The False Choice of “Do the Ends Justify the Means”
If the ends ever justify the means is perhaps the most acute of the philosophical questions. Unlike “are things holy because the gods love them, or do the gods love…
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“Checkmate Anarchists”
“Checkmate Anarchists: Humans Will Always Create Structures and Laws” One objection the anarchist will often hear is that a general set of anarchist principles is appealing in theory, but in…
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There Are No “Anarchist Systems” without Anarchist Fundamentals
Discussions about anarchy and anarchism too often jump right into talking points about competing ways to organize economic or political structures. This doesn’t seem to happen only when skeptics and…
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Imagining State-Capitalism
People from all ideological angles will agree that we don’t live with truly free markets in the West, or anything close to it. “Capitalist” societies, or ones regarded as driven…
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Against Common Sense
The legendary physicist Richard Feynman once said that if you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it. The prankster of the Manhattan Project was, alongside being a brilliant scientist,…
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Different Kinds and Degrees of Private Censorship Matter
Freedom of thought, belief, opinion, and speech can be controlled and regulated by private forces in certain ways. In a previous piece, I presented some thoughts on that, and how…
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The Utility of Facts
Each person’s worldview is not a single fixed thing. It is a tapestry, woven from countless threads, or a photograph made of countless pixels. And each of those tiny, barely-perceptible…
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Some Thoughts on Private Censorship, Power, and Control of Speech
As far as speech is concerned, the rule-of-thumb view we should adopt is that any individual or private group has the right to determine who is allowed in their space, and…
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Some Social Challenges That Won’t Magically Go Away With a Biden Presidency
2020 will be remembered for a lot, and one of the obvious low points is the start of a global pandemic. However, for many this will be offset (at least…
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Live and Let Die
A wise person once told me that evolution is not the story of life but of death. The vast, overwhelming majority of species are extinct. The dominant theme of evolution…
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