This is fun (despite the pelvic thrusts dance moves).
Of All People to Call for Jury Service
I was summoned for jury service in Tarrant County last week. As it happened, there were not any cases left on the docket, so I was free to go by mid-afternoon. From what the bailiff said, I should not be up for service for nearly two more years. I had an OK time, and I … Continue reading »
Making Liberty Popular
As the Texas Republican primary season is wrapping up with the May 29 election day, the airwaves are filled with candidates touting their conservative credentials or questioning the conservative bona fides of opponents. Some candidate platforms are better than others. But even in the conservative stronghold of North Texas, those candidates most wanting to reduce … Continue reading »
Making Words Count with Adam Kokesh
I was disappointed with this video from Adam Kokesh. It was plainly obvious to me that the Occupy protesters were identifying capitalism (or hyper-capitalism, as one person called it) as an economic system whereby social relations are dominated by the owners of capital. Rather than discussing why that is the case or at least why … Continue reading »
Free Talk Live Interviews Sam Seder
Free Talk Live‘s recent interview with Sam Seder of the Majority Report is somewhat frustrating but still enjoyable entertainment. It was frustrating because the FTL hosts were not able to strongly challenge many of Seder’s rebuttals to the non-aggression principle. At around the 30-minute mark, for example, I would agree with the point Seder (I … Continue reading »
Left- and Right-Conflationism Personified
Left-conflationism — the criticism of corporate power and plutocracy and other grants of government privilege as if they were the consequences of a genuine free market Right-conflationism — the praise of the virtues of a free market as though they constituted a justification for past and continued government-enforced privilege
Economic Progress and Capital Accumulation
The lesson about the heterogeneous nature capital accumulation is important too. Just as the increase in the labor force allows for a specialization of labor, an increased stock of capital goods allows for their specialization and division into a more unique and complex arrangement of individual capital goods. Rarely would an increase in capital mean … Continue reading »
Can the Needs of Society Trump the Rights of Individuals?
A common premise of communitarianism is that liberty is one of many competing political values worth pursuing. According to this thinking, there are circumstances where it might be preferable to sacrifice liberty, at least to some degree, in favor of other values. Continue reading »
Bastiat on Harnessing the Motive Force
This inner, indestructible, universal motive force that resides in every individual and makes of him an active being, this tendency of every man to seek happiness and to shun misery, this product, this effect, this necessary complement of sensibility, without which the latter would be merely a meaningless burden, this primordial phenomenon which is the … Continue reading »
