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Showing posts from May, 2019

Against the IFP

Centralizing control over a currency’s infrastructure is a seemingly obvious mistake.

One would think any Austro-libertarian worth their salt would be able to see thru such a charade. Yet here we are, again. Face to face with economic illiteracy. Not garden variety lefist economic illiteracy, but one far more stinging and painful - one which comes from within our own community, rather than from without. 

First, Bitcoiners faced the economic illiteracy of maximalism and small blockers. Attempts to masquerade money’s primary function as value storage (Ammous) or rejecting Menger’s Regression Theorem altogether (Szabo) are luckily demonstrably false. Nevertheless, the shock of our fellow Bitcoiners illiteracy was like an unexpected slap in the face. Suddenly, we were forced to confront the fact that the ignorance of our allies in the fight for sound money, had led them astray. Yet, thru BCH we were thankfully able to keep Satoshi’s dream of peer to peer cash intact. 
Well, crypto anarch…
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Reflections on Ron Paul's Revolution: Taxation is Theft

Ron Paul's Revolution: A Manifesto, is without a doubt a cornerstone and gem in Libertarian literature. Some might call it a "soft landing", but it's a fantastic entry into exploring Libertarian thought in a perfectly succinct, enlightening, genius way. No offense to Human Action, but to hell with Human Action! I'm joking of course, but this little guy at a whopping 186 pages (if you include the edition with a chapter on the economic crisis) covers all the basic principles of liberty ammunition for any debate, enlightening conversation, and just straight up knowledge to make you a little less dumb. Now unlike my fellow colleagues of this blog who have been around the liberty block a bit longer than myself and are probably a few or 20 IQ points higher than me (if you believe in that garbage), I'm kinda lazy. I don't really feel like doing an entire book review, despite how I just went off on how short and awesome it is. I feel like my favorite chapter woul…
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Milton William Cooper: Behold a Pale Horse | Book Review

Conspiracy theories play an elementary role in the pursuit of truth. After all, they tend to arise from speculation in cases with lack of information or holes in the story in order to make sense of the world based on what one already knows or think one knows. Some of these are rather easy to debunk theoretically (such as the flat earth theory's irreconcilability with gravity), but many are more difficult to completely refute, perhaps because of a lack of information or the theory being a half-truth where its hard to separate fact and fiction.

Investigating and thinking out conspiracy theories can be a challenging psychological exercise, and some of them can be pretty stressful to consider the plausibility of (such as corrupt and outright evil conduct by the elites), where it's potential truth (or lack thereof) is especially significant.



In Behold a Pale Horse, Milton William Cooper outlines a number of significant conspiracy theories: secret societies, the New World Order, FE…
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Walter Block: The Privatization of Roads and Highways | Book Review

The Road-book in all its glory.
If you have seen (or even participated in) a discussion between someone that is pro-state and someone that is anti-state, chances are you've seen the phrase "But, what about the roads?". Walter Block tries answering that question with a 475 pages strong book on The Privatization of Roads and Highways.


"Just as no one 'opposes' or 'protests' a volcano, which is believed to be beyond the control of man, there are very few who oppose the governmental roadway control"  - Walter Block
Its no small task to criticize the current road-management system, but to also offer up alternatives to something as fundamental and socialized as roads, is a mountain few would want to climb. Where do you even start? Well, in Mr. Blocks case he just starts in one corner and continue forward until there is no stone left to turn on the subject.

Huge chunks of the book is Walter Block picking out critique from other economists (mainly, with …
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Edward Stringham: Private Governance | Book Review

There is a wide-spread conception - not only among Socialists, but also many Social Democrats and Conservatives - that the market would be driven to chaos if it were not regulated by the State, and that it therefore needs to be "kept in check" through the implicit threat of coercion if it did not behave according to its dictates. In Private Governance, Edward P. Stringham challenges this view, by delineating how the stock market, online commerce, private police and complex financial markets have been well self-regulated throughout history, and that when the State endeavors to take over the task of regulation of this and that industry, the result of the substitution of statutory regulation for self-regulation often turns out as a net negative, as State actors have far less of an understanding of how the industries work and less of an incentive to avoid either too little or excessive regulation.

Though the author's logic seems to endeavor towards favoring a Stateless soc…
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Alyssa Milano: All Dried Up

So, apparently this past Friday (May 10) there was a sex strike. What? You didn’t hear about it? Oh. Well then you must have been busy being a toxic, patriarchal bigot, enslaving women with your male dominance.

Or maybe you were just being a normal human being having sex. If not, don’t worry (you’re not alone). You were most likely too busy going about life and enjoying your weekend, or maybe even scrambling together last minute Mother’s Day plans.

Whatever you were doing, I’m sure you weren’t doing what actress Alyssa Milano was doing. Apparently, she called for some sex strike in response to restrictive abortion laws, which is a contradiction if I’ve ever heard one. As if her blue Metropolis stomping grounds is preventing women from seeking abortions. Maybe not, but the state of Georgia is, which happens to be where the film and TV industry shoots a lot of projects. Milano had urged the industry to leave GA if it indeed became law, and since governor Brian Kemp signed the bill, th…
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Tokenizing Konkin

Heads up to the SEC: You parasites are officially on notice.

As anyone who has been following along at The Agora or The New Libertarian is well aware - we here are of the conviction that the coming tokenization of securities and assets will successfully disintermediate FINRA. A while back I wrote this article explaining how tokens are to the SEC as 3D-printers are to the ATF, or cryptocurrencies are to the Federal Reserve.

With this in mind, I decided to take the SLP token creator in Electron Cash for a spin. To my pleasant surprise, I discovered that the process is so simple, that in comparison, it makes assembling IKEA furniture seem like splitting the atom. For detailed instructions, check out this wonderful article by Jamie Redman or this recent tutorial by Roger Ver.

Anyway, in less than 10 minutes I had created 10.5 million KonkinCoin, with ticker symbol “SEK3” to honor the late founder of agorism and moved them all into my Badger wallet.

The first thing to stand out (other…
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The Growth of the American Police State

Among the many violations of the rights to life, liberty, and property Americans have experienced in later decades, the increasing degree of police brutality has played an especially scarring role. Every year, over a thousand people are killed by the police, and every single day there are new victims who lose their lives or get raped, beaten, tortured, or robbed by police officers. Congress and the courts have been complicit in this development, allowing the vast majority of cops accused of misconduct go without punishment or financial liabilities and providing them with increasingly larger budgets and more powerful military equipment. Looking at the bigger picture of police brutality in the United States, one may recognize commonalities with more totalitarian and repressive States like Russia and China, and that may be where the US is approaching if it does not soon change its course. In this article, I'll attempt to diagnose how widespread the issue of police brutality is in th…
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