Jeb Smith | The Libertarian Institute

Teaching Boredom

by Jeb Smith | Oct 20, 2025 | Featured Articles

Our industrial nation utilized compulsory government schools to train generations of docile, hardworking, obedient, tax-paying employees. Industrialist John D. Rockefeller said, "I don't want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers." The emergence of capitalists as the most influential segment of society enabled them to remake man into a herd animal—a docile, obedient, tamed worker. They are training us to be bored out of our minds. Our schooling system advances only those who can accept boredom. The ones who can be controlled, regulated, and locked in a classroom enduring tedious...

Our Whole Concept of Taxes is Upside Down

by Jeb Smith | Oct 2, 2025 | Featured Articles

Under a democratic state, your money can be likened to a piece of bread thrown into a pond where fish from both the left and right nibble away. Your money and rights are fought over and consumed in ways you did not consent to. In modern governmental systems, the tax codes purposely become so complicated that only allies of the powerful, national parties can afford top lawyers to find loopholes. The Goliath companies receive beneficial handouts and set the rules for the market, while the Davids are burdened with taxes and regulations Goliath can handle but they cannot. Meanwhile, the...

Why Politicians Seek Power

by Jeb Smith | Aug 27, 2025 | Featured Articles, Politics

In The Dictator's Handbook, Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics, Professors Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith look at historical examples as well as modern ones and conclude successful politicians do not gain power by helping "we the people," but by knowing how to gain and maintain it. This is done primarily through supporting the correct coalition of backers. To maintain their power, they must use the funds government access provides and divvy them to supporters who brought them to power and will keep them there. Those with the longest and most "successful" careers are...

Politician or Party?

by Jeb Smith | Aug 12, 2025 | Featured Articles, Politics

Political news hosts will rail against an opposing party member, declaring they must be replaced for passing legislation the pundit disagrees with. To which I always wonder: who will replace them? And who will replace the people who elected them and their financial backers? Who will be in their position in twenty years’ time? You can keep picking apples from an apple tree hoping for a pear, but it will not happen. If you keep returning to the same tree year after year, you can find variations in taste, color, and size, but you will get the essential fruit every time because it derives from...

Don’t Trust the Voters

by Jeb Smith | Jul 21, 2025 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Politics

In Against Democracy, libertarian professor and political philosopher Jason Brennan argues voting is bad for most people. Based on sixty-five years of data, he shows how completely and efficiently the voting public is misinformed on vital issues each election. The majority of voters are even ignorant of what party is in power, and, for example, during a presidential election, only a minority knew which candidate was more "conservative" or "liberal." They vote with this lack of knowledge, and it negatively affects you and me. Brennan wrote they "impose these ignorant and irrational decisions...

Democracy Cannot Lead to Self-Governance

by Jeb Smith | Jun 30, 2025 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Politics

Democracies end up anti-democratic because only a tiny minority of radicals (politicians, interest groups, major corporations, etc.) achieve power centralized in the capital. They work the levers of government, place their servants in power, and advertise via government education and media. As individuals in a democracy, we lose all power. Only masters have power, and their conflicting agendas ensure strife and discord. These groups do not seek individual representation for us but to subjugate individuals outside their grasp to their dictates by force of numbers. In democracy, the biggest...

Libertarian Lessons From Middle-earth

by Jeb Smith | Jun 17, 2025 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism

Professor J.R.R Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, has been described as an anarcho-monarchist, and he incorporated those political ideals into Middle-earth. Among them was his stance against coercion. "The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against Kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion." -J. R. R. Tolkien, “Letter 144” Tolkien wrote, "The supremely bad motive [is] domination of others’ free wills.” Tolkien’s heroes were the free peoples—those who follow Eru’s design. Eru, the god of...

Coercion, Self-Governance, and Democracy

by Jeb Smith | Jun 10, 2025 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism

Originally tribes of extended families and like-minded individuals joined together to create a community. They were self-governing and consenting associations of individuals, a unified whole. The head patriarch acted as a king, the head of the community, ensuring justice and leading them in defense. He served the people and their customs; their laws, representing their governance ideals, were the authority. Lords and warriors defended the tribe from subjugation by outside forces. Now imagine a larger tribe overpowers this smaller community, compels them to labor, exploits their resources,...