Friday Philosophy

Marx and Engels don't simply condemn capitalism. They note that by reducing everything to trade in money, it has made the reality of exploitation easier to see.

Current irrationalist modes of thought all contend that because our thinking about the world is conditioned in a certain way, it does not grasp the world as it really exists.

Schutz agrees with Mises that all human action is rational, in the sense that the actor has a goal or end and adopts means that he thinks are suitable to attain that end.

Do individual rights cease to exist in emergencies or are they only temporarily frozen? Does anyone have the right to decide when there's an emergency—and when these rights disappear?

Murray Rothbard’s criticism of Marxism is often misunderstood. 

Capitalism is often blamed for the effects of policies that aren't capitalism. This is why we need a better definition of capitalism.

Mises shows that even if you accept Kant, you should reject socialism.

An obvious criticism of stakeholder theory is that the key notion of the theory is undefined. Who counts as a “stakeholder”?

The nonaggression principle and negative freedom are not the same thing. Isaiah Berlin's work shows the key difference between them.

Acton not only condemns absolute monarchy but unlimited majority rule as well. If anything, majority rule is worse, because it is much harder to resist.

A world of socialist nations would be a world of ceaseless war. Here's why.

Can natural resources be appropriated but still subject to a rental tax?

Rothbard exposes a fatal lack of precision with claims about "public goods" and the argument that workers must either work for slave wages or starve.

Some oppose the free market because it allows them to make immoral choices. How can promarket people respond to this critique without relying on their value system?

Demonstrated preference has everything to do with the choices an economic actor faces in a given moment, not all the conceivable options.

An abstract state is built on patriotism. And when patriotism becomes "the highest of all virtues and the source of all the remaining ones,” states can get away with almost anything. 

A philosopher has recently argued for the abolition of the Second Amendment, but he seemingly does this using the premises of the nonaggression principle.

Some slippery slope arguments are a case of bad reasoning, but those presented by Mises and Hayek are not among them.

Paul Samuelson thinks that if the state coerces you to make an exchange with someone or taxes you, this isn’t much of a problem.