Monopoly Money
Written by Christophe Cieters. As money developed and people opted to place it in secured storage, banks started issuing bank notes which represented a client’s deposit at the bank and the promise to redeem each note for the amount of gold it represented at a 100% reserve rate. Market...
How to Fund Roads with Bitcoin
Written by Ray Whitledge. Anyone who has ever tried debating the merits of free markets over government monopolies has certainly run into the tired old question “But who will build the roads?” And while the possible answers to this question are limited only by the imagination, many people won’t...
A Glance at Plato and Hobbes: Why the State Implies Divinity
Submitted by M. Hall. Alfred North Whitehead, an English mathematician and philosopher, once said that Plato was the greatest philosopher in history, that all philosophical tomes ever written are mere footnotes on his insight. Although this claim is grand and perhaps exaggerated, Plato’s work has influenced the world’s thinking...
Is Non-Voting an Indication of Apathy?
Written by Lisa DeLasho. Here’s why I don’t vote. It has NOTHING to do with apathy…in fact, it is quite the opposite. You see, I don’t vote because I actually DO care about what happens to, well…everyone, everywhere. 1) Voting gives the illusion of choice. Is being “allowed” to...
Ratifying Violence
Written by Winter Trabex. For the first few years of America’s existence, the country did not have a Constitution. Rather, it had the Articles of Confederation. The Articles specified that most government power would be given to the individual states. In fact, the push for state’s rights under the...
Money: Rain Check
Written by Christophe Cieters. During the 14th century Renaissance in Northern Italy, banks as we know them today started to form in earnest. Gold and silver were still the dominant media of exchange; people used precious metals in their daily transactions and banks acted as highly secured storage facilities...
The Insanity of Cooking
Repost from a fan of our Facebook page. One exercise I’ve been refining with Statists, is to ask them to imagine that up until today, nobody has thought to cook food. It’s all eaten raw, so can’t be kept for long, doesn’t taste particularly nice, and makes people sick fairly...