Murray Rothbard rocks!

Rothbard Quote of the Day!

"The widespread attack on technology is even more irresponsible. If technology were to be rolled back to the “tribe” and to the preindustrial era, the result would be mass starvation and death on a universal scale. The vast majority of the world’s population is dependent for its very survival on modern technology and industry. The North American continent was able to accommodate approximately one million Indians in the days before Columbus, all living on a subsistence level. It is now able to accommodate several hundred million people, all living at an infinitely higher living standard—and the reason is modern technology and industry. Abolish the latter and we will abolish the people as well. For all one knows, to our fanatical antipopulationists this “solution” to the population question may be a good thing, but for the great majority of us, this would be a draconian “final solution” indeed."

Guerrilla Warfare - the Libertarian Way to Fight

I was skipping around in my reading today, and found a cool passage in Conceived in Liberty on the libertarian way to wage a war.  Murray Rothbard writes:

A guerrilla war would be the libertarian way to fight a war fully consistent with the American revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality of rights, and, therefore, the only way to achieve the libertarian goals of the Revolution. A European-style, orthodox war would be heavily statist, and would inevitably lead to the resumption of the very statism—the taxes, the restrictions, the bureaucracy—which the colonists were waging the revolution to escape.

What is more, guerrilla war would be enormously more effective; for that is the way any subjugated people—not only libertarians—can best fight against a better-armed, but hated foe. The efficiency of guerrilla fighting as against European warfare had not only been demonstrated in the unbroken victories of Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys in the Vermont revolution, but also in the victory at Concord, a guerrilla engagement so individualistic as to be almost completely leaderless. In contrast stood the slaughter at Lexington, where the Americans had fought in fixed ranks in the open.

Both moral principle and utility therefore required the choice of a guerrilla war; but various factors, certainly including the novelty of the dilemma, dictated a different choice.

Time Preference

Time preference is an economic term for the degree to which we prefer present to future satisfaction (consumption). It relates to how much money we want to spend now, and relates that to how much we're willing to invest to consume at a future date.

The College Industrial Complex

College is just like war and the united state's prison system - it's an industrial complex, where government throws lots of money at an otherwise unsustainable system.  Basically, here's how it goes - government does massive intervention in the student loans market, making it easier for more people to go to college, since there's easy money available to do so.

On Abortion - A Liberty Perspective

Abortion is one of those issues that keeps coming up when discussing the message of individual liberty and self-ownership, and it is indeed disputed even among Libertarians.  Two libertarian candidates for president of the United States disagree on this issue -  One of which is Dr. Ron Paul, who is pro-life; the other being Gary Johnson, who is pro-choice.

Agorist Thesis #8

Agorist Thesis #8 - Force distorts market information.

Violent intervention in the market distorts market information - the signals that tell entrepreneurs what to produce and what not to produce.  For example, do you think that bombs and fighter jets would be as abundant if it weren't for taxation funding military spending?  Would people be using the same government schools, or would they opt to send their kids to better private alternatives?

Agorist Thesis #7

Agorist Thesis #7 - Prices are information.