I have been quite busy lately and have not had much time for blogging, for which I am terribly sorry. But this morning I encountered a comments-section argument so poorly thought through that it compelled me to place my face in my hands for a few moments and weep, so I must say something. In […]

Anyone who has ever been masochistic enough to visit the Being Liberal Facebook page or the Yahoo! Answers politics section has undoubtedly been exposed to the profound and scathing critique that “libertarianism is just anarchy for rich people.” (Probably the only more pervasive one-line dismantlings of a philosophy are “Libertarians are just Republicans who want […]

I absolutely must begin this post by making clear that I will not argue that Pokémon: The First Movie is a libertarian film that affirms the nonaggression principle or the sanctity of voluntary interaction. Over the past year, for every blockbuster film released, I have seen some libertarian blogger arguing that the film in question’s […]

In what might just be the most desperate and absurd attempt to whitewash the Ferguson riots yet, Matt Bruenig of Gawker argues that rioting—“at the right levels”—is good. Granted, Bruenig does not parrot the destruction-drives-consumption talking points of charlatan—sorry, Keynesian—economist Paul Krugman. Instead, he chooses the somewhat more sophisticated, albeit far more absurd, argument that “rioting […]

In the last decade, technology has given rise to a new trend toward decentralization of means of production that threatens the firm grasp established producers hold over the economy. The proliferation of peer-to-peer and sharing economies has already shown its ability to disperse capital and produce more efficiently than large-scale firms. Taxicab companies the world […]

Nothing is more useful to the State than the notion that its rule is justified. As governments cannot forever rule by force alone, it is expedient for them if their subjects sense an air of legitimacy about the prevailing political authority. Prudent governments and their champion intellectuals tell a story of how those in power […]

It’s always seemed slightly ironic that a movement whose members were largely influenced by the works of a prolific female author would have so few women in it. Of course, Ayn Rand was no feminist (she did refer to herself as being a “male chauvinist”, despite being pro-choice and creating strong female characters who would’ve […]

When the Tea Party movement was at its pinnacle, there were a great number of signs to be seen bearing a particular quote raised in the air by middle-aged fists. The quote was a paraphrase of Thomas Jefferson: “When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.” […]

Since Bitcoin got off the ground a few years ago, there have been squabbles among adherents of the Austrian school over whether the decentralized cryptocurrency is money, adding one more to the umpteen schisms already in the Austro–libertarian camp. Jeffrey Tucker is an unrelenting starry-eyed proponent of Bitcoin and considers it a way to live […]

Days ago on Reddit, a user suggested testing the viability of anarchocapitalist theory with a microcosmic video game society and economy. The prospect of being able to test political, social and economic theories without risking devastation of quality of human life is an attractive one. The ability to test human interaction the same way we […]