Brad Pearce | The Libertarian Institute

The End of Zelensky’s Legitimacy

by Brad Pearce | May 29, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Volodymyr Zelensky’s term as the president of Ukraine expired on Monday, May 20. He won’t be leaving office, on the pretense that Ukraine’s Constitution currently prohibits holding elections under a state of martial law. Based on this reasoning, the elections for the Rada, Ukraine’s Parliament, were also canceled in the fall. This seems to make Ukraine a less developed democracy than Haiti, where the legislators left office when their terms expired but no new election had been held. The Western media is rushing to defend Zelensky’s decision to use the law to stay in power without winning a...

Inheriting Wealth is Good for You (And Society)

by Brad Pearce | May 15, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles

It seems as if hardly a week goes by that we don’t hear about some celebrity or industrialist saying that he doesn’t intend to leave his fortune to his children. There is a widespread belief in the Anglophone world that inheriting money will make children lazy and useless, and further that they don’t deserve the “unfair advantage” it would give them. Many claim to not believe in the premise of passing on wealth, the foundation of social stability since time immemorial. Part of what is going on is that the Baby Boomers, who grew up in a post-war economic boom, believe they earned everything...

Politics is a Game, and the Players Want to Win

by Brad Pearce | May 7, 2024 | Featured Articles, Politics

The recent massive “foreign aid” bill which gave over $60 billion to Ukraine was a key victory for what we call the “Uniparty.” However, this was not just a cash transfer; more accurately, quite a lot of the money went as spoils to the American military contractors who supply Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Joe Biden and Donald Trump came together with both parties in the legislature to fleece the taxpayer in favor of narrow financial interests and American client states, all while attacking our freedom and provoking a third world war. The whole picture is quite bleak. Still, even if the people...

America is a Democracy (That’s the Problem)

by Brad Pearce | Apr 24, 2024 | Featured Articles, Politics

Our rulers constantly talk about “our democracy,” often while justifying doing things which are profoundly anti-democratic. A common midwit response is, “America is not a democracy, it is a republic.” While your ninth grade history teacher may have felt smart telling students that, it is neither a meaningful nor accurate statement. For one thing, those terms are not in contradiction. More importantly, America was founded as a balanced, mixed government but has become a democracy over time, and in its current form is a de jure democracy. This is the source of our miseries. The claim that the...

World War III Isn’t Preordained (No Matter What They Say)

by Brad Pearce | Apr 4, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

A recent survey from YouGov found that 61% of Americans think a world war within the next five to ten years is “very likely” or “somewhat likely,” while only 21% say that such a scenario is “not very likely” or “not likely at all.” It’s notable that Democrats, who are much more likely to view Russia as the source of the world’s evils, are less likely than Republicans to believe a world war is coming by a strong margin; although it is still only 28% of Democrats in the two “unlikely” categories. At the same time, Republicans who may want rapprochement with Russia mostly see this as a way to...

In Defense of Inaction

by Brad Pearce | Mar 27, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Libertarianism

On March 17, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by a woman named Mary Anastasia O’Grady titled, “Giving up on Haiti Isn’t a U.S. Option.” She argues, in short, that Americans don’t have a choice but to continue doing all the things that have failed in the past while being aware that these strategies have been a failure. This type of thinking is common among America’s ruling class, where there is an enormous “bias for action,” often with disastrous consequences. Though the proverb “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” is well known, our ruling class behaves as if...

The CIA Admits Its Long-Time Presence in Ukraine

by Brad Pearce | Mar 13, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

On February 25, The New York Times published an article titled “The Spy War: How the CIA Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin.” This report was not the result of any leak, but was clearly authorized from the highest level: the CIA brought reporters in to tell the story. Though many spoke on the condition of anonymity to “discuss intelligence matters and sensitive diplomacy,” they do not even create the pretense that this is a story that the CIA doesn’t want the public to know. The clear purpose, stated almost explicitly near the end of the article, is to guilt the Republicans in Congress into...

No Man Controls Everything in a State

by Brad Pearce | Feb 28, 2024 | Featured Articles

The constant screeching about various “strongmen” from America’s media and think tank classes seem to have created a widespread misunderstanding about how governments, or really any large organization, work. We perhaps see this the most with Russia, where we hear the constant refrain that “Putin personally approved” what are routine matters for states. We also saw it with Donald Trump in both his business and political life, where people found it impossible to understand that a large team of lawyers and accountants handle his taxes and other such matters. The reality is that a man only has...

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