 Eden is an Illusion
by G. Stolyarov II
Beyond being destructive, the Eden myth is simply false. There never was a "better" state from which human beings have "descended." Mr. Stolyarov explores why the Fall is an illusion that ought to be abandoned. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
December 17, 2008 |
 The Minimal Secular Agenda Regarding Religious Belief
by G. Stolyarov II
In order to achieve peaceful coexistence among all individuals, Mr. Stolyarov presents a list of understandings which he believes all religious people need to adopt and that any reasonable secularist should expect them to adopt. Adopting the Minimal Secular Agenda Regarding Religious Belief (MSARRB) will defuse tensions among the religious and non-religious and will enable more peaceful, mutually respectful, and productive interactions among them. (Read more...)
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How to Approach Unjust Laws
by G. Stolyarov II
How do we, as private citizens seeking justice, approach the many unjust laws existing today? What is the best way to act in order to ensure that the harms of these laws are minimized and that they are eventually repealed – without bringing harm on oneself or those for whom one cares? Mr. Stolyarov proposes a few guidelines for thinking about these questions. (Read more...)
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How to Privatize the Roads: The Mechanisms and Benefits of Road Privatization
by G. Stolyarov II
Mr. Stolyarov demonstrates that the transfer of all roads to private ownership is feasible and desirable. He discusses how it might work and presents real-world instances in which it has worked. (Read more...)
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How Big Government Breeds Vice: Perverse Incentives of the Welfare State
by G. Stolyarov II
Expanding the scope and power of government cannot make people more virtuous than they otherwise would be. But it certainly can make them less moral than they would have been in a free society. Vast government controls, social programs, and handouts, by encouraging permanent dependence on entitlements, lead to a steady decline in the moral characters of large numbers of people. (Read more...)
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The Follies of Gun Control
by G. Stolyarov II
When it comes to restricting private individuals’ Second Amendment rights, it seems that the world must turn upside down to justify gun control. Criminals need to obey the law, limited human beings need to be present everywhere and respond to anything, inanimate objects need to assume a volition of their own, and parents all of a sudden need to become totally oblivious to what their children are doing. (Read more...)
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WALL-E, Economic Ignorance, and the War on Modernity
by G. Stolyarov II
The Disney/Pixar film WALL-E has been adoringly received by the majority of the theater-going public. This adoration is unjustified. The film's creators show an egregious ignorance of basic economics and of commonsense insights regarding the nature of human behaviors and the incentives facing individual economic actors. (Read more...)
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Why the Right Should Stop Attacking Homosexuality
by G. Stolyarov II
Mr. Stolyarov makes an appeal to everyone on the political Right to cease attacking homosexual individuals as immoral, obscene, vicious, flawed, self-destructive, or unnatural. He urges the withdrawal of all objections to homosexual marriage or open manifestations of homosexual preferences – provided that those manifestations are done civilly and in accord with the same expectations of good taste as accompany manifestations of heterosexual preference. (Read more...)
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Civility: A Powerful Weapon
by G. Stolyarov II
Advocates of political freedom and strong ethical standards have a powerful weapon on their side – if they choose to use it. In an age where too many people are ready to hurl insults at one another at the onset of any discussion or debate, civility sets one apart from the crowd and gives one a chance to actually persuade people of the soundness of one’s views. (Read more...)
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 An Atheist's Response to Pascal's Wager
by G. Stolyarov II
Pascal’s Wager is one of the more respectable arguments in favor of religion. As an atheist, Mr. Stolyarov is nonetheless sympathetic to this argument, because it attempts to use reason to actually persuade people to believe in God, rather than circularly using the Bible as a reason to believe in the truth of the Bible. Of course, as an atheist, Mr. Stolyarov also believes that Pascal’s Wager is a mistaken argument. But here he will give it the consideration it deserves. (Read more...)
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Affirmative Action and Blood Guilt
by G. Stolyarov II
The heinous idea of blood guilt is alive and well today in the United States. Yes, the same kind of fundamental mindset that characterized the policies of the governments of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union is today advocated by proponents of affirmative action. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
December 13, 2006 |
 Frederic Bastiat on Self-Interest
by G. Stolyarov II
An intricate and multifaceted understanding of the role of self-interest in economic behavior underpins the economic writings of Claude Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850), a French classical liberal thinker, free-trade activist, and delegate to the French National Assembly. Bastiat saw the self-interest motive as central to human nature but capable of leading to diametrically opposite consequences depending on whether this motive was employed in peaceful production and voluntary exchange or in the plundering of others through crime or through the enshrinement of plunder in the law. Mr. Stolyarov examines Bastiat’s view of self-interest’s dual tendencies and the societies each of them leads to. In free markets where property is secure, self-interest results in prosperity, peace, harmony, and morality. In a redistributive state, however, man is pitted against man in perpetually recurring “legal plunder,” which is reinforced by the self-interest of politicians, special interest groups (rent-seekers), and the plundered classes who wish to enter government and remake the law to make themselves the plunderers. (Read more...)
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In Praise of Investing Money Gained from Tax Cuts
by G. Stolyarov II
Mr. Stolyarov refutes several fallacious objections to the scenario of tax cut recipients investing the money they gain. He addresses three of these objections using the principles of economics and rational self-interest to display the virtues of such an outcome. Indeed, no damage will result from investment of such money; quite the contrary, this practice will fuel economic growth in the United States and rising standards of living for Americans as well as other individuals worldwide. (Read more...)
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Profit is Moral
by G. Stolyarov II
Mr. Stolyarov argues that the profit motive is one of the noblest forces that can impel a man to act. Profits are necessary for an individual to flourish and improve his own life. Mr. Stolyarov further refutes the idea that the pursuit of profit can ever harm other people; he shows how the profit motive always either benefits or at least does not harm others. (Read more...)
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 Honesty versus Brutal Frankness
by G. Stolyarov II
A popular misconception of honesty equates the virtue with always “telling it like it is” and not holding back any of one’s thoughts about a person, idea, or situation—no matter what the consequences of those thoughts. This view and its real-world applications are antithetical to genuine honesty. Mr. Stolyarov describes genuine honesty as being true to oneself above all and always striving to act on one’s best understanding of reality and one’s genuine self-interest. (Read more...)
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Ideas Require Application
by G. Stolyarov II
Mr. Stolyarov refutes the prevalent mindset among intellectuals that truth must be pursued solely for its own sake. Rather, he contends that the purpose of truth is to enable the individual to survive and flourish. Mr. Stolyarov presents a theory of the three vital components of truth and an imperative for intellectuals to turn their minds outward toward benefiting themselves by means of the external reality. (Read more...)
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Trade is Mutually Beneficial
by G. Stolyarov II
Mr. Stolyarov discusses the benefits conferred by trade to all parties involved. Trade is superior to the alternative systems of coercion and sacrifice in that—under trade—everybody wins and nobody loses. Trade is fundamental to the capitalist system and encourages productivity, prudence, and virtue. Furthermore, trade in itself is productive. (Read more...)
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Working on the Fringes: How to Create Effective Political, Cultural, and Intellectual Change
by G. Stolyarov II
Mr. Stolyarov advocates an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary approach to changing the political and cultural status quo; he suggests that friends of liberty and reason try to focus on the fringe issues which few people in the mainstream notice, rather than on contentious core issues where any forward movement will be thwarted by dominant orthodoxies and counter-orthodoxies. (Read more...)
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The Harms of Drugs versus the Harms of the War on Drugs
by G. Stolyarov II
Mr. Stolyarov has no sympathy for drug addicts; he morally disapproves of their behavior. However, the drug addicts would harm only themselves and willing associates were it not for the coercive illegalization of drugs. This essay argues the case of all those innocent, moral, productive individuals who are harmed by the government-waged War on Drugs. Compared to the damage the War on Drugs inflicts on good people, the harms from drug-taking itself are minimal. (Read more...)
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Why Public Utility Monopolies Fail
by G. Stolyarov II
Mr. Stolyarov uses Friedrich Hayek's insights on the dynamic, discovery-oriented nature of the market process to show why "public" utility monopolies—which inherently inhibit such a process—are bound to experience waste, inefficiency, and failure unless privatized. (Read more...)
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 A Review of Edward W. Younkins's Philosophers of Capitalism
by G. Stolyarov II
Mr. Stolyarov reviews a new anthology edited by Dr. Edward W. Younkins-- a renowned contemporary scholar of Objectivism and Austrian Economics. Mr. Stolyarov applauds Dr. Younkins's effort at creating a powerful libertarian synthesis by integrating the best elements of those two schools of thought. (Read more...)
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Wealth is Produced
by G. Stolyarov II
Special interest groups often attempt to expropriate others, justifying their actions by claiming “their share of the economic pie.” They are able to get away with violating genuinely productive individuals’ property rights by exploiting a widespread fallacy. This fallacy is the zero-sum view of wealth, perpetrated since at least the days of regulated Mercantilist economies. Its advocates view the amount of wealth in the world as static: what one man gains, another must lose. The “economic pie” was always there, and it was always the same size. Mr. Stolyarov refutes this view and argues that wealth can and must be created; its creation requires private property and free markets. (Read more...)
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Argumentum ad Experientiam
by G. Stolyarov II
Certain ad hominem appeals, to race, gender, or nationality, for example, are bigotry in the most transparent sense. However, the ad hominem appeal to an opponent’s inexperience is a more subtle variation of “poisoning the well,” and thus still retains considerable respectability in the modern culture. (Read more...)
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Michael Moore's Mystery Message
by G. Stolyarov II
Gather round, and I shall teach you a new game, called “Michael Moore’s Mystery Message.” It is a fun game, really; you get to see a film, visit a colorful website, manage a few ironic laughs at someone who seeks to make you laugh at President Bush, and, at the end, receive a grand prize. What is this prize? That is a mystery to be unraveled, much like Michael Moore’s message. Are you ready? (Read more...)
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 The Draft Dodger
by G. Stolyarov II
I let this poem speak for a man typically derided and considered an unpatriotic villain by the mainstream culture. I reveal the courage and fortitude of convictions that those who evade conscription can demonstrate. (Read more...)
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