Max, a little over a year ago you wrote a post called Nihilism: The Complex and the Caliphate. About the situation surrounding the start of Israel's Operation Iron Swords. It's a clever blend of ideas,…
A response to an article by philosopher Michael Huemer on AI risk, and why he believes the most dire concerns are unwarranted. I hope to show why he's mistaken.…
A person has a burden of proof when–and only when–they want to persuade another.…
In Ancapistan - a libertarian society with private law and no state - coordination problems are solved organically by private ownership and torts.…
An analogy doesn't imply that two things are similar in every way, or even most ways; they’re similar in a limited way that’s relevant to the topic of the discussion.…
I think it’s unwise to attach normative judgements to empirical claims about the world that might turn out to be true.…
When an act of snooping is itself subject to watching eyes, and indelibly etched into the public record, is it still worth it?…
A decision is mine, it’s the product of my will, to the extent that the prior state of my brain causes it.…
I'm convinced that if we want to prepare our children for the real world, we can do a lot better than sending them to school.…
A person considers a thing his property if he believes he’s justified in using force to exclude others from its unauthorised use.…
If I had the power to persuade non-libertarians to read one book right now I’d choose for it to be The Problem of Political Authority by Michael Huemer.…
It is false that voluntary exchange always benefits both parties in the ex ante sense. At least some voluntary exchanges are precipitated by factors not under conscious control, and thus not sensitive to expectation of benefit in the usually understood sense.…
Easy access to a firearm may be the dispositive factor that leads the marginal killer to commit a crime , increasing the homicide rate. But firearms are also used defensively, and in these ways guns decrease the homicide rate.…
I hope to show here that it's not a right to healthcare that you really want, but something much more valuable.…
I identify as an anarcho-capitalist and a moral nihilist. Here I'll sketch how these pieces fit together for me.…
Followers of Rothbard invoke the non-aggression principle (NAP) as the standard against which the permissibility of any action is to be judged. But the NAP is insufficient for this use. I call this idea non-aggression principle insufficiency. NAPI for short.…
There should be a strong presumption against threatening people with violence — Unless those people are threatening others, or violating their property rights (e.g. Robbers, murderers, rapists).…
We have two groups with opposing views about the appropriateness of this tradition. The stakes of the conflict are raised by the poisonous involvement of the state.…
Libertarians cannot assume that a state-controlled open border policy is automatically a more libertarian option than the state restrictively policing the border.…
Private ‘Rights Enforcement Agencies’ allow a granular approach, better for finding the proper balance between the harms and benefits of gun ownership.…