Recently I got involved an interesting philosophical discussion on Facebook (where else!) concerning taxation and the proposition that if you don’t pay your taxes men with guns will come and take you to jail or kill you (all true). One participant brought some focus to the conversation by distilling down the core argument to one [...]
Category: Big government is the problem
June 16 / 2013
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The Magic of Democracy
Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) had a humorous take on the recent IRS scandals (see clip here) however what I found most interesting in his monologue is what I believe may be the most succinct summation of the core belief system of all progressives/socialists: “I believe…that good government has the power to improve people’s lives [...]
June 10 / 2013
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Big government is the problem, Current events, Democracy, Libertarian opinion, Statist Myths
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The Truth Emerges…
What are the lessons from the recent IRS scandal surrounding the targeting of conservatively named groups for heightened levels of tax status scrutiny? Is it that there is a vast left-wing conspiracy in this country and this is just the tip of the iceberg? Is it that Obama is the fiendish mastermind behind these directives? [...]
June 03 / 2013
Perverse Incentives Promote Disasters
In the wake of any industrial accident there follows a predictable chorus of pundits lamenting “market failure” in order to justify further interference of the state into every facet of business function. On the surface this might sound plausible, surely we need Big Brother looking over our employer’s shoulder to make sure everything is safe, [...]
May 13 / 2013
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Monsanto Protection Act
Whether you are anti-GMO, pro-GMO, or couldn’t-care-less-about-GMO you should be angered and frightened not only by the content of what lawmakers slipped into the unremarkably named “H.R. 933: Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013” last week, but the manner in which they did so. Why should you care? The inserted language sets a dangerous [...]
April 08 / 2013
State Marriage Benefits Betray State Intrusions
Last week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments concerning two different cases that relate to the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). DOMA was signed into law in 1996 in order to delegitimize any attempt by the states to legalize homogender marriage by disqualifying members of such unions from receiving certain federal “benefits.” So [...]
April 01 / 2013
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Theft by any other name
“The state is a gang of thieves writ large.” Murray Rothbard It is curious that this simple fact is not more widely accepted, however given that the state itself has mastered the magician’s art of misdirection (via state apologists given a platform in the public media coupled with the indoctrination of our children into venerating [...]
March 18 / 2013
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The Debate that Never Happened
I was recently involved in the “Debate that Never Happened” at UGA through the Phi Kappa literary society where the question “Is full employment possible under capitalism?” was the topic. Unfortunately the audio is a bit low… if you turn it all the way up and sit in a quiet room I think you can [...]
March 08 / 2013
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False Alarm
It seems that can our government kicked down the road back on January 1 is upon us in the form of the looming March 1 “sequestration” cliff. One can both admire and be sickened by the hyperbole employed by politicians when discussing these impending “cuts”. President Obama in his 2013 State of the Union address [...]
February 26 / 2013
A tax by any other name
And so it has come to pass – nearly 100 years since the post office ceased Sunday mail delivery (dropped in 1912 primarily due to religious and workers rights reasons) the United States Postal Service will cease Saturday mail delivery later this year. This time the reasons are financial rather than ecclesiastical. The Postal Service [...]
February 18 / 2013
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