Keith Knight | The Libertarian Institute

Roland Fryer’s Shocking Conclusion

by Keith Knight | Jun 10, 2023 | Blog, Libertarian Institute Roundtable

https://youtu.be/2nLWCLsmpJ4 On the most extreme use of force – oﬃcer-involved shootings – we ﬁnd no racial diﬀerences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account. We argue that the patterns in the data are consistent with a model in which police oﬃcers are utility maximizers, a fraction of which have a preference for discrimination, who incur relatively high expected costs of oﬃcer-involved shootings. - Roland G. Fryer J. An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force. Journal of Political Economy. Forthcoming. Watch on...

The US Government Has Been Lying About How to Lose Weight for Decades

by Keith Knight | Jun 8, 2023 | Blog

https://youtu.be/TUADs-CK7vI Fat Fiction Movie Website Research by Ann F. La Berge: How the Ideology of Low Fat Conquered America Turns out a low-carb diet does far more to help people lose weight than a low-fat diet.

The “Rich Get Richer” Myth

by Keith Knight | Jun 4, 2023 | Blog

Some 94 percent of Americans who reach “top 1 percent” income status will enjoy it for only a single year. Approximately 99 percent will lose their “top 1 percent” status within a decade. Now consider the top 400 U.S. income-earners—a far more exclusive club than the top 1 percent. Between 1992 and 2013, 72 percent of the top 400 retained that title for no more than a year. Over 97 percent retained it for no more than a decade. - Chelsea Follett, High Turnover Among America’s Rich

The Non-Existent Difference Between National Socialism and Democratic Socialism

by Keith Knight | Jun 3, 2023 | Blog, Don't Tread on Anyone

Summary: National Socialism and Democratic Socialism both advocate institutionalized violence by the state against peaceful people only differing in rhetoric. The most popular self described Democratic Socialists in America today are Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Although Americans account for roughly 5% of the global population, these candidates focus primarily on American well-being at the expense of the other 95% of human beings. Is it because Americans are the poorest people on Earth in need of the most help? Hardly, most Americans today have access...

Ignoring Political Gossip & Sticking to Principle

by Keith Knight | Jun 1, 2023 | Blog, Libertarian Institute Roundtable

https://youtu.be/ZwWHjYVY4tg In the private sector, firms must attract voluntary customers or they fail; and if they fail, investors lose their money, and managers and employees lose their jobs. The possibility of failure, therefore, is a powerful incentive to find out what customers want and to deliver it efficiently. But in the government sector, failures are not punished, they are rewarded. If a government agency is set up to deal with a problem and the problem gets worse, the agency is rewarded with more money and more staff — because, after all, its task is now bigger. An agency that...

The Myth of “Hyper-Rugged-Isolationist-Individualism”

by Keith Knight | May 30, 2023 | Blog

Myth #1: Libertarians believe that each individual is an isolated, hermetically sealed atom, acting in a vacuum without influencing each other. This is a common charge, but a highly puzzling one. In a lifetime of reading libertarian and classical-liberal literature, I have not come across a single theorist or writer who holds anything like this position. The only possible exception is the fanatical Max Stirner, a mid-19th-century German individualist who, however, has had minimal influence upon libertarianism in his time and since. Moreover, Stirner's explicit "might makes...

The Lesson From Germany and Korea

by Keith Knight | May 28, 2023 | Blog, Libertarian Institute Roundtable

Institutions are, of course, in some sense the products of culture. But, because they formalize a set of norms, institutions are often the things that keep a culture honest, determining how far it is conducive to good behaviour rather than bad. To illustrate the point, the twentieth century ran a series of experiments, imposing quite different institutions on two sets of Germans (in West and East), two sets of Koreans (in North and South) and two sets of Chinese (inside and outside the People's Republic). The results were very striking and the lesson crystal clear. If you take the same...

The State is the Health of War (Full Speech)

by Keith Knight | May 27, 2023 | Don't Tread on Anyone

https://youtu.be/f7HG2ljcgTk First, we should recognize that institutions such as states show a natural aggressiveness. The explanation is very simple. If you have to fund your own aggressive ventures yourself, out of your own pocket, that will somewhat curtail your natural inclination to fight other people, because you have to pay for it yourself. On the other hand, if you imagine that if I want to fight some of you guys and I can tax him or him or him and ask them to support me in my fighting endeavors, then whatever my initial aggressive impulses might be, are certainly stimulated because...