On July 20, 2009 a 41 year old lobsterman from the island of Matinicus was shot in the neck over a property dispute.1 The islanders, like many Northeastern Lobstermen, have a property regime in place that is enforced by a series of acts against lobster traps that violat
WILL THE US ECONOMY FACE a sustained period of inflation or deflation, or perhaps hyperinflation? This is the subject of the great monetary debate of our day. It comprehends in its consequence nothing less than the fate of the world’s most important markets; from the international currency market to the US stock and bond markets to labor markets across the globe. The fate of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and the viability of the subsisting monetary order rest on the denouement of the monetary process being debated.
The misery of essentialism in his time, or at least of the philosophy of liberty, is condensed by Popper into a remarkable summary: “Scholasticism, mysticism and despair of reason—these are the inevitable outcomes of Platonic and Aristotelian essentialism.
Walter Block is a radical anarchist. He is a libertarian extremist. The government probably spends oodles of fiat currency investigating, monitoring and keeping detailed records of Block’s activities. More is undoubtedly spent each year in order to produce propaganda to counter his promotion of Austrian economics.
The human body shield problem is the following scenario. A criminal, holding your innocent neighbor in front of him, approaches you and begins shooting at you. You can stop him, but only by shooting through your neighbor and killing them both.
Property might be defined as something over which an individual should have exclusive control. For example, suppose you have some string and it is your property. It follows that you should be the one to decide whether you use it to tie up some boxes or your neighbor uses it to hang a painting. These two actions are incompatible, and the owner, for whatever reason, has the authority to determine what happens.
Modern military engagements are made possible by a state’s ability to easily acquire revenue. Central banking and the circulation of fiat currency enable the state to control the money supply and to fund any national interest the government deems worthy.
This paper looks at rights and the protection of rights from the minarchist and the anarchist perspectives. The small government view is represented by Objectivist Ayn Rand as well as Neo-Objectivists Tibor Machan and David Kelley. The no-government perspective relies primarily on anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard. Minarchists argue for the need for government in order to protect rights; otherwise, they claim, mob rule would prevail.
Through new legislation1 intended to alleviate poverty, the 1960s proved to be a time of bureaucratic discovery and administrative experimentation. This decade witnessed the first man on the moon and the war in Vietnam.
Times of uncritically accepting the application of methods of natural science to human science are seemingly gone. In the present age, we usually deal with so-called “crypto-positivism,” which revised certain assumptions, but is still stuck in the ideal of science professed more geometrico. Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a philosopher whose theoretical effort proves that the errors of naturalism and empiricism can be overcome only by praxeology based on a priori argumentation.
