Free Talk Live

Today happens to be the birthday of one of my all time favorite rebels. So, I thought I’d take us back in time and declare Lysander Spooner the rebel of this week in 1808.

Lysander Spooner was a nineteenth century American political philosopher, pamphleteer, entrepreneur, abolitionist and individualist anarchist. Spooner advocated what he called the “Science of Justice” which held that the initiation of coercion against an individual or their property was a natural crime, but so-called crimes that violated man-made statutes but had no victim were no crime at all.

"The Judge" agrees with Lysander Spooner in his wonderful speech at the Mises Supporters Summit. More at MisesMediaChannel on YouTube.

Emily delivered the winning rant at the Soapbox Idol competition from Porcfest 2011.

Japan's mafia among the first to organise and deliver aid

The Daily Beast news website said that hours after the first shock waves hit, two of the largest crime groups went into action, opening their offices to those stranded in Tokyo and shipping food, water and blankets to the devastated areas.

The website reported that the day after the earthquake, the Inagawa-kai (the third-largest organised crime group in Japan) sent 25 trucks filled with paper diapers, instant ramen, batteries, torches, drinks and other essentials to the Tohoku region.

The government is the world's most successful mafia.

A Swiss village has found a drastic way to compel dog owners to pay their pet's annual tax: Pay the government Mafia their protection fee or your dog dies!

Parents do not own their children, and therefore have no right to aggress against them. I should hope that in a free society, we would have the decency to defend the most helpless among us from the predations of their wards. For now, however, that job is sadly left to the state, just like so many other matters of interpersonal justice. Perhaps it would be better to focus on actual victims of state excess, and not the so-called ‘rights’ of petty aggressors to victimize their physical inferiors.

Medicare fraud has become very big business for gangs, members of the Mafia and other thugs. One estimate suggests that criminals steal some $60 billion from the federal government via health care fraud every year.

Lysander Spooner would say the problem is market intervention, that the Post Office fails because it lacks market signals and market competition. Wozniak on the other hand says the problem is email. A cheaper and faster service exists, and rather than improving the Post Office, he proposes turning the Post Office into a parasite on the superior service.