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Showing posts from June, 2013

Choosing Our Authorities

Today's column is now live , it begins: Anarchy means, etymologically, "no rulers." It does not mean "no rules" or "chaos," despite what so many who (ab)use the word would have everyone believe. Within my heart of hearts, I am an anarchist. It's very simple really. I am an anarchist because I reject the idea that anyone else is a legitimate ruler over me. And more, I reject the idea that anyone else (on Earth or in Heaven, as it were) has any other kind of authority over me. And what if I told you (queue Morpheus), that you have the prerogative as a human being to choose whom you will bow down to?

Secret Surveillance and the Right to Privacy

My column for last week , a bit late I know, begins: It doesn't seem to me that enough people are truly outraged by the revelations of the National Security Agency's spy program. Too many seem to have a "Well I haven't done anything wrong so why should I care?" attitude. This is very troubling to me. For starters, "done anything wrong" is becoming increasingly versatile, what with all of the millions of laws already on the books and thousands more being created yearly. It's very likely that we all do "wrong" every day. The bigger offense, however, is the aggression that's committed against us by the state's secret surveillance.

Rebuilding My Foundation

My latest column takes on more of a personal matter than this series has done before. It begins: "Resistance," to the Borg, "is futile." It's also human, very human. Particularly the type of resistance given to the changing of one's beliefs. And by "beliefs" I mean everything someone either thinks is true or knows is true with absolute certainty. Often their certainty is based on a very limited amount of experience, and they don't know what they don't know. Faith, the way I see it, is rational belief on the basis of limited experience. What is believed may ultimately prove false, but without faith one will never do anything. Nobody has experienced everything, and everybody wants to remove their "felt uneasiness." Like resistance, to act on the basis of faith is also human. I have performed religious ordinances and made covenants with others (seen and unseen) on the basis of faith. But I now find myself at a point in my life whe

The Market is Always Free and Fully Employed

My latest column is now available at EVC. It begins: Those who adhere to the philosophy of liberty (libertarians, voluntaryists, etc.) are quick to point out that neither the United States nor most places on earth have a free market economy. This is true if we ignore an important qualification for what constitutes a free market. Rothbard defined the (free) market as, "a summary term for an array of exchanges that take place in society. Each exchange is undertaken as a voluntary agreement between two people or between groups of people represented by agents." Thus we can make the argument that the market is always free, and concurrently, always fully employed.

LPL - May 2013 Update

Through the end of May 2013, 254 books sold in the US, Europe, and Great Britain. Carl Menger's Principles of Economics   sold the most at 27 copies; followed by Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty  at 20 copies, and Albert Jay Nock's Our Enemy, the State  at 20 copies. Of the 254 books that have sold, 192 copies went to the US (dollars), 38 copies went to Great Britain (pounds), and 23 copies went to mainland Europe (euros).