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A welcome from Mark

Welcome to the new Nobody’s Business blog. I first got the idea to start this blog a few years ago when I was reading Rogier van Bakel’s original Nobody’s Business blog. It just struck me that our...

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I shrugged too

As someone pithier than I first pointed out, I think I now have an idea how Jewish kids feel at Christmas time. Lots of other people in the libertarian blogosphere are really excited about the new...

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Pissed-off Christians destroy mediocre photograph

In France, the Christians are apparently jealous of all the cool extremism the Muslims have been getting away with — fatwas against novelists and comic artists, for example — so some of them decided to...

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We call them “consumers” because they are

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman may have a Nobel prize in economics, but in his recent commentary on the Independent Payment Advisory Board, he sure doesn’t sound like an economist. (I don’t know...

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Chinese prosperity is not necessarily a threat

Yesterday, my Esteemed Co-Blogger Rogier posted with some concern about a recent IMF forecast that the United States will soon no longer be the world’s largest economy. According to a Brett Arends at...

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How to win the fight for freedom in America

The story first came out yesterday afternoon of yet another screwed-up police raid. (And if you read Radley Balko a lot, you won’t be surprised to learn that it happened in Broward County, Florida.)...

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On the need to understand anti-porn morality

I don’t understand how some people can be so obsessed with with pornography. I’m not talking about people who watch it, I’m talking about people who do things like this: Morality in Media announced...

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Keynes vs. Hayek, Round 2

It seems to me that since we’re calling ourselves “libertarian,” someone ought to post the sequel to last year’s Keynes vs. Hayek rap video, “Fear the Boom and Bust”. (My favorite part is when Hayak...

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Explaining things, Part 1 – Ideology

Over at the Agitator, guest blogger Peter Moskos wants libertarians to explain a few things to him. The Agitatortots have been answering him in the comments, but I thought it would be a good exercise...

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Explaining things, Part 2 – Force and Freedom

Over at the Agitator, guest blogger Peter Moskos wants libertarians to explain a few things to him. The Agitatortots have been answering him in the comments, but I thought it would be a good exercise...

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Explaining things, Part 3 – Compassion

A couple of weeks ago over at the Agitator, guest blogger Peter Moskos asked libertarians to explain a few things to him. The Agitatortots answered him in the comments, but I thought answering him here...

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Check out Radley Balko’s new digs

Radley Balko, whom I think I can safely say is admired by everyone at Nobody’s Business, is now posting at his new digs at HuffPo. His first post is the infuriating story of how the the Pima County,...

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Terrors of the managed economy: Taxicabs

Reason‘s A. Barton Hinkle has a nice piece about one of the clearest examples of what goes wrong when the government steps in to manage a market that should be free: A decade or so ago, Minneapolis...

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Professor Levitt’s “Daughter Test”

Economist Steven Levitt said something dumb, and I’m not sure whether to be amused or disappointed. He wants online poker to be legal, but he draws the line at cocaine and prostitution. Here’s his...

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How are we doing so far?

Since we launched this new blog, I’ve been trying to avoid obsessing over the traffic stats. Other than occasionally checking the average daily visitor count — currently hovering around 50-60 — I have...

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Peter McWilliams

Peter McWilliams, 1949 – 2000 This blog is named after Peter McWilliams’ amazing book, Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country. The premise of the book...

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A brief and unnecessary defense of Radley Balko

I want to be Radley Balko when I grow up, so it pains me when I check out how he’s doing at his new job with the Huffington Post and see partisan lunacy like this: Huffington Post needs to spend some...

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Nobody’s Business, now available in blue

I just switched Nobody’s Business over to version 1.1 of our theme. Basically, we were getting a bit tired of the traditional orange, and trying to find other colors that go with it was straining my...

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Stories of consensual crime enforcement

If you read Radley Balko’s excellent Agitator blog (which you should) or one of the legal blogs which covers the injustices of our legal system, such as Scott Greenfield’s Simple Justice, you’re...

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“No Knock Raid”

Most of you have probably already seen this, but as I’m taking a bit of a break for the next week or so, I thought I’d leave you with it. Warning: This music video features camera footage of actual...

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Roads

I’ve been on a road trip from Chicago to the east coast and back, and along the way I’ve been looking for something I can make into a libertarian lesson. For example, I could write about the poor...

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Denying the free will of prostitutes

When Dave Krueger of the currently-dormant Sex Hysteria blog first suggested Maggie McNeill as a contributor to Nobody’s Business, I was a bit hesitant. I was concerned that bringing aboard an...

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Linkavaganza

Stuff I can’t write a whole post about: Health insurance price controls: Because health insurance should be as easy to get as a rent-controlled apartment in New York. One of my complaints about...

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More national greatness nonsense

We’re in a bit of a lull here at Nobody’s Business — I think all of us are busy with our day jobs at the same time — and I’ve been trying to find ways to fill it. I was planning a multi-part lecture...

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Declaration of Independents – Part 1

By now, you’ve probably heard that Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch from Reason magazine have a new book out called The Declaration of Independents. I say you’ve probably heard this already because...

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Declaration of Independents – Part 2

When I wrote part 1 of my review of Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch’s new book, The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America, I ended up quoting a lot from...

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Welcome to the 9/12 world

In the aftermath of 9/11, a lot of people told us we needed to sacrifice our freedoms in order to stay safe. They told us we needed to have the PATRIOT act — the provisions of which had been rejected...

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Declaration of Independents – Part 3

I guess it’s about time I wrote the final part of my review of Declaration of Independents. Part 1 and Part 2 — covering their respective parts of the book — are already up, but I’ve been holding off...

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A pointless bit of libertarian purity

They say you can find out if someone is a moderate or hard-core libertarian by telling him you want to cut the top income tax rate to 1 percent. A moderate libertarian will likely be enthusiastic about...

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A libertarian looks at Occupy Wall Street, part 1

I haven’t had much to say about the Occupy Wall Street protests — or any of the other Occupy <your-city-here> events — mostly because I don’t know what the protests are about. That’s not entirely...

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A libertarian looks at Occupy Wall Street, part 2

As I said before, I haven’t been writing about the Occupy Wall Street movement because it’s hard for me to get a handle on what such a grass roots movement is all about. (I had the same trouble with...

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A libertarian looks at Occupy Wall Street, part 3

I’ve been taking a look at the Occupy Wall Street movement. In Part 1 I just rambled on a bit about the movement, then in Part 2 I started to take a look at the official Declaration of the Occupation...

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A libertarian looks at Occupy Wall Street, part 4

I’ve been taking a look at the Occupy Wall Street movement. In Part 1 I just rambled on a bit about the movement, then in Part 2 I started to take a look at the official Declaration of the Occupation...

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How not to count the costs of drug prohibition

One of my regular web surfing stops is Ethics Alarms, a thought-provoking blog where ethicist Jack Marshall writes about the ethical dimensions of various events in the news. I often disagree with what...

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Kissing Hank’s Ass

I was planning to write something else, but then I decided that Rogier’s idea of slamming major world religions is a lot more fun.

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The Totalitarian Moment

Well ain’t that a kick in the head? Going into the Iowa caucus, it was starting to look like Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch’s libertarian moment was going to happen in a big way. Ron Paul was actually...

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Don’t let Whitney Houston become the next Len Bias

To sports fans, Len Bias was a college basketball star who died too young of a drug overdose, a symbol of what might have been. To those of us who oppose the War on Drugs, however, Len Bias is a symbol...

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How not to bring women into the libertarian movement

Over at Ravings of a Feral Genius, the whole contraception-Sandra-Fluke-Rush-Limbaugh-slut-prostitute incident has got Jennifer Able pissed off at some of her fellow libertarian bloggers (emphasis, I...

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Helping the well-connected by helping the disadvantaged

A family friend used to be an executive at a Fortune 500 corporation, where she ran a department that provided a certain kind of service to other businesses. She had started the department with just a...

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When libertarianism happens to people: Music shop edition

It’s a bit unfortunate for libertarianism and free markets that Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (soon to be another major motion picture) is about innovative captains of industry — giants among insects —...

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The FBI thinks you should never have privacy

Can you imagine if the FBI had been around when the construction industry was as new as the internet is? We would have been reading news items like this: The FBI is asking for industry support for new...

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Shikha Dalmia on totalitarianism at the borders

Since I don’t have time to write much of my own stuff, I can at least point to something good when I see it, such as Shikha Dalmia’s piece at The Daily about how both the left and right hate it when...

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Remy: Why They Fought

Not quite appropriate for Memorial Day. Not quite inappropriate. It came up first in YouTube’s search box autocomplete after I typed “re” so I guess I’m not the only one who thought of this today.

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Do elected leaders worry about precedent?

Whenever our elected leaders decide to give themselves some shiny new powers — indefinite detention, warrentless wiretaps, killing Americans without due process — I always wonder, don’t they realize...

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How not to help the homeless

One of the common slurs against libertarianism is that we want poor people to suffer. Sure, we claim to be driven by principled opposition to the leviathan of government, but these critics see through...

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Peter McWilliams and why the drug war isn’t funny

Peter McWilliams, 1949 – 2000 The name of this blog is more or less a reference to the book Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country by Peter...

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Enslaving our kids

I’m late to the party on this, but I couldn’t let Thomas Ricks’ stupid op-ed go without saying something. Ricks is a respected journalist who covers military issues and has a blog at Foreign Policy...

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A libertarian telling the Right where they go wrong

Over at The Agitator, guest blogger Jason Kuznicki has a terrific post titled “An Open Letter to My Friends on the Right,” in which he tries to explain how the right wing gets freedom wrong. He begins...

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