 Machan's Musings - A Risky Argument for Liberty
by Tibor R. Machan
The fact that the insistence on the basic rights of all, including the rich, to pursue their own goals—be they of great public benefit or none—also tends to benefit most people is secondary, not primary. Unless the case for the free system can be made along lines that stress the justice of the it, those on the Left will make a better case with their equation of justice and fairness. (Read more...)
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Saturday
November 19, 2005 |
Decentralisation, and Those Who Oppose It
by Peter Cresswell
What's wrong with choice, and letting people exercise it? What's wrong with a cornucopia of choices, an abundance of options, a profusion of possible housing choices? Why can't you leave people alone to choose for themselves their own manner of living? When you strip away the veneer of buzzwords surrounding the planners' latest fads, you're left with the express intent that these people don't like the choices you make about how to live, and they will make you pay any price to avoid letting you do so. (Read more...)
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Saturday
November 19, 2005 |
Machan's Musings - Some (Small) Good News
by Tibor R. Machan
Although the content of discussions of global warming in Science News has not changed much, and most of them keep suggesting that it’s all due to the greed and materialism of human beings, at least now and then a letter is allowed to voice some dissent. (Read more...)
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The Epicurean Roots of Some Classical Liberal and Misesian Concepts
by Martin Masse
Epicureanism, wrote Ludwig von Mises, inaugurated "the spiritual, moral and intellectual emancipation of mankind". One can find articles on the Internet discussing similarities between Objectivism and Epicureanism, and how Ayn Rand has been influenced by Epicurus. These are some examples of how this ancient philosophy is connected to the classical liberal and libertarian tradition. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Is Classical Liberalism Based on Skepticism?
by Tibor R. Machan
Those who champion the free society and want to do more than simply express their preference for it—never mind if it holds any argumentative merit, or whether it can be shown to be superior to alternative regimes—need to find good arguments and not rely on the skeptical tactic. It simply will not work. (Read more...)
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Thursday
November 17, 2005 |
Daily Linz 20 - Vanity vs. Self-Esteem
by Lindsay Perigo
Likely those of us who’ve been around Objectivism for a while have met one or more of them. If we see one coming we cross the road or hide behind a tree. If we see one at a table we sit at another. Willingly to expose ourselves to him would be an act of masochistic self-sacrifice. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 16, 2005 |
Making a Contribution
by Merlin Jetton
By the self-sacrifice, ask-nothing-in-return standard, wealthy producers in business such as Bill Gates only get credit for "making a contribution to society" when they contribute to charity or do something comparable like endowing a university. There is no credit under this standard for providing employment to others or providing customers with useful products. These are only the pursuit of self-interest, which is morally neutral at best. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 16, 2005 |
Machan's Musings - Corruption of the Police
by Tibor R. Machan
My youngest daughter and I were driving about when she told me her theory about contemporary police officers. Her idea was that police departments in our time attract bullies, people who have always liked to flex their muscles and show everyone who is boss. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - What About the Children?
by Tibor R. Machan
Those who prize a free society, one where government concerns itself with protecting individual rights, keeping the peace and fending off attacks from enemies, have one very tough problem to overcome. This is the fact that millions of people who have no business doing so keep having children.
(Read more...)
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Rewarding Success, Rewarding Failure
by Rick Pasotto
If you want to reward success instead of rewarding failure, the sphere of government activities must be made as small as possible, and desirable goals left to the energy and ingenuity of entrepreneurs working for the rewards of profits in a free market economy. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Gradualism Revisited
by Tibor R. Machan
Contrary to those who want it all in one fell swoop, the progression from a messy mixed economy in the direction of a free one is highly unlikely to come about by way of a sudden leap. Indeed, that is very likely never going to happen, because people are very unlikely to get on board the train to liberty all at once, with equal conviction and commitment. To believe otherwise is to perpetuate that very widespread mistake best captured in the motto, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” (Read more...)
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Notes on "Reading Lolita in Teheran"
by Adam Reed
The ultimate paradox of theocracy, is that it exists for the purpose of imposing the primacy of consciousness on reality itself. It creates, in Azar Nafisi's parting words, "a place where the film censor is nearly blind and where they hang people in the streets and put a curtain across the sea to segregate men and women." And where pedophiles "marry" nine-year-old girls, with the full endorsement of the mullahs of the Islamic Republic. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Rudy Giuliani vs. Civil Liberties
by Tibor R. Machan
What is telling is that nearly all of the measures Guiliani took pertain to how people must behave in public spheres. These are severely reduced in size and scope in a libertarian polity. And private owners and operators of subways, parks, buildings, and streets may, according to Lockean libertarians, establish whatever rules they deem are required to manage these realms. The real problem is reconciling civil liberties with the effective management of public realms. This is no challenge to Lockean libertarianism. (Read more...)
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Saturday
November 12, 2005 |
Austrian Economics and Objectivism
by Edward W. Younkins
By combining and synthesizing elements found in Austrian economics, Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, and the closely related philosophy of human flourishing that originated with Aristotle, we have the potential to reframe the argument for a free society into a consistent, reality-based whole whose integrated sum of knowledge and explanatory power is greater than that of its parts. (Read more...)
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Saturday
November 12, 2005 |
Machan's Musings - Welcome to Freer Markets
by Tibor R. Machan
Most of those with whom we do business never were our bosom buddies in the first place. They were strangers all along, and at one time this meant we couldn't do any good for each other at all. But with the thriving of commerce around the world, with the increase of freedom of trade and of capital and labor movement, the source of mutual benefit, and with occasional volatility as well, strangers have become important sources of well-being for most of us. (Read more...)
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Daily Linz 19 - Friday Miscellany
by Lindsay Perigo
This week's topics: Reason/emotion; The Free Radical 69.
Daily Linz has been less than "daily" this week and last, on account, as explained, of my being immersed in the upcoming Free Radical. I can report that this issue will KASS even more than most! Lead article is an interview with the world's first "Political Correctness Eradicator." What a hopelessly confused weasel-worder he shows himself to be! There's an exclusive article by Casey Fahy, The Silence of Ayn Rand's Critics, guaranteed to cause wailing and gnashing of teeth. ...
(Read more...)
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Thursday
November 10, 2005 |
Machan's Musings - When Government "Teaches"
by Tibor R. Machan
As someone with a 40-plus-year career in education, I am fully supportive of schooling the young, not only because this gives me a fantastic job but because the young, including my own three children, require a solid education. But a solid education does not come from government and its school administrators. It comes from a free education system, free not of reality—which means costs, controversies and confusions, among other things—but free of government. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 9, 2005 |
On the Origins of the Trading Syndrome
by A. Robert Malcom
Among the ancient settlements uncovered by archaeological research, raiding was not the dominant means of interaction; plenty of evidence suggests that instead, bartering took place. Bartering is a form of trading, an exchange of "value for value," and, because of the likelihood of repeated encounters, was done without coercion. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 9, 2005 |
Machan's Musings - Every Day a New Study
by Tibor R. Machan
In the university atmosphere, where people can keep jobs the free marketplace may well not support, there will clearly be a lot of make-work. Not only is it an article of faith in most university disciplines that original scholarship and research are marks of excellence; not only do degrees and promotions depend a great deal not on teaching students but on doing this kind of work; but a good portion of the funds for it all can be gotten without having to persuade the funding agents, taxpayers, of the merits of these projects. (Read more...)
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The War with Islam
by Kyrel Zantonavitch
Muslims forever claim the the West in general, and America in particular, is "at war with Islam." Nothing could seem more ludicrous. But is it? (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Corporate Self-Flagellation
by Tibor R. Machan
This is one of the most infuriating things I experience on a nearly daily basis: businesses that are sponsoring total disrespect toward business. Any Rand used to call this "the sanction of the victim," suggesting that these are good people who are accepting bad things said about them. But I think they are not always such good people. (Read more...)
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Daily Linz 18 - Rod Donald, Green Convertible?
by Lindsay Perigo
There were no false pretences between us, just an appreciation of our commonalities and a lot of humorous banter about our differences. Goodbye, Young Donald! I may be damned to hell for saying it, but I shall miss you. (Read more...)
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The Berkeley Horror Files
by Katherine Brakora
My motivation to re-start my own Horror File is a product of last night’s monthly meeting of the UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly (i.e., student government). Rather than recapping nearly three hours of proceedings, I’ll just relay the two quotes so incredible I actually wrote them down. My blood is still boiling. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - No Choice, Only An Echo
by Tibor R. Machan
What should be clear to all these highly educated, well read, sober people on both sides—all of whom have their own particular value-agendas, make no mistake about that—is that adult human beings just do not get better when they are pushed around, however well-meaning are the pushers. (Read more...)
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Should Christian Bale Be Drafted?
by Heidi C. Lange
Involuntary military service? What a way to destroy an economy .... (Read more...)
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