March 22, 2019
An Introduction to the Work of the Ostroms
When I took my current gig as libertarianism.org‘s economics editor, one of the first pieces I wanted to commission was one explaining the contributions of the Ostroms and why they matter…
All posts in: Democracy
November 26, 2018
Would More Representative Voting Favor the Democrats? Not Quite
Before, during, and after the election, many of the Democrats in my Facebook feed keep complaining that the current districting system is unfair and leads to gerrymandering and overrepresentation of…
November 20, 2018
Bad Arguments for Democracy #2: No External Standards
People disagree about the facts, about principles of justice, about the principles of political economy, and so on. Therefore, it is illegitimate to make reference to an external, objective standard…
September 13, 2018
Looking for Daylight: Minarchist Strategy’s Missteps
Reason magazine editors Nick Gillespie and Katherine Mangu-Ward have recently debated the question of minarchism (i.e., minimal government) vs. free-market anarchism. As an anarchist, I’m obviously on Mangu-Ward’s side of…
August 14, 2018
Socialism: What’s in a Word?
Chris Freiman, following a suggestion by Jason Brennan, has just published a good post on socialism, showing that socialists are not entitled to define socialism by its goals and aspirations,…
June 21, 2018
Don’t Be Unfair to News Viewers
The Pew Research Center conducted a survey/study recently, in which they claim to show that most Americans cannot adequately distinguish factual from opinion statements. But the study seems poorly designed,…