It is false that voluntary exchange always benefits both parties in the ex ante sense. At least some voluntary exchanges are precipitated by factors not under conscious control, and thus not sensitive to expectation of benefit in the usually understood sense.…
Easy access to a firearm may be the dispositive factor that leads the marginal killer to commit a crime , increasing the homicide rate. But firearms are also used defensively, and in these ways guns decrease the homicide rate.…
I hope to show here that it's not a right to healthcare that you really want, but something much more valuable.…
I identify as an anarcho-capitalist and a moral nihilist. Here I'll sketch how these pieces fit together for me.…
Followers of Rothbard invoke the non-aggression principle (NAP) as the standard against which the permissibility of any action is to be judged. But the NAP is insufficient for this use. I call this idea non-aggression principle insufficiency. NAPI for short.…
There should be a strong presumption against threatening people with violence — Unless those people are threatening others, or violating their property rights (e.g. Robbers, murderers, rapists).…
We have two groups with opposing views about the appropriateness of this tradition. The stakes of the conflict are raised by the poisonous involvement of the state.…
Libertarians cannot assume that a state-controlled open border policy is automatically a more libertarian option than the state restrictively policing the border.…
Private ‘Rights Enforcement Agencies’ allow a granular approach, better for finding the proper balance between the harms and benefits of gun ownership.…
I talked with Max Borders about his new book, The Social Singularity. We also touch on social technologies, incentive systems and scarcity, the importance of culture, and Distributed Income Support Cooperatives (DISCs).…
Justin Goro is a developer building tools on the Ethereum network.…
Bitcoin doesn’t have intrinsic or inherent value. This isn’t as serious a handicap as it might seem, because nothing has intrinsic value. Not government notes, not gold, not even grain, or salt.…
The problem has to do with overselling libertarianism with attractive anti-violence/anti-aggression catchphrases.…
Though not all vaccines contain aluminum, compelling evidence of risk associated with this ingredient undermines the claim that vaccines are safe.…
Imagining categorical needs – divorced from individual values and goals – dismisses human difference, subjectivity, intentionality and reason.…
Is an open border policy inherently more libertarian than a restrictive or exclusionary policy? I believe the answer is no.…
Arts funding depends on taxation. Taxation depends on maintaining credible threats of violence against peaceful people who would otherwise not comply.…
Scott Alexander’s 2015 review of David Friedman’s Machinery of Freedom includes a few interesting objections. Here I answer them as best as I can.…
Marxist accounts of the injustice of capitalism can sound plausible. But there's a foundational mistake in Marx’s exploitation theory.…
I encourage you not to be afraid of moral nihilism. It doesn’t make you a wicked person. It coheres better than moral realism with what we know about the world, and you sacrifice no persuasive power by accepting it.…