Notes: Market Failure: An argument both for and against government (David Friedman)
I just attended the Young American’s for Liberty state convention yesterday in order to hear the venerable David Friedman speak. Below are my notes highlighting the main points of the talk. You may recognize some examples and positions if you’ve…
Notes: International Students for Liberty Conference, Matt Zwolinski, How to Talk About Liberty Without Sounding Like a Jerk
Matt runs the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog. He started off with An Argument: premise: Libertarianism is True observation: most people don’t belive that. conclude: They are either wrong and evil, or they have never heard of it. given people have…
Notes: International Students for Liberty Conference, David Friedman, Problem of National Defense
Defense without Government ————— – government bad at doing things, esp complex things (ex: legal systems) am willing to accept government solution when alternative is worse – court and police aren’t complicated enough to require government – define National Defense…
Religious Experience
In a piece titled Islam and the Misuses of Ecstasy, Sam Harris takes issue with some atheists about their distance regarding the motivations of religious believers. I, unfortunately, share the perspective that Harris critiques. I once ran into the anthropologist…
Social Game
As a result of some deep procrastination, I’ve been spending far too much time reading junk in the manosphere, which I only recently discovered. These collection of blogs promote topics such as MGTOW (men going their own way), MRA (men’s…
The Absence of Libertarian Countries
Salon has a rousing piece of claptrap provokingly titled The question libertarians just can’t answer. Fortunately, without building up any suspense (which would in this case be correlated with reader annoyance), the author, Michael Lind, comes right out with it:…
Career Advice from a Successful Autistic
Autistics may be a rare breed, but it it pays off handsomely to try and understand the workings of their minds. In the same way that building and bridge design improves from failures more than successes, neurologists learn more about…
Distributed Defense
Recently there has been much brouhaha about 3D printed weapons. Mostly these reactions have been media-generated. Cody Wilson, an enterprising young lad has, for the past year, been perfecting the technical artistry behind the manufacture of a working gun printed…
The Commodity Money Myth
Frank Shostak wrote an article about The Bitcoin Money Myth. For an Austrian economist with “over 35 years of experience as a market economist, central bank analyst, and builder of large scale macro-econometric models”[AAS profile], I’m not wholly surprised that…
Notes: Steps to Expatriation by Ron Yoder
Last weekend (Mar 30th) I took a trip down to a fabulous domicile in Fallbrook, CA to hear Ron Yoder talk about his expatriation to Uruguay. Having already authored an article published through The International Man in 2011, Ron agreed…