“Car Theft: There’s an App for That!”

Consumers might not realize that stealing cars...

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"Stride"

[Original artwork courtesy of John Tankersley]

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KA-POW! #35 - Rajsic

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Predrag Rajsic for “Measuring the Immeasurable” :

Wealth is a meaningless term without the concept of value. If we know that the purpose of human action is to satisfy one's needs and wants, then the material wealth of two different individuals (let alone abstract entities such as nations) cannot tell us much about the satisfaction of their needs and wants. Wants and needs are subjective, unknown, and immeasurable by an outside observer.

KA-POW! #34 - Rockwell

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. for “Freedom of Association” :

We live in antiliberal times, when individual choice is highly suspect. The driving legislative ethos is toward making all actions required or forbidden, with less and less room for human volition. Simply put, we no longer trust the idea of freedom. We can't even imagine how it would work. What a distance we have traveled from the Age of Reason to our own times.

“The Future In Review”

The Future In Review...

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KA-POW! #33 - Tucker

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Jeffrey A. Tucker for “A Society of Mutual Benefactors” :

When do we say, "you're welcome"? We say that when we give a gift (a good or service) to a person without receiving anything in return. For example, I might hold a door for a person. That person says, "thank you," and I say, "you're welcome." Another time might be at a birthday party when the recipient of a gift expresses thanks.

These are one-way examples of benefaction. We are giving but not necessarily getting anything tangible in return. What makes the case of the commercial exchange different? Why do both parties say, "thank you"? It's because each side gives a gift to the other.

THPBPT!

I thought I heard something...

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All in a Day's Waste

I had gotten a cheap, but handy...

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KA-POW! #32 - Fedako

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Jim Fedako for “The New Bureaucratic Man” :

There is something to Trotsky's vision of man under communism. From all historical appearances, man under a totalitarian state functions differently than a man under liberty. And degrees of man exist as society slowly turns from liberty to slavery.

...

One year, at the beginning of spring, a duck built a nest in the moat, under one of the many bushes. As her ducklings hatched and grew, it came time for them to search for water. However, despite their repeated attempts, the ducklings could not jump from the moat to the walkway bridge.

"A Headless Chicken"

It’s a little known fact that...

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KA-POW! #31 - Mises

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Ludwig von Mises for “Role of Interest in Entrepreneurial Calculations” :

A drop in the gross market rate of interest affects the entrepreneur's calculation concerning the chances of the profitability of projects considered. Along with the prices of the material factors of production, wage rates, and the anticipated future prices of the products, interest rates are items that enter into the planning businessman's calculation.

The result of this calculation shows the businessman whether or not a definite project will pay.

“Speak Not of the Future”

Dear Mr. Scribbler,

Please forgive my intrusion...

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“Space News Item”

The Shocking Truth Behind Strange Incidents in Space!...

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KA-POW! #30 - Riggenbach

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Jeff Riggenbach for “John Holt: Libertarian Outsider” :

What Holt wanted, in a nutshell, was freedom for those being pushed around — freedom from interference by others. But, he wrote in Freedom & Beyond, "few of us really believe in freedom. As a slogan, it is fine. But we don't understand it as a process or mechanism with which or within which people can work and live. We have had in our own lives so little experience of freedom, except in the most trivial situations, that we can hardly imagine how it might work, how we might use it, or how it could possibly be of any use to us when any serious work was to be done."

“My Favorite Venusian”

“This seat taken?” said the beautiful redhead...

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KA-POW! #29 - Tucker

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Jeffrey A. Tucker for “Are We a Self-Hating Commercial Society?” :

I'm on a Sunday walk and a nice boy tries to sell me lemonade. A budding entrepreneur! Still, I decline. So he strengthens his pitch: "I'm donating the profits to stop child abuse."

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This proves that the traditional rap on capitalism is false. It is not only about private gain for the few. Business can be as enlightened as the individuals running them. Note that all this praiseworthy other-directedness is being accomplished within the matrix of exchange, which has wrongly been maligned as selfish. As we can see, there is no contradiction between doing good and doing well. All these innovations that merge the third sector of charity with the first sector of profiteering illustrate that capitalism can adapt itself to an age of broad-minded social concern.

KA-POW! #28 - Mogambo

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to The Mogambo Guru for “No Cure for Government Spending” :

“Nothing can be done and you are a moron for trying” is a snotty-yet-unshakable Foundation Stone of the Mogambo Grandiose Economic Theory (MGET), which, as a corollary, also says that you should always bet against the government using a fiat currency over the long term because that particular bet has always paid off, paying out unbelievable odds, which means you should be buying gold, silver and oil with Both Freaking Hands (BFH).

“Transcendence Gate”

Maybe it was a myth, born of a universal but desperate hope...

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KA-POW! #27 - Upshur

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Abel P. Upshur for “Our Federal Government” :

The principle that ours is a consolidated government of all the people of the United States, and not a confederation of sovereign States, must necessarily render it little less than omnipotent. That principle, carried out to its legitimate results, will assuredly render the federal government the strongest in the world. The powers of such a government are supposed to reside in a majority of the people; and, as its responsibility is only to the people, that majority may make it whatever they please.

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But in a country so extensive as the United States, with great differences of character, interests and pursuits, and with these differences, too, marked by geographical lines, a fair opportunity is afforded for the exercise of an oppressive tyranny, by the majority over the minority.

KA-POW! #26 - Palmer

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Matt Palmer for “Rothbard and the Nature of the State” :

The Rothbardian perspective is distinctive because he refuses to interpret the actions of states as belonging to a special class of human action. Rothbard holds all people to the same standard of conduct, whereas others give the actions of states special moral considerations. For instance, if one person who is not designated as possessing state authority threatens another person with violence in order to take their property it is considered criminal. However, the very same action if committed by those with state authority is not considered criminal. Nobody can deny that the actions are the same, even if the intentions are different. The difference in these actions is simply a matter of how the actions are interpreted.