Saturday, December 29, 2018

School Voucher Dangers

Taxpayer vouchers allowing students to attend private schools is a bad idea, despite the growing hype for it, for a number of reasons:

Sunday, December 23, 2018

Where do you get your rights from?

Empathy empowers rights.

Libertarianism is inherently empathetic. Libertarians respect individual conscience in all things. We imagine how others…

  • want to be treated, and deal with them accordingly (the Golden Rule)
  • don’t want to be treated, and we respect their boundaries (the Non Aggression Principle)

Empathy is a regard for others. It was empathy that motivated humans to create a legal system. We all recognize that none of us wants to be…

  • Threatened
  • Robbed
  • Murdered
  • Cheated

We support due process and the presumption of innocence because of empathy. We imagine how we would feel if we were falsely accused. Thus…

Our rights are empowered by empathy! Your neighbor could menace, steal from, or slaughter you. You could do the same to him. Instead, you each recognize that…

Empathy feels good, achieves good, and returns good.

This makes empathy a better social strategy than bullying force. Empathy fosters positive reciprocity.  By contrast, The State…

  • Threatens and initiates force
  • Is funded by violent means

These practices negate empathy. They replace positive reciprocity with political warfare. If you lose the political contest then I impose on you, and vice versa. Empathetic libertarianism rejects political warfare in favor of non-violent persuasion, cooperation, and tolerance.


Do you agree that we shouldn’t aggress against anyone just as we wouldn’t want anyone to aggress against ourselves? If yes, help us promote these ideas by sharing this page with others. Thanks! 

Friday, December 21, 2018

How do libertarians view politics?

KEY CONCEPT: Politics is inherently sociopathic.

A sociopath feels no empathy. Now consider people’s political behavior. They…

  • Vote for politicians who initiate force
  • Delight when their partisan enemies lose
  • Feel no sympathy for people who must submit to policies they hate
  • Endorse State actions they would normally consider criminal

In short, voters feel no empathy for the losing side. Instead, they actually feel joy when force is initiated against the minority view. This is sociopathic.

Reject this depravity. Embrace empathy-based Non-Aggression.

  • Don’t initiate force, personally or politically
  • Limit force to defense of person or private-property only
  • Don’t use voting to violate the private-property rights of others


If this viewpoint attracts you then please share this page with others!

Thursday, December 20, 2018

Who is a Voluntaryist?

A voluntaryist libertarian believes that all adult relationships should be voluntary.

A voluntary society is what results when you apply the Non-Aggression Principle (the NAP) consistently. This means that institutions of governance must be…

  • Voluntarily funded (no taxes)
  • Open to competition (no legal monopolies)

The result is something we call consumer-controlled governance. In other words, citizens should have the power to withhold funding from government functions they disapprove of, or to choose another service provider.

Some libertarians disagree. They make exceptions to the Non-Aggression Principle. They argue that some legitimate government functions, such as police, courts, national defense, and pollution control, require taxation, though they still hope to limit those functions and taxes.

Voluntaryists believe this approach is both immoral and impractical. It’s immoral because it initiates force. It’s impractical because  it…

  • Divorces government from the need to perform well.
  • Gives politicians vast powers that must inevitably expand.

This is why tax-funded government tends to be wasteful and inefficient. It’s also why tax-funded government constantly grows. There is no way to prevent this once you permit the power to initiate force. Thus…

Voluntaryists make NO exceptions to the NAP. Force must never be initiated. Force must only be used defensively.

The voluntaryist thinks empathetically when evaluating all political proposals. We put ourselves in the shoes of those affected — not only those who would benefit from some coercive political proposal, but also those who would be harmed by it. We ask if we would want to be treated that way, and then act accordingly.

Voluntaryism

Do you agree that force should only be used defensively? If yes, help us promote these ideas by sharing this page with others. Thanks!

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Who is a libertarian?

The one thing all libertarians agree on is that...

The focus should be on ELIMINATING or at least REDUCING as much as possible the level of aggression that is legally and socially permissible.

When presented with a social problem, the libertarian’s FIRST and primary question is

Will the proposed solution involve threats or the initiation of force, or will it rely on persuasion and perhaps even reduce the present level of initiated violence?

This is because libertarians, more than any other political philosophy, are concerned about the means that are used to achieve an end.

The libertarian has a Mental Lever in mind, that tells him or her…
  • it’s wrong to initiate force to achieve social goals; persuasion and voluntary cooperation are better.
  • acts of coercion are very likely to cause more harm than good.
  • threats and actual, initiated violence violate the conscience and happiness of individuals.
All of this thinking is packed into the Golden Rule concept known as the Non-Aggression Principle. Libertarians use an empathetic approach. Thus it’s no surprise that…

Libertarians can share your social concerns! They can be intensely concerned about health care, education, homelessness, terrorism, and violence on the streets. He or she can and often does agree, that there are indeed social problems. And problems need solutions!

And while the libertarian will often be ready to join you in creating those solutions, he/she will be just as concerned about the means you propose to use.

In other words, the libertarian is critical of statist programs — because these schemes initiate force.

The libertarian will want to take direct, peaceful, voluntary action to solve the problem. They will not want to wait while you lobby Congress. It’s both inefficient and rude to pass a law compelling submission to one master plan. To enlist libertarian support, you’ll need a more empathetic, cooperative solution, that still leaves room for other people to try their preferred solutions.


If you agree with eliminating or reducing aggression as much as possible, please share this page with others. Thanks!

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

What is aggression or initiated force?

Initiated force is what justifies defensive force.

What do libertarians mean when they talk about aggression or initiated force? Initiated force is like throwing the first punch. But it’s more than that. It includes using threats of violence to gain submission.

Criminals do this without trying to justify it. But the most adept gangsters — politicians — make excuses. They claim their terrorism is needed to achieve indispensable goals. Notice how twisted this is. You would never try to achieve good ends by….
  • Pointing guns at people
  • Threatening to cage people
  • Shooting people for resisting your good intentions
But that’s exactly how politicians use the “gunpoint proxy” you give them.
  • They act in your name, if not at your direction
  • Their “policies” threaten violence
  • You must obey and pay, or armed agents will harm you
Politicians hide this brutality behind weasel-words like “public policy,” “national security”, “unintended consequences” and “collateral damage.” But the victims are real. We aim to zero-out this harm. Widespread acceptance of the Non-Aggression Principle will encourage people to…
  • Look for the gun behind every State action
  • Feel empathy for the victims
  • End initiated force

If you like these ideas then please share this page with others.

Monday, December 17, 2018

What is the Non-Aggression Principle?

The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) is THE core libertarian idea. It says — Don’t aggress or initiate force against anyone, personally or politically.

It means:

  • Do not use force except for defensive purposes.
  • Let each individual live as he/she wills, provided he/she permits the same to others.


Libertarians want a world where force is used only defensively — no aggression!


If you like the idea of Non-Aggression, then please share this page with others!