Libertarianism

Archive for Libertarianism

A College Student Interviews Bob About Libertarianism

This is a short but fun interview. I get into some things that I don’t usually talk about. The context is that a college student was doing her honors’ thesis on the libertarian worldview, and was interviewing a bunch of us. I asked if we could use our conversation for the podcast.

It’s Celebrity Criticism All the Way Down

As all right-thinking people recognize, it should be illegal to harshly criticize a celebrity. Now some libertarian theorists try to say, “Well, there’s no rights violation involved, so shouldn’t it be legal to harshly criticize a celebrity?” But that’s not a good argument. I’ll demonstrate with a humorous thought experiment to show the inner contradictions of […]

The Case for Legalizing Blackmail

Seriously I am just a rebel. Where else do you get hard-hitting stuff like this? An excerpt: The interesting aspect of this system is that it would provide an informal means of “fining” people for violating social taboos. Although this might strike some (such as Scott Sumner, whom we’ll discuss in the next section) as […]

“The fraud of classical liberalism”

I always like to skim articles like this to see how someone could come up with a title like that. In my (obviously defensive) reaction, I would say the author points to things that are clearly not consistent with classical liberalism–like using armies to engage in “free trade”–or he is simply mistaken about historical causality–like […]

Thoughts on the “Vice” Episode on Charlottesville

Partly because I had technical hang-ups and partly because I wanted to collect my thoughts, I’ve waited a bit before saying anything publicly about this shocking video on Charlottesville. So here are my reactions, and again I’m closing the comments on this because I think that will help to contain further fighting. ==> It will […]

If Libertarians Reject the “Left/Right Spectrum” Then Why Do We Use Those Terms?

I’m genuinely asking the question. (And this isn’t just coming from me; I’ve seen other people in the last few months making this point.) On the one hand, we libertarians like to roll our eyes at standard political surveys or classification schemes in which Adolf Hitler is the polar opposite of Josef Stalin. We like […]

A Tale of Two Conspiracies

In the last month I have become intimately acquainted with two conspiracies afoot in the libertarian economics community: CONSPIRACY #1 James Buchanan was a founder of Public Choice economics. Its scholars are actively seeking to end injustice perpetrated by the State, and to advance individual liberty. Buchanan invited an outspoken opponent of apartheid to his […]

An Interesting Combination of Positions in the Carrier Debate

I don’t want to make too much of this, and I’m not even saying there is an outright contradiction here. I’ll succinctly state the interesting combination in the form of a script, loosely based on actual events that I observed firsthand on social media. TRUMP SUPPORTERS: You idiot libertarians need to drop your faith in […]