Shards and Phractures

I'm working on my Master's Degree, and I had to give a presentation on "the history of a chosen resource."  My professor knows some of my libertarian outlook, and where I work, and practically dared me to pick gold.   Challenge accepted. This was the final slide in my class presentation last night.  It shows the price of gold since 1800. I humorously and facetiously pointed out the "huge spike" caused by the Civil War, and the equally huge one caused by the Great Depression, before focusing on the real spike.  Something profound and basic had to have happened to change this otherwise flat graph to an exponential progression; I jokingly asked what could possibly have happened around the time of the Nixon administration to have caused it? "Gold is gold," I said.  "Gold doesn't double in power every eighteen months.  Gold doesn't release a new model with sunroof and bucket seats.  Gold doesn't crash the asking price by ...

Had the privilege of voicing "The Jeffersonian Secessionist Tradition" by Thomas DiLorenzo, available for your listening pleasure right here: The Jeffersonian Secessionist Tradition Hope you enjoy; comments, criticisms, critiques, always welcome. -=ad=-

...great post by Chris Rossini over at Economic Policy Journal: You, Mr. & Ms. libertarian, are of the same pedigree as John Hancock!  It's true that you're not smuggling a physical good (as Hancock did) but if you'reabsorbing the ideas of liberty and then sharing those ideas with others, you're still a smuggler. I've always described being a libertarian as "rolling snowballs downhill."  Every time you discuss freedom, or Ron Paul, or Lew Rockwell, or libertarianism, the real Lincoln, alternative health, paleo diets, etc, etc...you pack a small snowball and set it loose to roll down a hill. Most snowballs rolled down a hill grind to a stop.  Some bounce off the slope and disappear.  But...every now and then... On occasion, one of those snowballs will hit just the right trajectory, and pick up speed, and just like in the old cartoons, it will just keep getting bigger and bigger until it reaches the bottom of the hill and creams all of the u...

I have to ask permission to drive, marry, hunt, fish, build a house, start a business, carry a firearm, or travel out of the country. And if I travel by air, you reserve the right to irradiate me, view me through a scanner that looks past clothing, and run your hands over my body.  You take a bite out of every paycheck, a cut of every purchase, and even the lion's share of the estate when I'm gone.  If I have employees, you decree how much I may pay them and how much I must pay you for hiring each of them. You control what my kids learn in school.  You claim the power to restrict what I put into my body.  You read my email, listen in on my phone calls, and steal my property if I'm even suspected of a crime.  Not charged, mind you...but simply suspected. You claim the right to decide what treatments my physician can use to heal me.  You jail more of your own citizens than any other country in the world.  You send our youth off to kil...

My latest LewRockwell.com article, "Welcome to the Neighborhood," was picked up and reprinted on Bob Livingston's Personal Liberty site: Welcome to the Neighborhood -=ad=-

More narration work for the Ludwig von Mises Institute.  This time, I had the privilege of providing the voice for an essay by the incomparable Doctor Walter Block.  He is one of my favorite Mises/Lewrockwell.com writers, and I hope I did his writing justice.  You can listen to it here: You Didn't Consent To Be The State's Victim - Audo Daily ...or, if you'd prefer to just read it, without my mumbling getting in the way, click here instead: You Didn't Consent To Be The State's Victim - Mises Daily Either way, it's an excellent essay; I enjoyed narrating it for all of you.  Enjoy! -=ad=-

I am now doing narration/voice work for the Mises Institute.  Check out the first two: http://mises.org/media/8528/ Natural-Disasters-Dont- Increase-Economic-Growth http://mises.org/media/8525/ Why-the-Cost-of-Government-Is- Higher-Than-You-Think ...please feel free to comment/critique... -=ad=-