Keith Knight | The Libertarian Institute

Jacobin Magazine Lies About Ludwig von Mises!

by Keith Knight | Oct 11, 2022 | Featured Articles

Five important criticisms are made of Ludwig von Mises in the recent Jacobin article titled, Ludwig von Mises Was a Free Market Ideologue, Not a Hardheaded Thinker. Mises was an ideologue Mises supported workers "bowing" to capitalist masters Lack of support for universal voting proves Mises was opposed to empiricism Nordic countries and the UK's NHS prove that statism is preferable to free markets Mises supported imperialism For a full refutation see the video linked below, in short: The Misesian ideology can be summarized as: Decriminalize all economic activity between consenting adults....

Trump’s Inexcusable Response to the Arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell

by Keith Knight | Oct 9, 2022 | Blog

On Friday a libertarian mentioned that the age of consent is something reasonable minds can disagree on. The Ignoratti had a field day with this, it apparently never occurred to them that governments across the planet and different states in America have different ages of consent. Accused pedophile Republican Dennis Hastert was Speaker of the House and Donald Trump wished pedophile trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell "luck" after she was arrested. To this day, we are waiting for Trump to clarify and retract the statement. A very glassy house to be throwing stones from. Politics turns the...

Lindsey Graham is a Liar

by Keith Knight | Oct 8, 2022 | Blog

Graham believes the terror war is/was inevitable. The reality: ...we now have the first complete data set of all suicide terrorist attacks around the world from 1980 to 2009,...research on who becomes a suicide terrorist showed that virtually none could be diagnosed as mentally ill, while many were religious and, most striking, nearly all emerged from communities resisting foreign military occupation.... From 1980 to 2003, there were 345 completed suicide terrorist attacks by 524 suicide terrorists who actually killed themselves on a mission to kill others, half of whom are secular. The...

Want Health Care for Everyone? End the Regulatory Regime (feat. Blake Masters)

by Keith Knight | Oct 7, 2022 | Don't Tread on Anyone

https://youtu.be/Yhcm5pegHPE Some critics of the free market argue that property rights are in conflict with “human” rights. But the critics fail to realize that in a free-market system, every person has a property right over his own person and his own labor, and that he can make free contracts for those services. Slavery violates the basic property right of the slave over his own body and person, a right that is the groundwork for any person’s property rights over nonhuman material objects. What’s more, all rights are human rights, whether it is everyone’s right to free speech or one...

The Squad is Wrong About “Inequality”

by Keith Knight | Oct 7, 2022 | Blog

The rapid economic advance that we have come to expect seems in a large measure to be the result of this inequality and to be impossible without it. Progress at such a fast rate cannot proceed on a uniform front but must take place in echelon fashion... At any stage of this process there will always be many things we already know how to produce but which are still too expensive to provide for more than a few... All the conveniences of a comfortable home, of our means of transportation and communication, of entertainment and enjoyment, we could produce at first only in limited...

The Carl Sagan Case Against Democracy

by Keith Knight | Oct 6, 2022 | Blog

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. - Carl Sagan, BrainyQuote How has science and technology advanced when "we the people" never "voted" for such a thing to occur? Democracy advocates claim that 'if we don't vote on X through the political process, we will have no influence on X, and X will benefit only the very few'. Does anyone think Seinfeld would have been funnier if script writing had been put to a popular vote? Would printers work better if people who know nothing about printers...

AOC is 100% Wrong About Inequality

by Keith Knight | Oct 5, 2022 | Blog

...[I]n 1800 AD, 95% of the world was destitute, living in what we’d now consider extreme poverty. In 1900 AD, about 75% were. Now, maybe 9% of people are, while nine out of ten people live above extreme poverty. In 1950, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan were very poor. Singer would have said we have duties to give our extra income to their citizens. In 2020, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan are very rich—indeed, the average person in Singapore is now richer than the average American. Singer today would say the Japanese, Koreans, etc.,have...

Socialist Greed vs. Free Market “Greed”

by Keith Knight | Oct 4, 2022 | Blog

A common scam involves taking a constant reality that always applies to everyone, then uniquely applying it to one set of people or one set of ideas. Which of the following sounds more greedy to you?: Give me your money or I'll have my employees put you in a jail cell and shoot you if you resist (taxation) I cannot get a penny out of your pocket unless you voluntarily give it to me in exchange for a product, service, or charitable gift Most of us fear social disapproval, so being called greedy decreases our confidence in promoting the voluntarist ideas of free markets....