Lysander's Ghost Columns
Eternal Vigilance or Perpetual Motion Liberty?
"Liberty is not a perpetual motion engine started with the fall of the last state. Guard it with eternal vigilance, seek it continuously, and never trust that all options on a market are automatically in your best interest." Column by Lysander's Ghost.
A Boom-Bust Cycle in Austrian School Politics
"I must unfortunately take political pessimism to a further degree. Even assuming political activity could save us from the dangers of political activity, it is too late for America. America survives by imports bought with a currency that rests on myth: faith that the dollar will retain its value. The emperor not only has no clothes, he has little of meaningful value with which to buy real clothes. Ron Paul cannot save the USA." Column by Lysander's Ghost.
C.S. Lewis: Enemy of the Golden Rule
"[Lewis] implies that both parties, English and German soldiers, are innocent of any crime or sin worthy of capital punishment. Lewis makes it clear that he thinks the soldiers are committing no sin in participating in the war, but argues that it is acceptable for both sides to "mutually" kill each other, with the only justification that some political-military elite told them to do so. As long as they don't hate the innocents they kill, of course. That is Christian morality?" Column by Lysander's Ghost.
Open Letter of Conditional Surrender in the War on Terror
"We surrender all our state officials, politicians, and bureaucrats who pushed for this war, who caused the massive slaughter of thousands or millions of innocent lives and trivialized the crime with the term 'collateral damage.' We surrender all of the lobbyists who pushed for war. We surrender our military officials and personnel who actively participated in this war. We surrender our military-industrial complex, their officials and profiteers. We surrender all the media pundits who negligently used falsified information to rally dupes and knaves among the people to vengeful injustice. Most of all, we surrender the religious leaders who pretended to justify this war and demanded we surrender our individual duty to determine good or evil in war to the war chiefs of Empire." Column by Lysander's Ghost.
Operating Systems: Lessons for Libertarians 1.0
"Libertarians acknowledge that the market/society/voluntary interaction preceded the state. So, the state formed by converting something allowed within the market to political power. Voluntary social systems allowed (in the sense of failed to stop) something to form that had the power to overthrow this system. We must acknowledge that there is an ever present, but not necessarily fatal weakness within the market." Column by Lysander's Ghost.
Decentralism vs. Rational Markets
"Think ahead and don't sell someone the rope if you know they intend to hang you with it. Remember that any free society retains the right to refuse suspicious customers." Column by Lysander's Ghost.
Reframing the Competition vs. Cooperation Debate
"In short, no one should attack market anarchism for opposing cooperation. We don't. We don't care, at least from a legal perspective, if you want to form a commune where everyone is married to everybody in complete and permanent income sharing. Consider the debate about competition vs. cooperation as one of minimal detail for every individual to work out in each of his own interactions with others." Column by Lysander's Ghost.
"Sometimes the state does stand there, predictable in its foolish pride and self-destructive wars and policies, where we can plan our lives to minimize our interaction with it and the cost to us. But in other cases, state influence is more like an odorless poison gas, diffusing in all directions where only people actively searching for that particular poison will have warning." Column by Lysander's Ghost.
Anarchist Revisions for Civilization the PC Game
"Every state is a religion. Generally we call this worship of state civic religion, with its flags, anthems, pledges of allegiance, rituals, and holidays. (Notice the etymological origin from holy day.) States often allow freedom of religion, but by propaganda, forced schooling/brainwashing, and threats to dissenters, it instills the civic religion into the core of every approved religion. You no longer have to believe that the state or king is God, only the instrument of God to be obeyed and the legitimate maker of laws of right and wrong." Column by Lysander's Ghost.
Intentional Communities as Anarchism in Practice
"Don’t let anarchist communities die with Josiah Warren. If some intentional communities can exist peacefully and survive profitably for generations even with ideas as inefficient as the Kibbutzim’s opposition to any private property, or the Amish opposition to technological progress, why would FMAICs need be any less successful? Further, it is the place to show the world anarchism in practice." Column by Lysander's Ghost.
The Mathematical Restitution Formula and Its Application
"Is justice something that must be created and defined by a government whose origins in conquest of weaker parties precede and supercede its concept of justice (sovereign immunity)? Or is justice a principle where conflicting parties resolve disputes without allegiance to any party above, beyond, superceding, or immune to justice?" Column by new Root Striker Lysander's Ghost.