Apropos thick contractarianism, contract hacking! I have published quite a few scholarly papers, and with each one I am invited to sign a copyright form. This is a contract between author and publisher, which which I hand over certain rights and the give me $0 (plus they publish my paper). These contracts (and my signature)…

Fourth in a series. See thick libertarianism, thick individualism and thick voluntarism. I’m generally skeptical of contractarianism. I simply can’t imagine non-feudal contractual arrangements. Perhaps I’m not thinking far enough outside the box, or maybe I’m just too bogged down with surviving in the world as we know it. One idea that might make me…

“If you remain neutral in a battle between a lion and a gazelle, you’ve effectively sided with the lion, and the gazelle isn’t going to appreciate it.”—Natalie Reed “If there’s a chance for the wealthy to capture a social instrument, they will. If there’s an opportunity to use it to dump on the despised, it…

“If, in the present chaotic and shameful struggle for existence, when organized society offers a premium on greed, cruelty, and deceit, men can be found who stand aloof and almost alone in their determination to work for good rather than gold, who suffer want and persecution rather than desert principle, who can bravely walk to…

“One of the reasons it’s so easy to condemn the public sector is that it is so, well, public. Government makes decisions in front of everyone. Even a cub reporter can easily uncover problems. The private sector, on the other hand, acts in secret.”—David Morris “I figure governments and corporations alike will seek to bottle…

“Gayhoods and girlhoods are significant… … even the erased ones.”—Valerie Keefe “It is always magical thinking to declare an outcome need only be profitable for it to be possible.”—Dale Carrico “As a physicist, I will tell you one thing: no matter how afraid you are of nuclear war, you are not afraid enough.”—voxcorvegis “The minority*…

As you may know, my conception of equality is not so much equality of opportunity or the (IMHO straw-man) equality of results, but equality of footing. I fear there may be reality-based reasons to believe that equality in this sense and personal freedom may be conflicting goals. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that…

“Well, I am not convinced that Agorism is revolutionary at all. Except the fact that most agorists I’ve seen are simply some strain of ‘Anarcho’-Capitalist (or at the very least, support private property and the allow for wage labou[r]), Agorism itself [is] based on the idea that Black Markets can destabilize a society enough to…

“A movement to Occupy, from my perspective, has to avoid the temptation to be about expanding the ranks of the winners, or changing the composition of the winners. It has to subvert the contest altogether.”—Freddie “Many threats to freedom come from capitalists. The story is no longer capitalism and freedom, but capitalism against freedom. Two…