Old Truth Blog

Parents have a unique responsibility. They have the power to create life, and then the duty to protect it and raise it into a functioning adult. But can we say that this life that they create is theirs in the sense of materialistic ownership? I don't think we can. If we are to apply libertarian property appropriation principles , the one who first appropriates and puts to some use the child's body is its rightful owner. Since the child itself is the first one to do this, albeit with little rational direction, it stands to reason that the child is a self-owner the moment he takes his first breath of life (and perhaps before). Therefore, the relationship between parent and child cannot be one of ownership. The most we could call it, I suppose, is stewardship . And because the parent does not own his child, what sorts of behaviors and actions toward the child can we consider ethically justified on libertarian grounds ? Hans Hoppe defined the state as, "an agency that exerc...

I had some thoughts on something that I thought I'd put down here. Though people, especially young people, are becoming libertarians in great numbers, it seems that most people are quite comfortable with the size and scope of the myriad levels of government they are subjects of. And I think this has to do with a confusion people have between power and liberty. Let me explain. Since the secession from Great Britain and the founding of the United States, the US federal government has usurped all sorts of powers and grown to never before seen or imagined size and complexity. In other words, liberty has slowly, and at times very quickly, declined. But I don't think it's commonly felt . And I think the reason is because of the growth in power that the average America has. What I mean by power is personal power. Power to move, to do, to be what someone wants to be. We can travel anywhere in the world in hours, send a message anywhere in seconds, and meet someone in real-time t...

The following is an email exchange between me, a voluntaryist libertarian, and a progressive Democrat (PD), who shall remain nameless. It demonstrates the common threads of progressive and Democrat thinking. They clearly identify with the state and believe it to be a legitimate social entity, and them a legitimate part of it. Republicans very much believe the same. The difference between the two, however, is in what functions the state should perform. Absent is the question of whether or not the state should even exist, and how society would function without it. I am thoroughly convinced that products like this is the real goal of government schooling. It's self-evident, really. Enjoy: PD : A group of individuals decide in order to help assure mutual survival they will venture out into the wilderness and build a fort. An agreement is made among the individuals that in order to live within the walls and enjoy the protection provided they will comply with the following: ...

A common misconception among society is that the role of police officers is to provide security. It's not. Quite the contrary. Security is on-site, monitoring, and guarding whatever it is that needs to be secured. If it's not, the owner of whatever wealth is in need of security is taking a risk, perhaps acceptable. Police officers, on the other hand, rarely monitor and guard society. Once in a while there's an event or some such that requires their presence, but that's usually to keep "law and order", not to secure anything. And thus we have their role: law enforcement. More often than not the law that police officers are enforcing are laws that make it harder for society to secure itself. Laws against firearms, for example. In other words, firearms laws say that we aren't allowed any advantage in securing our persons and property, and we must pay for police officers to bring us to "justice" when we violate these laws. It's a simple exe...

I've had my share of mixed feelings regarding Ron Paul. As a defender and promoter of liberty, Ron Paul is matched by few men. He's introduced millions to individualism, free markets, sound money, and non-interventionism. I applaud him and praise him for his selfless efforts in this beautiful cause. He's taking his principles to ever wider audiences, and as President of the United States, he would have a greater platform than any libertarian has ever had in the fight for freedom. But I have my reservations. One the one hand, there are those who argue that a Ron Paul victory would only prolong the life of the American Empire. While it may have it's reigns tightened for a time, it would ultimately continue it's course of plunder and destruction once Ron Paul is out of office. While Ron Paul would be a beacon for educating the masses on the principles of liberty, when the Empire does reach it's logical conclusion, Ron Paul and libertarianism would be made int...

Michael Suede of LibertarianNews.com has some excellent thought experiments on the violence of the state: -Your mother grew illegal vegetable matter and gave it to her sick friend. If found guilty, she faces 1 year in jail and a 1000 dollar fine. – would you convict her? -Your mother is the CEO of her privately owned corporation and she hid corporate income in order to avoid taxation. She used the money she kept to help you pay for your college. If found guilty, she faces 5 years in federal prison and a 100,000 dollar fine. – would you convict her? -Your mother owns a restaurant and she agreed to allow a 15 year old waitress to work overtime during the summer so she could save money up for a car. She is guilty of violating child labor laws. If found guilty, she faces 6 months in federal prison and a $10,000 fine. – would you convict her? -Your mother installed an addition to her home without asking the State permission before doing so. She is guilty of failure to obtain...

Here's something that I just wrote up for an online conversation regarding the Constitution: Derek, let's start from the beginning. For the moment, let's not even consider whether or not God established the Constitution. Let's pretend that we don't know that yet. Is the Constitution a socialist document? Did the Founders establish a socialist government with the Constitution? The answer to both questions is yes. The Constitution is a socialist document and the Founders used it to establish a socialist government. Read Hoppe's " A Theory of Socialism & Capitalism " to better understand what socialism is. He tackles totalitarian, social democractic, conservative, and constitutional socialism in his treatise. Did it establish totalitarian socialism? No. It established limited socialism, but socialism nonetheless. Study socialism from those who understand socialism, and you'll understand why these are true statements. There's a one lin...

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...

The below video demonstrates rather briefly the consistency in the fight for liberty, sound economics, and a non-interventionist foreign policy that has permeated Ron Paul's congressional career.

My 6-year-old son's always asking me how different things are made. He sometimes has some unusual requests. I can only tell him so much before he just gets confused. Enter the Science Channel's " How It's Made ". I've watched this program in the past, but he was too young to care. I re-discovered it while channel surfing. I quickly got him to watch it with me, and he fell in love with it. We set up our DVR to record the last 2 episodes, so there's always something new for him to watch. What is "How It's Made"? To me, it's Leonard Read's " I, Pencil " on steroids. For those unfamiliar with Read's essay, it's a story of creation from the perspective of an everyday pencil. The essay's thesis is that it's impossible for any single person to make a pencil. The story traces the pencil's coming together after it's parts are found all over the world. It takes thousands of people, all of whom are working to ...

I've been debating with myself on whether or not I should even make this post. My thoughts on what I'm about to say have a dual meaning. First, on just how far-reaching and consistent Ron Paul's libertarian principles are, and Second, how far I believe we've strayed as a society from the Christian principles to love our neighbor as well as our enemies. In theory, everything points to Ron Paul being electable. He can out-left the Left and out-right the Right . But I think that's also his downfall. He has too many enemies, and those enemies have too much power. Just look at this list: The Federal Reserve Wall Street Bankers Military Contractors Federal Drug Warriors Big Labor, Unions Big Agriculture Foreign Recipients of Federal Aid And the list goes on. I see too many special interests with too much on the line (money) to allow a Ron Paul victory. He wants to capsize the boat that is Big Government. And here's the really disturbing part, I even g...

January 2021: I read this essay and added commentary for Episode 459 of the Everything Voluntary podcast . If you've ever criticized taxation in front of an average statist, be them liberal or conservative, you know that it quickly turns awkward. They insist that taxation is necessary for certain services and that they're happy to pay it. They sometimes even assume you're advocating not paying taxes, then the conversation turns towards a discussion on the merits of "obeying the law". We are just supposed to obey the law, people say. My fellow Latter-day Saints are even more insistent on this, throwing out the knee-jerk 12th Article of Faith reaction. We are supposed to support "government" and obey the law. We are supposed to be good little citizens. If we don't like the law, we can write a letter to our congressman, our run for office ourselves, etc. But what about when the law becomes criminal? What, you don't believe the law can be crimin...

Chapter 46 of the Book of Alma, in the Book of Mormon, chronicles the time that Captain Moroni of the Nephite Armies rallies his people together to fight for their liberty. The seminal moment came when he created "the title of liberty": And now it came to pass that when Moroni, who was the chief commander of the armies of the Nephites, had heard of these dissensions, he was angry with Amalickiah. And it came to pass that he rent his coat; and he took a piece thereof, and wrote upon it: "In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children," and he fastened it upon the end of a pole. And he fastened on his head-plate, and his breastplate, and his shields, and girded on his armor about his loins; and he took the pole, which had on the end thereof his rent coat, (and he called it the title of liberty) and he bowed himself to the earth, and he prayed mightily unto his God for the blessings of liberty to rest upon his brethren...

November 2020: I read this essay and added commentary for Episode 417 of the Everything Voluntary podcast . It is a simple fact that our world is a world of scarcity, that is, that human wants exceed the amount of usable resources to satisfy them. This is not say that usable resources are not being discovered, or that human wants will not change. Of course change happens. Oil was once considered a nuisance, but now it's considered a usable good. When people need the same resources (economic goods) to satisfy their wants, conflict ensues. This is what economists call the " economic problem ": How are things to be produced and the factors of production allocated in a world of scarcity? There are ways of handling conflict over scarce resources. People can fight over them, and to the victor go the spoils. Or, people can reason. They can use the resource between their ears to come up with ways of ending, reducing, and preventing conflict, leading to the creation of wealth an...

It's perfectly clear to me that Ron Paul is unlike anyone else in Washington, and unlike any of the other candidates vying for the Republican nomination for President. But it may not be perfectly clear to you. I'd like to invite anyone unfamiliar with Ron Paul's breadth of principle and scholarship to look at a few things. Books -  Ron Paul has written or co-written several books, all of them (except his medical works) with one purpose: to spread the message of freedom. You'll also notice that not a single one of them engages in self-aggrandizement, unlike many others . In chronological order: 1981 - Gold, Peace, & Prosperity 1982 - The Case for Gold 1983 - Abortion and Liberty 1983 - Ten Myths About Paper Money 1984 - Mises and Austrian Economics 1987 - Freedom Under Siege 1990 - Challenge to Liberty: Abortion 1991 - The Ron Paul Money Book 2007 - A Foreign Policy of Freedom 2008 - Pillars of Prosperity 2008 - The Revolution - A Manifesto 20...

Over the last few years, I've pitched my tent on the anti-copyright and anti-patent side of the libertarian camp. In other words, I don't hold that ideas are property, or can be property, and the granting of such monopoly privileges  by the state is an act of theft and wealth redistribution of all real property owners. John Tehranian of the University of Utah's S.J. Quinney College of Law has written a fantastic paper for the Utah Law Review that looks at the disparity between copyright law and copyright norms. It's worth a full read, however, what I wanted to share here is his making plain just how often the average person, in this case the average college professor, infringes on copyright, to the tune of billions per year: To illustrate the unwitting infringement that has become quotidian for the average American, take an ordinary day in the life of a hypothetical law professor named John. For the purposes of this Gedankenexperiment , we assume the worst-case sc...

October 2020: I read this essay and added commentary for Episode 401  of the Everything Voluntary podcast. I am wont to harp on non-libertarian political philosophies because of their foundation in violence . I'd like to take just a moment to explain something that I haven't done a good enough job explaining. Libertarianism to me is about one thing, Love. I've said that the libertarian political philosophy can be summed up in one phrase, "Keep your hands to yourself." Why should we do this? There're all sorts of reasons why we should practice libertarianism, but I believe the primary reason should be out of love and respect for other people. I want liberty for you as much as I want liberty for myself. I know that freedom is the only way that prosperity can be achieved, and I want you to have prosperity. I want you to pursue and find happiness. I want you to be free from the control of others. And I want you to be free to serve your fellow man . Liber...