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Major Libertarian Thinker On Human ‘Failures’: ‘It Is Best They Should Die’

Major Libertarian Thinker On Human ‘Failures’: ‘It Is Best They Should Die’

The fact that Cato and Reason both reacted so swiftly is a testament to the central place Spencer holds in the development of libertarian thought. According to Rothbard, who the elder Paul describes as the “founder of the modern libertarian movement,” Spencer’s Social Statics is the “greatest single work of libertarian political philosophy ever written.” Yet this foundational libertarian text does not say what Root and Cato claim that it said. Indeed, if Social Statics is, indeed, the “greatest single work of libertarian political philosophy ever written” then that is the most damning indictment of libertarianism imaginable.

This is why it’s a waste of time to argue with libertarians. Both Cato and Reason just flat out denied the text of the book said what it clearly says.

This is exactly how Reason reacted to being called out of publishing Holocaust denials. The PDFs are online but they claim they didn’t publish what you can clearly see they published.

Why not admit you were wrong; apologize and move on?

Rand Paul’s Favorite Philosophers Think Poor People Are ‘Parasites’

Rand Paul’s Favorite Philosophers Think Poor People Are ‘Parasites’

Spencer’s own philosophy can safely be described as genocidal libertarianism. In Social Statics, the book Rothbard raises up as the “greatest single work of libertarian political philosophy ever written,” Spencer argues that “[i]nconvenience, suffering, and death are the penalties attached by nature to ignorance, as well as to incompetence.” They are also, he adds, “the means of remedying” these traits. “By weeding out those of lowest development” Spencer explained, “nature secures the growth of a race who shall both understand the conditions of existence, and be able to act up to them… . Nature demands that every being shall be self-sufficing. All that are not so, nature is perpetually withdrawing by death.”
Rather than proving nature’s cruelty, Spencer believed that this deadly game “purif[ied] society from those who are, in some respect or other, essentially faulty.” If a man or woman is “sufficiently complete to live,” then they should live. But if “they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best they should die.”
Needless to say, Spencer saw no place for what he labeled “[a]cts of parliament to save silly people.”

The good old days when libertarians didn’t bother to pretend to care about the poor. These days they pretend that government programs are the cause of poverty. Because poverty didn’t exist in pre-new deal America. And something-something didn’t you read Atlas Shrugged?

The standard defense of this is to claim that that isn’t libertarianism or to claim a straw man. Or that the free market magic will somehow prevent this.

You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.

You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.

It looks like the gold bubble is over and the price will be back to the pre-crisis trend line about the same time that the economy, unemployment and other metrics reach the pre-crisis trend lines. So it’s time to dust off the greatest.quote.about.gold.EVER.

Today the world’s gold stock is about 170,000 metric tons. If all of this gold were melded together, it would form a cube of about 68 feet per side. (Picture it fitting comfortably within a baseball infield.) At $1,750 per ounce — gold’s price as I write this — its value would be about $9.6 trillion. Call this cube pile A.

Let’s now create a pile B costing an equal amount. For that, we could buy all U.S. cropland (400 million acres with output of about $200 billion annually), plus 16 Exxon Mobils (the world’s most profitable company, one earning more than $40 billion annually). After these purchases, we would have about $1 trillion left over for walking-around money (no sense feeling strapped after this buying binge). Can you imagine an investor with $9.6 trillion selecting pile A over pile B?

Beyond the staggering valuation given the existing stock of gold, current prices make today’s annual production of gold command about $160 billion. Buyers — whether jewelry and industrial users, frightened individuals, or speculators — must continually absorb this additional supply to merely maintain an equilibrium at present prices.

A century from now the 400 million acres of farmland will have produced staggering amounts of corn, wheat, cotton, and other crops — and will continue to produce that valuable bounty, whatever the currency may be. Exxon Mobil XOM -1.37% will probably have delivered trillions of dollars in dividends to its owners and will also hold assets worth many more trillions (and, remember, you get 16 Exxons). The 170,000 tons of gold will be unchanged in size and still incapable of producing anything. You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.

Rand Paul accidentally proposed legalizing murder

Rand Paul accidentally proposed legalizing murder

Paul said that in his vision for America, “Any law that disproportionately incarcerates people of color is repealed.” The problem is that that describes pretty much every law that incarcerates a lot of people in America — the nonviolent drug offenses Paul often rails against, sure, but also violent crimes and property crimes.

For those playing at home, Mr. Paul just called for adjusting the law based on the race of the accused. Let’s see if libertarians call him out on this. My guess is no.

Rand Paul Joins Crowded Field of People Who Will Never Be President – The New Yorker

Rand Paul Joins Crowded Field of People Who Will Never Be President – The New Yorker

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, and neurosurgeon Ben Carson are just a few of the men thought to be considering squandering time and money pursuing an office that they will never occupy in a billion years.

Why Is Indiana’s Religious Freedom Law Different From All Other Religious Freedom Laws?

Why Is Indiana’s Religious Freedom Law Different From All Other Religious Freedom Laws?

the Indiana law explicitly allows any for-profit business to assert a right to “the free exercise of religion.” The federal RFRA doesn’t contain such language, and neither does any of the state RFRAs except South Carolina’s; in fact, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, explicitly exclude for-profit businesses from the protection of their RFRAs.

Welcome to a world where peices of paper are granted Religious Freedom.

A Strong Welfare State Produces More Entrepreneurs

A Strong Welfare State Produces More Entrepreneurs

The mechanism in each case is the same: publicly funded insurance lowers the risk of starting a business, since entrepreneurs needn’t fear financial ruin. (This same logic explains why more forgiving bankruptcy laws are associated with more entrepreneurship.)

Completely sensible argument that leaves me wondering why GEDI statistics seem to show little to no correlation between welfare state expenditures and entrepreneurship. But WMF stats show a correlation between time and cost to start a business and entrepreneurship.