Summary by Luis Rivera III:

In this video, Walter Block briefly goes over where rights might come from. He mentions Murray Rothbard’s natural rights theory, the utilitarian argument for rights and Hans Hoppe’s argumentation of ethics. Block, goes over what libertarianism consists of, namely, abiding by the non-aggression principle which he defines.

For more, read Toward a Libertarian Society.

How much is Obama’s new war on Iraq and Syria going to cost? If you believe the woman who was right about the costs of the last US war on Iraq, Harvard Professor Linda J. Bilmes, it’s going to cost a fortune.

In the US, many pension plans are hopelessly underwater as the economy heads into troubled times. State employee pension plan are $1 trillion in the red, local government employee pensions are nearly $500 billion in deficit, and even employer-funded pensions (buoyed by rising stock and bond markets) are showing problems. Of course the Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare fiasco is showing red ink for as far as the eye can see. The combination of overly generous benefits and demographically declining tax bases means that there will have to be severe benefit cuts down the road.

Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces, by Radley Balko, PublicAffairs, 2013

“There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.” —Charles de Montesquieu

With dollar signs in their eyes, Pentagon officials have jumped on the global warming bandwagon and   ”released a report Monday asserting decisively that climate change poses an immediate threat to national security, with increased risks from terrorism, infectious disease

With the exception of a few ethnic Italian activists, no American appears to actually celebrate Columbus Day anymore (assuming it was ever “celebrated” in any meaningful sense). And unless you work for a bank or a government agency, you may not even notice it’s a “holiday” at all.

Here’s a real shocker:  The 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics was not awarded to Israel Kirzner, as many Austrians fervently hoped.