-
I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation.
-
George Bernard Shaw
-
Cold sober, I find myself absolutely fascinating.
-
Katharine Hepburn being interviewed on the Dick Cavett Show, 1973
-
Can anything interesting ever be thought without violating common sense?
-
bkmarcus
-
When I grow up, I want to be a Global Village Idiot.
-
bkmarcus
-
Any discussion of anything important will require a reassessment of vocabulary.
-
bkmarcus
-
Love motivates -- it never compensates.
-
bkmarcus
-
You can raise a child to be
moral.
You can raise a child to be well-behaved. You can't do both.
-
bkmarcus
-
I care about my loved ones and about humanity. I care about no groups inbetween.
-
bkmarcus
-
What's the opposite of diversity? ...
University?
-
bkmarcus
-
Life is too short for soft-porn.
-
bkmarcus
-
What's the longest-lasting monopoly in U.S. History?
... Is it the
Post Office or the Federal Reserve?
-
bkmarcus
-
There's a big difference between
monogamy
and integrity.
-
bkmarcus
-
I learn so much about nature from the artificial ecology of my corporate campus.
-
bkmarcus
-
- Nd+1
- For all free travellers through N dimensions, there must be a unidirectional dimension, N+1.
-
bkmarcus
-
Once a child is capable of speaking for himself, you are no longer allowed to put your spit on him.
-
bkmarcus
-
In a smart-matter world, there will only be surreal estate ...
-
bkmarcus
-
For most people, thinking about politics is like a cross between thinking about religion and thinking about sports.
-
bkmarcus
-
In 1903 Congress passed legislation that banned immigrants who advocated the overthrow of government. Wouldn't that include the Founding Fathers?
-
bkmarcus
-
I maintain that only the initiation of force or fraud deserves the retaliation of force or fraud. Proactive
coercion
is unacceptable -- as deeply wrong as anything can be any level of wrong.
-
bkmarcus
-
Politics is about how we should decide whom to coerce about what.
-
bkmarcus
-
Statism
is the claim that institutionalized proactive
coercion
is justified.
Anarchism rejects that conclusion.
-
bkmarcus, Isn't Anarchism Unrealistic?
-
Unless you think something should be illegal everywhere, it shouldn't be illegal anywhere.
-
bkmarcus
-
It's sad to me that such a basic thing as the principled opposition to
coercion
is considered to be extremist, unreasonable, unrealistic.
Why do I have to believe in permanent peace to oppose war? How is it utopian to denounce force?
-
bkmarcus, Isn't Anarchism Unrealistic?
-
Maybe it's time to
look toward diversity as a strategy and not just as a goal.
-
bkmarcus
-
Individualists believe that the only legitimate or acceptible forms of cooperation are the voluntary forms of cooperation. (And if you think the term 'voluntary cooperation' is redundant, then you might just be an
individualist.)
-
bkmarcus
-
Individualists do not
(as individualists)
oppose competition (as competition). They would oppose coercive competition or competition that is based in coercion, but it's not the competition that is being objected to -- it is the
coercion.
-
bkmarcus
-
Calling the question absurd does not make it go away. Not even silencing the questioner can make the question go away.
-
bkmarcus
-
For the majority of Americans living in the early 21st century,
the evils of
the state
are easy to see rationally, but hard to accept emotionally.
-
bkmarcus
-
It is not in any institution's interest to promote independence from that institution.
-
bk's review of
Deschooling Our Lives
-
If there is to be any real, significant, and lasting change, it will either happen after democracy or it will happen despite democracy.
-
bkmarcus,
Violent Revolution Q&A
-
I would venture to say that any non-governmental group that is looking to fight the government head-on is likely to be a new set of statists.
-
bkmarcus,
Violent Revolution Q&A
-
I see the initiation of civil insurrection or a violent revolution as politics of the worst kind.
-
bkmarcus,
Violent Revolution Q&A
-
I use the term 'libertarian' to mean the "principled rejection of all proactive coercion, whether by individuals or by groups." Since government is based in the proactive coercion of a group over individuals, I reject government as incompatible with libertarianism. It is in this sense that I am an anarchist.
-
bkmarcus,
Violent Revolution Q&A
-
The most important thing to understand about lowercase-L libertarians (as opposed to the Libertarian Party) is that we oppose politics. The capital-L Libertarians believe that politics can be abolished by political means. Lowercase-L libertarian anarchists reject political means as well as political ends.
-
bkmarcus,
Violent Revolution Q&A
-
We anarchists see political power as itself the problem.
We libertarians reject proactive insurrection as immoral, and we reject the take-over of government as dangerous folly. We object to both the means and the ends of political revolution.
-
bkmarcus,
Violent Revolution Q&A
-
Someone's position on
minimum wage law
is a good litmus test of their economic (il)literacy.
-
bkmarcus
-
The reason people adopt economic position X is neither principled nor practical, but symbolic.
Not What is right? Not What will work? But rather, Who's side am I on?
-
bkmarcus
-
Disaggregate.
The relevant collective nouns will not be the ones most people are using.
-
ReluctantCapitalist.com:
bk's lessons from political economy
-
Politics is a negative-sum game that is talked about as a positive-sum game, while generally believed to be a zero-sum game.
-
bkmarcus
-
Taxation is inherently regressive.
-
bkmarcus
-
Without a model that distinguishes causes from symptoms, you have terrible odds against focusing on the right things.
-
bkmarcus
-
Political capitalism (government run for a capitalist elite) has been a great evil. Everyone can see that, no matter what their rhetoric. But the evil has been in the politics and not in the capitalism. Without understanding that, the vast majority look to politics for the solution, for the weapon they believe they need to fight capitalism.
-
bkmarcus
-
Civilization has two children: the market, and the State. Almost everything good about civilization seems to have come out of the market, out of cumulative systems of voluntary exchange. Almost everything bad about civilization seems to have come out of the State, out of the organized use and threat of violence.
-
bkmarcus
-
A coherent complaint depends on a coherent counterfactual.
-
bkmarcus
-
Straw-man "individualism":
The position that
individual rights
always supersede
group rights.
Stated this way, individualism seems unreasonable -- seems in fact like a call for dogmatically
privileging one entity over another.
True individualism is both far more reasonable and far more radical for it
denies the very existence
of such a thing as "group rights".
According to individualism, no one's rights ever supersede anyone else's rights because all
rights are equal
and compatible.
-
bkmarcus,
BlackCrayon Dictionary
-
Refusing to judge anyone for anything ... well, it shows lack of judgment!
-
bkmarcus
-
The only
rights
are
equal rights.
All else is
privilege.
-
bkmarcus
-
If you can't understand price fixing, you can't understand anything in economics. This means you should refrain from holding or expressing any opinions on any economic subject whatsoever!
-
bkmarcus, "Emergency Price Fixing"
|
Email:
www
@
bkMarcus
.
com
