapp. The war on the gig economy is just one of many examples of how conservative today’s “progressives” really are. They’re more interested in saving an old and busted system, in the name of “the workers,” than they are in the actual interests of real workers.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Kent McManigal. (My Eastern New Mexico News column for October 12, 2022) Being political leads to unfortunate outcomes. Politics never makes people act smart. I don’t think federal agents– FBI or anyone else– have any business digging for things over w...| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Sheldon Richman. Government officials must not be permitted to suppress, directly or indirectly, public-health and other sorts of claims they disagree with. Officials of course can say what they believe are the facts, but they must not attempt to smear, marginalize, and silence dissenters. The very act of financing scientific research is prejudicial because of the stamp of exclusive legitimacy it implies. As the pandemic illustrates, a truly free marketplace of ideas is literally a ma...| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Kent McManigal. Some would have you believe we are at war with each other, but your neighbors aren’t the enemy, even if they follow the enemy. Or if you do. Don’t let politics make you hate each other -- that would be a tragedy.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Thomas L. Knapp. The US Supreme Court has agreed, in its coming session, to hear an appeal in the case of Gonzalez v. Google. The case deals with one aspect of “the 26 words that created the Internet” — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. As is usually the case when Section 230 comes up, the pundit-media industrial … Continue reading Note to SCOTUS: Section 230 is an Acknowledgement of Reality, Not a “Liability Shield”→| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Sheldon Richman. By now Randolph Bourne’s observation that “war is the health of the state” ought to be such a cliché that it would hardly need to be said. And yet, it must be said — often — because many still haven’t gotten the word.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Thomas L. Knapp. As Russia’s war in Ukraine drags into its eighth month, the European Union scrambles for energy to heat its homes and power its industry in the coming winter, the US and China continue to rattle sabers at each other over Taiwan, and smaller actual and potential conflicts rage around the world, it seems like a good time to take stock of two old, busted, worn-out terms: “American hegemony” and “unipolar world.”| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Bryan Caplan. If you listen to successful politicians speak, and fail to realize that they’re speaking strings of pretty lies, you’re missing the point. To understand politics deeply, just ask one follow-up question: “Why is speaking strings of pretty lies the path to power?” The bitter answer: Because in politics, pretty lies are what most people want to hear.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Kerry McDonald. At this time of year, many parents may be starting to look for other education options for their children.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Kent McManigal. It seems it should be obvious to everyone by now: those who seek positions of political power can’t even run their own lives; they certainly shouldn’t be allowed to run yours. No one is less qualified to do so.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Isaac Morehouse. “A world of obedience and unity. A world where the thought of each man will not be his own, but an attempt to guess the thought of the brain of his neighbor who’ll have no thought of his own.”| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Sheldon Richman. Neuroscientist/philosopher Sam Harris caused quite a stir recently by defending the social networks’ conspiracy (his word) to suppress news coverage of Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s smoking-gun laptop shortly before Election Day 2020. Harris said the suppression was justified because Donald Trump was such a threat to America that he had to be defeated whatever the cost to the election’s integrity.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Isaac Morehouse. I had a naïve assumption that the internet meant the release of information permanently. That everything – good, bad, true, false – would make its way online, and therefore be forever findable.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Kent McManigal. Democracy is nothing but mob rule; might through superior numbers makes “right.” It is nothing to celebrate or fetishize. Those who place faith in democracy are telling you they don’t understand what rights are, nor do they understand the dangers of letting the mob decide which rights to respect and which to ignore.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Sheldon Richman. I have the impression that people think their own intuitions need not be questioned because they are reliable. But is that wise? I don’t think so.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by John Stossel. Sex worker "Aella" has made hundreds of thousands of dollars, mostly by "camming," showing her body to men online and talking intimately with them. Her customers are happy to pay for that. This offends people.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Kent McManigal. Do you only care about some things because you’ve been manipulated into caring?| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Kilgore Forelle. A horrendous TV news link appeared in today's Facebook news feed, "Iowa school district promises to end seclusion rooms use." I read the term, "seclusion" as "solitary confinement," and I flash back to scenes from "Cool Hand Luke."| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Alex R. Knight III. I’ve written elsewhere, in places too numerous now to recall, about the fact that many if not most libertarians make the erroneous – and largely false – assumption that the average person actually wants to be free. All the evidence demonstrates that they don’t. There’s another reason why libertarianism fails to gain mass appeal: It’s too rational.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Kerry McDonald. There are mounting concerns over profound learning loss due to prolonged school closures and remote learning. New data released last week by the US Department of Education reveal that fourth-grade reading and math scores dropped sharply over the past two years. Fingers are waving regarding who is to blame, but the alleged "learning loss" now being exposed is more reflective of the nature of forced schooling rather than how children actually learn.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Post by Thomas L. Knapp. If the strop taught me anything, it was the false lesson that instant resort to violence “works.” I suspect I’m not dead, in prison, or an alcoholic in spite of, not because of, the strop.| Everything-Voluntary.com
There were differences between these two ostensibly “antiestablishment” lifestyles, and not all of them merely temporal. The Beats projected a different vision than the hippies who followed after them, and it was one that, I contend, appealed much more to an individualistic sensibility.| Everything-Voluntary.com
It is said that neither freedom nor security is free. I agree. But must we pay coercive monopoly prices for inferior services?| Everything-Voluntary.com
Tom has worked in journalism — sometimes as an amateur, sometimes professionally — for more than 35 years and has been a full-time libertarian writer, editor, and publisher since 2000. He’s the former managing editor of the Henry Hazlitt Foundation, the publisher of Rational Review News Digest (2003-present), former media coordinator and senior news analyst at the Center for a Stateless Society (2009-2015) and also works at Antiwar.com. He lives in north central Florida.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Can we ever arrive at the 'truth?'| Everything-Voluntary.com
Actual respect for marriage would involve getting both federal and state governments completely out of the business of deciding who can be, or is, married. Not just “on the basis of the sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin of those individuals,” but completely.| Everything-Voluntary.com
The bankruptcy of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the alleged fraud by co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, which has cost customers millions, is tailor-made for anyone who already wants the power of government to expand, especially in the area of financial privacy. For that reason I think it would be useful to take a 30,000-foot view of the matter. I offer these considerations as someone with no more than a layman’s knowledge of the cryptocurrency phenomenon.| Everything-Voluntary.com
As cryptocurrency exchange FTX falls into bankruptcy and its principals seem likely to face various criminal charges over the activities leading to that bankruptcy, it’s time for another round of crowing from opponents (and would-be regulators) of cryptocurrency. Which means it’s time for another round of pointing out where those opponents and would-be regulators are all wet.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Advocates of “industrial policy” want you to believe their ideas make you better off. Unless you’re a large stockholder in a “protected” corporation, they’re lying to you.| Everything-Voluntary.com
I recognize writing of human communication as the apex of developing culture originating and transmitting ideas...| Everything-Voluntary.com
Politicians are always promising to do things politicians can’t do. Either they believe they are magic, or they want you to believe they are.| Everything-Voluntary.com
The winner-takes-all approach is why politics is so toxic to society. It’s like voting on which church everyone is required to attend and fund for the next four years.| Everything-Voluntary.com
An “experienced analyst” at the National Security Agency ran an illegal surveillance project that involved “unauthorized targeting and collection of private communications of people or organizations in the US.” The agency’s inspector general concluded that the analyst “acted with reckless disregard” for “numerous rules and possibly the law.” This happened ten years ago. The inspector general’s report was issued six years ago. But the public is just now learning about it.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Who will keep you safe? Every politician now running for office claims, pretends to guarantee, that he/she will.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Missouri v. Biden, a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, cites a previous action (Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia Univ.) to this effect: “A private entity violates the First Amendment ‘if the government coerces or induces it to take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, … Continue reading Missouri v. Biden: Putting America’s Lysenko Under Oath →| Everything-Voluntary.com
Without my intending any criticism, Friedman might have asked Donahue what system he thinks some business people try to manipulate in today’s mixed economy. Isn’t it the interventionist political system that free-market advocates object to?| Everything-Voluntary.com
Conservatives needn’t buy any grand theory of government to continue and redouble their opposition to Big Government. They just need to remember how often their enemies will actually run the government.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Isn’t it better to not create a problem in the first place than to try to fix it after it happens?| Everything-Voluntary.com
What’s bizarre about the revisionist notion of “privilege” is that almost anything counts.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Political government as we’ve constructed it is geared toward maximizing death to increase its own power and expand its own reach at the expense of everyone. We’ve still got perpetual war of every man against every man. Only now it’s highly organized, well-funded, and waged for the benefit of the political class.| Everything-Voluntary.com
For the umpteenth time, someone I revere is saying that he or she will leave Facebook. We voluntaryists believe that is one's choice. But for selfish reasons, I hate to see good people go.| Everything-Voluntary.com
To spare the innocent, we must deny the state power to kill the guilty.| Everything-Voluntary.com
What does the libertarian philosophy have to say about business management as an institution? Is it analogous to the state or something entirely different?| Everything-Voluntary.com
After a consensus that the world was topsy-turvy, the most vocal segment claimed that parents were to blame. The implication was that earlier generations of parents were better.| Everything-Voluntary.com
The push-back against identity politics by disillusioned leftists is welcome, but the striving to replace identity with economic equality as the guiding political principle? Not so much.| Everything-Voluntary.com
Is it my imagination, or do many people run from responsibility as fast as they can?| Everything-Voluntary.com