Author Archives: Caspar Oldenburg
Redskins, the State, and the Right to Be Racist
As happens about once every decade, the controversy surrounding the Washington Redskins football team’s name has sprouted up again and everyone has their two cents to give. Following the U.S. Patent Office’s decision to cancel the football organization’s six trademarks, the pontificating from the libertarian community has been predictably lacking in nuance and woefully ignorant. […]
Everything Is Aggression, Everything Is Voluntary
Many libertarians erroneously believe that they, as a group, hold a natural monopoly on the concern for freedom, liberty and voluntary interaction. In fact, many in the movement think that these words alone, as objective and self-evident concepts, serve as a description of their ideology. After all, who the hell could consciously and openly hate […]
Nuclear Weapons in a Free Society: Walter Block Gets It Wrong
When an argument over gun control breaks out between a libertarian and a statist of some variety, it is only a matter of time before the libertarian backs himself into a corner where he must defend the right of individuals to own nuclear weapons by extension of the principle that anything that is not aggressive […]
What Libertarians Can Gain from Feminism
Last week on this blog, Eric Faden wrote a brief explanation of what the feminist movement, insofar as it exists, can gain from libertarian thought. Conversely, I would like to explain what libertarianism as a philosophy and libertarians as individuals can gain from feminist thought. In February, the Free State Project hosted a panel as […]
On Socialist Distinctions between Private and Personal Property
Earlier in the month, I posted an article about how libertarianism’s and socialism’s theories of property are incompatible and how, as a result, a free society would not allow voluntary socialism. The socialist theory of property makes the distinction between private and personal property. So while under socialism it would not be legitimate for a […]
Keystone XL: Bad for Liberty, Bad for You
Over the weekend, it was announced (by whom, exactly, seems uncertain) that there will be a demonstration in Washington, D.C. to assemble those interested in “protecting the Free Market” from the Obama administration. It is ironic but surely no coincidence that this gathering is scheduled for May Day, the May 1 socialist holiday that is […]
A Libertarian Society Would Not Permit Voluntary Socialism
There is a common argument used by libertarians in defense of a free society that attempts to characterize a libertarian system as one that should be preferable to all because it would be a system of panarchy, where everyone may voluntarily choose the sort of economic and governmental system in which he would like to live. The argument […]
Oskar Lange and the Free Market’s Sustainability Problem
In 1937, when socialism was still an idea people took quite seriously, Polish economist Oskar Lange wrote as his contribution to the ongoing “Socialist Calculation Debate” an article describing how a socialist economy could avoid the calculation problem and need for private property to which Ludwig von Mises called attention seventeen years earlier in his […]
Mises Christ! 