Your mind is the most important thing in your enjoyment of liberty. You may be physically restrained, but mental freedom is harder to confine. Think of the person you want to be. Write it down, and take a step in that direction every day. There’s no sense arguing with others when you don’t have your … [Read more…]
The desires of others to interact with you are influenced by your reputation. Being mean makes business suffer. There is a difference between feedback of transactions, and reputation ratings. Feedback, such as on eBay, serves as a way for the buyer to help or hinder the seller. A reputation rating can be as complex as … [Read more…]
When first hearing the proposition of no government, some immediately think people could kill without recourse, because there will be no law against it. Law is not necessarily bad, the problem is when far away men create it and subject you to it. Law instead created through voluntary agreement and subsequent codification is valid. The … [Read more…]
Justice should not be based upon the rules of old men many miles away, enforced by young men with a gun on their hip and an authoritative glean in their eyes. No, justice is a personal thing, and should be ironed out between individuals every day in the ways they interact. Justice should evolve, just … [Read more…]
When people choose the easy way out, the way nobody would laugh at, they do themselves and humanity a disservice. Satisfying desires by appealing to the lowest common denominator, the thing that most would find amusing, yet almost never enlightening, leads from intellectual poverty to physical poverty. Push the edge of the envelope and the envelope … [Read more…]
In a purely voluntary society, can roads function to meet the demands of the populous? The fact is, roads really are just long stretches of property. There is nothing inherent to them that makes having government-run roads more efficient. So why do so many people have a disinclination toward roads being privately run? One issue … [Read more…]
A trade deficit occurs when imports are greater than exports. The concept relies on the erroneous idea that statistics from arbitrary political boundaries are valid. For instance, no one talks about the trade deficits between cities within a country, or between two households. “If U.S. imports are greater than exports, they must be paid for … [Read more…]
In the event of a worldwide economic collapse, how useful are precious metals as money? For instance, there is an often made criticism against gold: in the event of Armageddon, it is better to hold guns and food rather than gold. The problem with this argument is not the first part, where it recommends a … [Read more…]
There are likely four ways the governmental system can change: Buildup, Breakdown, From Within, and From Without. Buildup is the creation of a new system from scratch. Seasteading is an example. Breakdown is what can occur before buildup. It is the violent refusal to be a part of an existing system, and is often a … [Read more…]
No one inherently deserves authority over another. Authority should only exist when freely earned. The current structures do not operate this way, however. If hundreds of years ago men signed a document removing your right to choose who you want to protect your property, how can that be legitimate? Government, if it is to exist, … [Read more…]