Notes

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For libertarian views in favor of blackmail laws, see Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 85-86; and Richard Epstein, “Blackmail, Inc.,” University of Chicago Law Review 50 (1983): 553.

For libertarian arguments against defamation (libel and slander) laws, see Block, Defending the Undefendable, pp. 50-53; and Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, pp. 126-28; in favor, see David Kelley in David Kelley vs. Nat Hentoff: Libel Laws: Pro and Con, audiotape (Free Press Association, Liberty Audio, 1987).

Living Outside

the Statist Quo

By Jeffrey Tucker

For Murray N. Rothbard

The title of this book is drawn from one of those defining moments in life in which a small phrase* shatters the social-cultural convention and reveals completely new possibilities. I tell the story herein in the essay on morning drinking.

A great scholar and Southern gentlemen—a man who has written the ultimate guidebook to the writing of the King James version of the Gospels—invited me for an early breakfast, 7:00 a.m. and then offered me coffee.

I said, “yes, thank you.”

He then added: “would you like bourbon in that coffee?”

1

January 10, 2006

The Department of Energy may soon be paying a visit to a certain shower head manufacturer in Arizona. The company is Zoe Industries Manufacturing. It runs Showerbuddy.com, a popular site that sells amazing equipment for bathrooms.

2

February 20, 2004

You may have had a sense lately that something is just not right in your domestic life, not calamitously bad but just bad enough to be annoying on a daily basis and in seemingly unpredictable ways.

You are not alone. In fact, a huge variety of personal and social problems trace to a single source.

First an inventory to establish what I mean:

• You have the vague sense that your bed linens are not so much comforting you as hemming you in, restricting you and just not breathing as they should;

3

February 26, 2008

Once again, for the umpteenth time this month, I arrive at work soaking wet. Just getting from the car to the front door of the Mises Institute is like going through the rinse cycle—and umbrellas just aren’t my thing. What’s striking is how this weather pattern follows a year of dire warnings from government officials about the deadly drought that is destroying the region, as you can easily see from the government’s own U.S. Drought Assessment maps.

4

January 5, 2010

My order at my favorite Chinese takeout was taking too long. I stopped into the men’s room. There I witnessed a common scene: the modern toilet disaster. An otherwise clean business had a restroom calamity on its hands, one so grim that I hesitate to describe it.

5

September 26, 2006

In Purgatory, there probably aren’t any garbage disposals. People there will have to scrape all food remains into the trash, and if so much as an onion bit gets into the drain, it will have to be carefully fished out before the water is turned on, lest the drain clog.