I walked past a bakery recently and saw some outrageously priced coffee with some heavy marketing elements that said something to the effect that it was grown by desperately poor farmers who sacrifice their children’s food to give you organic, environmentally-friendly coffee (they left out “to fuel your hyper-productive, obscenely materialistic lifestyle,” but that would (more…)
My son asked me to buy a book on amazon and it wasn’t available for some reason. His comment? “Thanks a lot Obama.” That just cracked me up. He goes to a super conservative school and he is exposed to the occasional extreme view, but he and his buddies find the humor in it when (more…)
The fundamental libertarian axiom is the non-aggression principle or NAP. The opposite of this is to take action violating someone else’s property or physical person without the person you’re violating having acted against you. Basically, violence can only be used in self-defense. This is such a fundamental and self-evident tenet of morality that even in (more…)
My sister Booie passed on to me my love of words and has added a few colorful phrases to my vocabulary (e.g., she taught me the meaning of “grok” and coined “ethical glass ceiling“). She and her husband Bill also contributed the expression “put an ob on you” to my lexicon–and now to my glossary! (more…)
In debating a fellow libertarian who was disappointed that I’m not an advocate for unconditional open borders (to read why not, see my comprehensive article on the subject: The Libertarian Immigration Conundrum), I told him that one-off libertarian solutions are sometimes a trap when employed in the context of the Welfare-Warfare Superstructure. As a matter (more…)