In my last post, I wrote about the absurdity of economic process in the realm of the Hobby Lobby religious liberty arguments. To drive the point home at how arbitrary this procedural silliness is, I have a hypothetical April Fools joke one could play on Hobby Lobby. Hobby Lobby opposes “paying” for IUDs. Medicaid, government… Continue reading Hobby Lobby April Fools Joke
Process, Religious Liberty, and Contraception
I agree with Elizabeth Stoker’s take that the Hobby Lobby contraception stuff is really confused. Ostensibly, Hobby Lobby is objecting to having to “pay” for the contraception coverage of its employees. This is contrasted with other forms of financing contraception, which we are told by those who argue on behalf of Hobby Lobby are permissible.… Continue reading Process, Religious Liberty, and Contraception
No violence but personal violence
When I use the word violence in the context of discussing theories of property, I mean a specific thing by it: acting upon the bodies of others without their consent. This is as neutral a definition of “violence” as you will find. It is the definition of violence implied by the concept of self-ownership. It… Continue reading No violence but personal violence
Violence Vouchers: A Descriptive Account of Property
I’ve argued here and elsewhere that property is an institution of involuntary, violent, coercive aggression (I, II, III, IV, V, et al). These arguments are clearly correct, but they are lacking in one important respect: they don’t constitute a full descriptive account of the institution of property. They describe certain characteristics of property — that… Continue reading Violence Vouchers: A Descriptive Account of Property
On FiveThirtyEight
Nate Silver launched FiveThirtyEight this week along with a really long manifesto. In it, he attacks a lot of other journalism and especially opinion writers. This is easy to do because a lot of journalism is pretty bad, often for the reasons he provides. A number of other writers did not take kindly to Silver… Continue reading On FiveThirtyEight