Against Politics

Jim Crawford against natural rights

Aschwin de Wolf — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 10:14:27 PDT

Jim Crawford’s autobiographical antinatalist manifesto Confessions of an Antinatalist contains an illuminating perspective on the idea of natural rights: Concurrent with our wish to understand the human condition through over-simplification is our tendency to ground human desire and behavior in ‘natural rights.’ Such...

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Thomas Ligotti, Karl Popper and antinatalism

Aschwin de Wolf — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:22:36 PDT

In his recently published non-fiction work The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror the contemporary horror writer Thomas Ligotti takes Karl Popper’s “negative utilitarianism” to its ultimate conclusion: One who did not balk entirely was the Austrian-born British philosopher Karl Popper, who in The Open...

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The national debt means nothing to us

Aschwin de Wolf — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:39:01 PDT

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, [...]

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Nullification: interview with a zombie

Aschwin de Wolf — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:19:30 PDT

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Important Voices interview with Anthony de Jasay

Aschwin de Wolf — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 13:39:15 PDT

On March 15 2010 The Gary Johnson for President blog (!) featured a brief interview with Anthony de Jasay who “wishes to state, though, that he has no views on the candidacy of Governor Gary Johnson for the Republican nomination.” Asked why limited government is so hard to achieve, de Jasay answers: The main reason [...]

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Anything that’s peaceful

Aschwin de Wolf — Fri, 28 May 2010 15:47:46 PDT

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...

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The liberalization of libertarianism

Aschwin de Wolf — Mon, 24 May 2010 13:32:23 PDT

In the aftermath of the Rand Paul civil rights controversy a surprising number of self-identified libertarians have endorsed state-restrictions on freedom of association. In essence, the argument is that historical and contextual circumstances can warrant the broadening of anti-discrimination laws to the private sector. This is not just a...

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Rand Paul and the anti-discrimination paradigm

Aschwin de Wolf — Thu, 20 May 2010 16:58:00 PDT

Newsweek features an opinion piece about “The Difference Between Rand Paul’s Libertarianism and Traditional Segregationism.” If one thing has become clear from this piece (and the “civil rights” controversy that triggered it) it is how immensely unpopular strict liberalism is among opinion makers and many...

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The truth about voting

Aschwin de Wolf — Wed, 19 May 2010 16:01:16 PDT

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Anti-market bias, unemployment and immigration

Aschwin de Wolf — Sun, 16 May 2010 09:22:18 PDT

Economist Bryan Caplan discusses the important topic of market-clearing wages. Why are wages not falling during the recession in order to establish equilibrium and full employment? Caplan gives an answer that seems common sense but receives little attention from professional economists and politicians. Is labor market rigidity a market failure? ...

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