Cuomo’s Wager

by | May 12, 2020 | , ,

Pascal's Wager is a familiar idea. It goes something like this: regardless of what you may think about the existence of God, rational cost-benefit analysis says you should sign on. After all, if you do and you're wrong, what have you lost? But if you don't and you're wrong, uh oh -- you're in big trouble, buster. (I'm not saying this makes sense, by the way.) Something similar has gone on with the coronavirus pandemic and the draconian economic policies embraced by many governors in the United States, best exemplified New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. They have...

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L’etat C’est Moi!

by | May 7, 2020 | ,

Trump has vetoed Congress's effort to keep him from going to war against Iran unilaterally. Nothing remarkable there. We've come to expect such things from the fraud who posed as antiwar. What's interesting is that Trump has reminded of what a narcissist he is. That fact is so much a part of the landscape that it can be hard to notice these days. In vetoing the bill passed under the War Powers Resolution, a 1970s post-Vietnam attempt to restore Congress's exclusive power under the Constitution to make war, Trump said, “This was a very insulting resolution...." Insulting? That's why he vetoed...

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Radical Incrementalism?

by | May 6, 2020 | ,

Hell, yes! Radical abolitionist anarchist libertarians can -- and I say ought to be -- incrementalists because, sorry, "abolition now!" is not on the menu today. No contradiction exists in the radical incrementalist or the incrementalist radical. Tom Knapp addresses this point quite capably in his re-post "Blast from the Past -- Without a Net: Compromise versus Calculation." I recommend it highly. The reason that no conflict need exist between abolitionism and incrementalism is that the former is an end while the latter is a means: Incrementalism involves setting (and achieving) incremental...

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If Adam Smith Were Writing the Wealth of Nations Today

by | Apr 17, 2020 |

“It is not from the benevolence of the mask maker, glove maker, or hand-sanitizer maker that we expect our person protective equipment, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.”

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TGIF: Is Self-reliance a Libertarian Ideal?

TGIF: Is Self-reliance a Libertarian Ideal?

by | Apr 17, 2020 | , , ,

An Associated Press article published a few days ago reported on disagreements among libertarians over what, if anything, the government may properly do about the coronavirus pandemic. My purpose here is not to comment on the quotes from the various libertarians. I prefer to focus on just one sentence by the author, Hillel Italie. It's this one: "Libertarian principles of self-reliance and minimal government have been around for centuries." Only the part I emphasized -- the reference to self-reliance -- interests me today. At first, that term may seen unexceptional -- even to many...

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The Szasz Centennary

by | Apr 15, 2020 | , ,

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Thomas S. Szasz (1920-2012), the most unappreciated libertarian in modern times. Beginning with his book The Myth of Mental Illness in 1961 and proceeding through dozens of books and hundreds of articles, Szasz, a Hungary-born physician and psychiatrist, spent more than half a century analyzing and debunking the myriad violations of individual liberty committed in the name of health, public health, and mental health. He dubbed the union of government and medicine The Therapeutic State. In this cause, Szasz, who was also a historian and...

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