Old Truth Blog

Government debt's a big problem in the US and all over Europe (and I'm sure elsewhere). What's to be done? For starters, governments need to cut spending across the board. That'll prevent more debt. As for the existing debt, there's only one libertarian solution. I give you Rothbard via " The Ethics of Liberty ", chapter 24, paragraph 5: Many libertarians fall into confusion on specific relations with the State, even when they concede the general immorality or criminality of State actions or interventions. Thus, there is the question of default, or more widely, repudiation of government debt. Many libertarians assert that the government is morally bound to pay its debts, and that therefore default or repudiation must be avoided. The problem here is that these libertarians are analogizing from the perfectly proper thesis that private persons or institutions should keep their contracts and pay their debts. But government has no money of its own, and paym...

This video is absolutely superb. If you value life and freedom at all, Ron Paul deserves your support.

I'm not sure why I've been fixated on this the last few days, how it entered my mind's eye, but I can't shake it until I get it out. I believe that Ezra Taft Benson, former President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint, and prophet of God, was an anarchist of the voluntaryist/libertarian sort, and that's a good thing. He spoke often about the need to defend and preserve the Constitution of the United States. Now, it is also my belief that constitutional government is a " pure manifestation of Socialism ". How do I reconcile the belief that Ezra Taft Benson was both an anarchist and a Constitutionalist? That's easy, for the same reasons that I'm both an anarchist and a Constitutionalist. One of the most popular essays of Ezra Taft Benson is his " The Proper Role of Government ". He begins this essay with these verses of LDS scripture on the proper role of government: We believe that governments were instituted of God...

Oh boy I wish I read this book sooner. I would have become an anarcho-capitalist a long time ago had I started with this book. Hoppe completely obliterates the argument for socialism in any degree, from a limited nightwatchman state to democratic socialism to full-blown Soviet Union totalitarian socialism. And he does it in under 300 pages. How great is this book? His first 6 chapters look at every degree of Socialism, and using step-by-step logical deduction shows it to be economically inferior to free market, voluntaryist capitalism. Included in this analysis is an attack on empiricism used by mainstream, non-Austrian, economic theory. He then takes Socialism down with a rock solid ethics/moral argument. But he doesn't end there. Hoppe completes his masterpiece with a case against the fear of a monopoly producer in a free market, and for the private production of security. He even takes down the "public goods" argument for the state. This book truly has it all. Fr...