Saturday
September 29, 2012 |
 Frankness About Wealth Redistribution
by Tibor R. Machan
Government’s redistribution of the citizens’ wealth is unavoidable unless taxation is abolished. Even the most minimal of taxation brings about such redistribution. (Read more...)
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Thursday
September 20, 2012 |
 Elementary Dear Obama
by Tibor R. Machan
Ok, so none of us creates or produces anything ex nihilo. What, if anything, follows from this? Our teeth weren’t made by us, nor our hair or nose or eyes. Yet we often benefit because of these. Our beautiful eyes may impress someone and may even land us a movie contract. We may be very tall and do well at basketball in consequence. A few of us may have talents others would kill for! (Read more...)
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Tuesday
September 11, 2012 |
Dworkin’s Plain Statism
by Tibor R. Machan
As is usually the case, The New York Review of Books gives ample room to some Leftist jurists, like Professors David Cole or Ronald Dworkin, to provide the politically correct commentary on a major ruling by the U. S. Supreme Court. And, so unsurprisingly, Professor Dworkin penned such a piece in the magazine’s August 16, 2012, issue. It is a beauty of statist jurisprudence arguing that all in all the Roberts Court’s recent decision to give President Obama’s signature health care program a pass was a welcome thing from the Left’s perspective. (Others, like Professor Randy Barnett, have made arguments from the libertarian side, holding that the ruling isn't so bad for those who want to advance the cause of human liberty. See the interview with Professor Barnett in Reason, October 2012.) (Read more...)
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 A Proposal to Completely Eliminate Federal Income Tax
by Paul Hibbert
Craig Biddle in his article, How Would Government Be Funded in a Free Society?, in The Objective Standard makes a convincing argument for a means for voluntary funding of legitimate government activities. However, I think that more motivation is required to accomplish this ideal. The article details a means of directing funds according to the political and economic aspirations of the individual donors. (Read more...)
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How Can Obama Not Turn Our Backs on Failing Businesses?
by Tibor R. Machan
Like a monarch, Mr. Obama sees the country’s wealth to be his wealth. He has no respect for private property rights--all property belongs, as argued by his favorite political philosophers Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel (in their book The Myth of Ownership), to the country and is not the property of the citizens of the country! (Read more...)
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Another Attempt to Bluff Us All
by Tibor R. Machan
Those aspiring to manage our lives, to take it over and run it according to their vision, never tire of trying to bluff us into letting down our guards. Now come Robert and Edward Skidelsky, in a book titled How Much is Enough? (Allen Lane, 2012), claiming that there’s just too much capitalism afoot and this must be contained. I assume by them and their pals. They urge us to re-examine economic growth “as an end in itself,” without any connection to “what a good life might look like.” (Read more...)
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When you've lost yourself..
by William Anthony Bardel
The musings of someone who has lost themself and wishes to share the experiece with others of like minds. The lack of desire is a disease that corrupts the soul and is, in my opinion, death among the living. A living zombie tries to philosophize his way out of stasis, and jolt self-motivation through the fundamentals of Ayn Rand's way of thinking. In this way he searches for purpose and fulfiulliment. Other writings follow, hoping to utlilize what he has learned of Ayn Rand's philosophy and how it must apply. (Read more...)
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Another Plea For More Statism!
by Tibor R. Machan
I recently read Zanie Smith’s essay, “North West London Blues,” in The New York Review of Books, and found it an insulting, devious, and roundabout way of trying to justify statism (Read more...)
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Sometimes a Great Notion: The Story of a Family Who Would Never Give an Inch
by Edward W. Younkins
Ken Kesey’s novel, Sometimes a Great Notion (1964), is a complex and integrated historical background and relationship study of the Stamper family, a prideful logging clan living in Wakonda, Oregon. This big story involves a man, his family, a town, the country, a period of time, and the effects of time. All of the ele... (Read more...)
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What’s the Fuss About those Uniforms?
by Tibor R. Machan
Senator Reid was sounding like the United States of America is at war with any nation in which there are firms that produce commodities that fulfill the needs of companies producing goods and services for American consumers. Next Senator Reid will call for declaring war on any country that doesn’t fall in line with his standards of acceptable trading partnership. (Read more...)
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On Insider Trading
by Merlin Jetton
I will argue that insider trading is a diminution of property rights for some (most) shareholders. (Read more...)
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The story of Adam and Steve (a fable).
by Ed Thompson
A fable about the free market. (Read more...)
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Anticipated the Reasoning by the Court
by Tibor R. Machan
So here is a wonderful opportunity for the current crop of Republicans, with Mitt Romney leading them in the next few months, to mount a bona fide, no holds barred revolution that will complete the first one. Ron Paul might have been counted upon to lead it but one may doubt that Mitt Romney is going to go there. Too many leaders of and people within the Republican Party remain statists who believe that the government rules the people instead of serving them. (Read more...)
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Did Rubio’s Parents Do Right?
by Tibor R. Machan
Let me tell you right away that when you live in a hopelessly defunct country, it makes little difference whether you are oppressed or impoverished. Both can kill you good, and both are mostly the result of how the country is being run by the politicians who have taken it over. (Read more...)
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Jobs From Forced Charity--the Socialist way.
by Tibor R. Machan
It appears, based on the economic philosophy he has been outlining in recent weeks, that President Obama believes that jobs based on economic transactions, exchanges, trade, and so forth, do not matter, have no significance. This has a very serious foundation, to which I will turn later in this short discussion. (Read more...)
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Flourishing and Happiness in a Nutshell
by Edward W. Younkins
By integrating features found in the writings of Aristotle, Austrian economists, Ayn Rand, and a number of contemporary thinkers, we have the potential to develop a powerful, reality-based argument for a free society in which individuals have the opportunity to flourish and to be happy. Modern contributors to this appr... (Read more...)
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Machan's Archives: Genuine Military Defense Anyone? (updated)
by Tibor R. Machan
As much as one may object to Iran's government’s efforts to build atomic weapons, the American government isn’t supposed to be some kind of meta-police that embarks upon restraining such governments! Certainly spending American taxpayers’ funds on conducting military actions against Iran would be going way beyond the proper military role of the American government, which is to protect its citizen’s freedom from domestic and foreign criminals. (Read more...)
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Seattle, America’s Europe?
by Tibor R. Machan
On a recent trip to Seattle, which I visit on and off quite a lot, I found the place to have just the kind of feel I have experienced in Stockholm and Oslo and in cities, big and small, throughout Austria and Switzerland. (Read more...)
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Creation of an Ethical Business: The Implementation of Virtuous Behavior and Shared Values and Goals
by Jessica L. Kuryn
In today’s competitive business environment, a growing number of firms will do almost anything to gain sales and customers, as well as to increase profits. For some of these firms, playing by the rules doesn’t achieve the results they are after. Firms have the choice to act ethically or unethically. While misguided ... (Read more...)
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The Face of Egalitarianism
by Tibor R. Machan
A few weeks ago they ran the famous Oxford v. Cambridge rowing race on the Thames but a fanatical egalitarian, Mr. Trenton Oldfield from Australia, ruined it for everyone by jumping in the river and blocking the race in the name of resisting the elitism of rowing! He was dubbed in the UK the “anarchist swimmer” and has mounted some other guerrilla strikes to make his point. Among other things he is urging cabbies to take well to do passengers on long detours and cleaners not to place toilet paper where they are expected to serve rich folks. (Read more...)
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Objectivist Virtue Ethics in Business
by Edward W. Younkins
Virtuous actions can lead to the achievement of values. When one’s context is reduced to business, virtue theory contends that pursuing virtuous principles, strategies, and actions can result in firms realizing their values including their mission, purpose, profit potential, and other goals. Virtuous employees tend to ... (Read more...)
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 When the Soul Stalkers Come
by Paul Hibbert
Beware of the soul stalkers (Read more...)
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Henry Hazlitt's Time Will Run Back: A Tale of the Reinvention of Capitalism
by Edward W. Younkins
Henry Hazlitt’s novel, Time will Run Back, was originally published in 1951 as The Great Idea. It teaches that if capitalism did not exist, then it would be necessary to invent it. It makes the case that the discovery of capitalism is one of the greatest triumphs of the human mind. In his nonfiction works Hazlitt is a ... (Read more...)
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What about those Hoodies?
by Tibor R. Machan
Over the last couple of weeks I have been waiting for something to be mentioned about hoodies, something that I thought was staring us all in the face. This is that during the recent London riots, nearly everyone depicted by the TV cameras was wearing hoodies as they were caught vandalizing the stores in the neighborhood under siege. (Read more...)
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 It's All a Matter of Precision
by Paul Hibbert
The present butterfly effect theory doesn't come to the inescapable conclusion that small changes in initial conditions never die out without eventual significant effects. (Read more...)
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