When an author of a recent study on the supposed conflict between markets and morality states “market participants violate their own moral standards” when choosing to improve their own life at the expense of other moral considerations, he implicitly contends or takes for granted that the benefit of people’s own life isn’t a valid moral […]
Category Archives: Commentary
The dramatic fluctuation in the trading price of Bitcoins over the past month is an example of decentralized economic coordination. Bitcoins had increased in price over 400 percent since March and now have seen about half of those gains be washed away. The price may fall further still. When naive or ill-informed participants begin to […]
Matt Zwolinski has an article on libertarianism.org about the alleged impracticability of the non-aggression with respect to pollution in a modern economy. He seems to think that the non-aggression principle implies that an instance of aggression warrants any degree of retaliatory coercion. For example, if carbon dioxide is a pollutant, then it would be within […]
Advocates for expansionary credit policies often retort that increasing the volume of credit wouldn’t have a noticeable effect on the price of an economic resource unless it were closely approaching or already at full capacity. Before tackling that specific point, I think it is worthwhile exploring why idleness or unemployment exists at all. To the […]
A few days ago I was asked how we can know that rights exist, so I wanted to put my thoughts down. Human values are facts that relate to the requirements for a human life. Human values are different than the readily perceptible facts we see around us, like the fact that water is wet […]
