North America Blog

November 25, 2014

Against the Criminal Justice System, Pt. II: The Criminality of Criminal Law

In the first post of this series, I gave some reasons why libertarians ought to reject the practice of punishment. As an alternative, I suggested that the only proper role of law […]

November 12, 2014

Libertarian Feminism: Rape Culture as a Spontaneous Order

Libertarians often respond to feminists’ claims of “rape culture” with lots of dismissive hand waving. On first glance, it seems like rape culture seems like an anti-concept. The conspiratorial notion that the […]

November 10, 2014

Destroying the Village in Order to Save It

During the Vietnam War, a U.S. major justified bombing and shelling civilian areas in Bến Tre by saying “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” This statement evolved into the […]

November 4, 2014

Against the Criminal Justice System, Pt. I: No One Should Ever Be Punished

As the pain, suffering, and sheer cost incurred by the criminal justice system in America spirals further and further out of control, more and more people have come to push for reform. […]

October 30, 2014

Fear and the Expansion of State Power

As Halloween approaches, many of us play with one of humanity’s most primal emotions: fear. We go to haunted houses, watch horror movies, and generally seek thrills, terror, and shocks. Fear can […]

October 12, 2014

Breaking the Anarchist Silence

When talking about student activism, one piece of advice is usually stressed for libertarians who are also anarchists: don’t talk about anarchism. “You already agree with minarchists on most things, so why […]

October 5, 2014

Uber, the Sharing Economy, and Libertarianism

A new industry known as Uber has been taking the transportation industry by storm. Uber connects passengers with drivers of vehicles for hire through a smart phone application. It utilizes the Internet […]

October 3, 2014

Politics Without Romance: The Insights of James M. Buchanan

What should be done about market failures? When a public good is underprovided, a transaction produces an externality, or consumers and producers have asymmetric information, many people leap to the conclusion that […]

September 29, 2014

A Misesian Holiday

Once you start delving into the rich and captivating tradition of libertarian and classical liberal thought, it isn’t long before you stumble upon an early 20th century economist named Ludwig von Mises. […]

September 29, 2014

Does Obama Believe He Should Have Gone to Prison?

As President Obama has admitted since long before entering politics, he’s done his fair share of illegal drugs. In his 1995 book, Dreams From My Father, he wrote that he’d used marijuana […]

September 26, 2014

Rediscovering Libertarian Feminism: The Lens of Liberty

For nearly a century, many libertarians have seemingly forgotten many issues their 19th century forerunners talked about. One of the most crucial topics was feminism, which gets a bad rap in most […]

September 24, 2014

Demystifying the Invisible Hand

The phrase “invisible hand” can easily evoke fanciful imagery of invisible hands magically manipulating the world. So it’s no surprise that many critics of laissez-faire, particularly on the left, misconstrue the concept […]