Friday Philosophy

The nonaggression principle and negative freedom are not the same thing. Isaiah Berlin's work shows the key difference between them.

Acton not only condemns absolute monarchy but unlimited majority rule as well. If anything, majority rule is worse, because it is much harder to resist.

A world of socialist nations would be a world of ceaseless war. Here's why.

The Nazi economy reduces entrepreneurs to the status of shop managers. The government tells them what and how to produce, at what prices and from whom to buy. Private property is de facto gone.

Can natural resources be appropriated but still subject to a rental tax?

Rothbard exposes a fatal lack of precision with claims about "public goods" and the argument that workers must either work for slave wages or starve.

Some oppose the free market because it allows them to make immoral choices. How can promarket people respond to this critique without relying on their value system?

Demonstrated preference has everything to do with the choices an economic actor faces in a given moment, not all the conceivable options.

Suppose some people don't like the services furnished by a "minimal state." Don't these people have the right to establish their own services to compete with the minimal state?