Keith Knight | The Libertarian Institute

13 Quotes By Thomas Sowell Which Obliterate Progressivism

by Keith Knight | Sep 26, 2022 | Blog

The very same people who say that government has no right to interfere with sexual activity between consenting adults believe that the government has every right to interfere with economic activity between consenting adults. – Thomas Sowell, Ph.D., “Looking for That Elusive Escalator to Success,” Sun Sentinel, Jan. 2000. In reality, most of the great fortunes in American history have resulted from someone figuring out how to reduce costs, so as to be able to charge lower prices and therefore gain a mass market for the product. Henry Ford did this with automobiles, Rockefeller...

The Greatest Karl Marx Quote Ever

by Keith Knight | Sep 25, 2022 | Blog

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground—what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour? - Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, The...

America First Foreign Policy vs. NeoCon Psychopathy

by Keith Knight | Sep 24, 2022 | Blog

After America emerged as the undisputed leader of the West in 1945, however, the shocks, reversals, and humiliations at the hands of Stalin were greater than those that had caused Britain to declare war in 1939. America, however, chose a different course. Embracing the wisdom of George Kennan, America pursued a policy of containment and conscious avoidance of a Third World War. When Stalin trashed the Yalta agreement, terrorizing the peoples of Poland and Eastern Europe for whom Britain had gone to war, America was stunned and sickened but issued no ultimata. When Moscow blockaded...

Refuting the Deep State’s Foreign Policy Narrative (feat. Dave DeCamp)

by Keith Knight | Sep 24, 2022 | Don't Tread on Anyone

https://youtu.be/1cxFGw_7hYs To kill one man is to be guilty of a capital crime, to kill ten men is to increase the guilt tenfold, to kill a hundred men is to increase it a hundredfold. This the rulers of the earth all recognize, and yet when it comes to the greatest crime — waging war on another state — they praise it!... If a man on seeing a little black were to say it is black, but on seeing a lot of black were to say it is white, it would be clear that such a man could not distinguish black and white... So those who recognize a small crime as such, but do not recognize the wickedness of...

How to Tell if a Politician is Evil or Ignorant (feat. Bryan Caplan, Ph.D.)

by Keith Knight | Sep 20, 2022 | Don't Tread on Anyone

https://youtu.be/zJCEQRVgUTs My case for pacifism, to recap, comes down to three simple premises. The first two are empirical: Premise #1: The short-run costs of war are clearly awful. [Empirical claim about immediate effects of war]. Premise #2: The long-run benefits of war are highly uncertain. [Empirical claim about people’s ability to accurately forecast the long-run effects of war]. These empirical claims imply pacifism when combined with a bland moral premise: Premise #3: For a war to be morally justified, the expected long-run benefits have to substantially exceed its short-run costs....

9 Mind-Blowing Contributions From Thomas Sowell (feat. Wilfred Reilly, Ph.D.)

by Keith Knight | Sep 18, 2022 | Don't Tread on Anyone

https://youtu.be/HA_zM96coww To many people, even today, high profits are often attributed to high prices charged by those motivated by “greed.” In reality, most of the great fortunes in American history have resulted from someone’s figuring out how to reduce costs, so as to be able to charge lower prices and therefore gain a mass market for the product. Henry Ford did this with automobiles, Rockefeller with oil, Carnegie with steel, and Sears, Penney, Walton and other department store chain founders with a variety of products. A supermarket chain in a capitalist economy can be very...

Debunking the Top 5 Feminist Conspiracy Theories! (feat. Bryan Caplan, Ph.D.)

by Keith Knight | Sep 14, 2022 | Don't Tread on Anyone

https://youtu.be/VJqy-qP5ZtU Listing the main ways that society appears to treat men less fairly than women requires only a little more reflection to complete. Topping the list: a. Men are overrepresented at the bottom levels of society. They do most of the nasty, dangerous work, are much more likely to be homeless or imprisoned, and much more likely to kill themselves. b. Men spend much more time on the job than women. c. The law heavily favors women in child custody and child support disputes. d. Men are more likely to be victims of violent crime. e. Men are much more likely to die in...

How Free Markets Make Poor Countries Wealthy (feat. Benjamin Powell, Ph.D.)

by Keith Knight | Sep 10, 2022 | Don't Tread on Anyone

https://youtu.be/fmh1JeGAVP0 Here’s why: almost a hundred years ago, the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises explained that socialism, even if run by benevolent despots and populated with workers willing to work for the common good, could still not match capitalism’s performance. Socialism requires abolishing private property in the means of production. But private property is necessary to have the free exchange of labor, capital, and goods that establish proper prices. Without proper prices, socialist planners could not know which consumer goods were needed or how best to produce...