Against Politics

Toward a depoliticized society

The national debt means nothing to us

The Tea Party is worried about the national debt. Public debt is not created by “us” but by the government (“them”) and there is no reason why one should feel morally obliged to pay it off. As Murray Rothbard has observed: The public credit transaction is not a genuine contract that need be considered sacrosanct, [...]

Anything that’s peaceful

Libertarians spend a non-trivial amount of time arguing for the obvious. At best, such arguments are redundant because there is no widespread believe that violence or threats of violence are a good thing. At worst, these debates hurt the prospects for a society with less violence because theories about the existence of  “natural rights” are [...]

The end of health insurance

At Alternative Right Richard Hoste wonders whether the decision to turn insurance companies into public utilities that administer entitlements is a deliberate decision to destroy health insurance  in order to set the stage for further government involvement or simply reflects a poor understanding of economics: There are two possible explanations of what the Democrats are [...]

Murray Rothbard’s obscure case for the obvious

Libertarians are not doing themselves a favor by taking on the burden of proof to argue for something that most people take for granted. Bryan Caplan makes a similar point about Murray Rothbard’s defense of “libertarian rights:” I object that anything that people do is ipso facto “natural,” so there’s no way you’re going to [...]

Market fundamentalism

A recent trend in progressive thinking is to accuse opponents of “market fundamentalism.” That seems to be a smart rhetorical tactic because a) it rides on the wave of concerns about any kind of fundamentalism, and b) the phrase appeals to people’s reasonableness. After all, if two ways of “organizing society” are available, only a [...]

L.A. Rollins’ case against natural rights

Nine-Banded Books has done the world a great favor in publishing a new edition of L.A. Rollins’ The Myth of Natural Rights. Although one could argue that in one sense it is a mixed blessing because it indicates that there is still a need for such a book. While the idea of natural rights seems [...]

Singularity economics and the future of money

On his website, Robin Hanson discusses an unfilled niche in economics which he calls the “economics of science fiction” or “economics of future technology.” Another modern phrase would be “Singularity economics.” Hanson describes the economics of science fiction as the: “economic analysis of the sorts of assumptions typically explored in science fiction. It is distinguished [...]