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The 9th International Students For Liberty Conference (ISFLC16) is just a week away, and Liberty.me plans to be out in full force! Several familiar faces of Liberty.me will be speaking at the conference like Jeffrey Tucker, Julie Borowski, and Lucy Steigerwald. Plus, Liberty.me is also hosting the conference’s Media Lounge, where Liberty.me content creators can gather in a space to collaborate and conduct interviews. You simply won’t want to miss the largest gathering of young libertarians in the world. Best of all, as a Liberty.me subscriber, SFL has arranged a discount just for you. Use the promo code ISFLC16 for...

By Students For Liberty Vote5 1

For most Americans, fears of terrorism have been fading from memory since the end of the Iraq War. As the world just witnessed, however, the threat of global terrorism is once again a reality thanks to the emergence of a radical, new, jihadist group – the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Only by understanding how ISIS emerged and what exactly its leaders want can we address the threat it now poses. As it stands, the world’s leaders are ignoring vital information that may lead to disastrous consequences at the hands of ISIS. So how did ISIS emerge? As...

By Students For Liberty Vote0 0

A recent editorial by Lew Rockwell is titled, “Open Borders: A Libertarian Reappraisal.” But this isn’t a new look at immigration from the libertarian perspective. It’s actually a reevaluation of libertarianism, where Rockwell decides border control matters more than the principles of liberty. He’s not alone. An amazingly high number of libertarians switch sides when immigration is the topic. “We have a welfare state,” they cry. “These teeming hordes don’t appreciate our heritage of liberty.” With this most recent piece, Rockwell’s upped the claim. He argues that politically unwelcome immigration violates personal property rights as understood by libertarians. Rockwell’s approach...

By Students For Liberty Vote6 18

As libertarians, our inclination is to defend free speech at all costs. But as people – and people who care deeply about oppression – it’s our obligation to look deeper into the tension between free speech advocacy and the black experience at Mizzou and Yale. There’s a larger context in which we must understand the events leading up to these tipping points. We can, in no way, excuse protesters for how they treated student journalist Tim Tai, but we can – and should – dig deeper into their experience with oppression on campus. We should interrogate how the Constitution’s definition...

By Students For Liberty Vote1 4

In Tuesday night’s GOP popularity contest, Marco Rubio claimed, “Welders make more than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers.” While the grammatically incorrect claim has already been debunked, what interests me more is what this quip reveals about Rubio’s sense of life. To be clear, I’m only singling out Rubio because his stupid quip is a good jumping-off place for what I’d like to discuss. Much of what I say here can probably be said about all politicians. I pity Marco Rubio. He has succumbed to the evil that is politics and makes his living out of it. He...

By Students For Liberty Vote5 2

On Tuesday, Ohioans chose not to adopt Issue 3, which would have legalized the recreational sale of marijuana in the state. The ballot initiative had ten major funders (former 98 Degrees star Nick Lachey among them) and included language that limited cultivation to their own companies. Despite widespread support for ending marijuana prohibition in Ohio and nationwide, the measure faced major opposition and was decisively defeated. Some opposition is to to be expected. The state legalization efforts in Colorado, Alaska, and Oregon faced strong opposition from opponents citing community health and safety as their main argument. They claimed that marijuana...

By Students For Liberty Vote4 2

Learn more about the right to bear arms with SFL’s #NotJustAGun campaign. It’s undeniable, for criminal justice scholars and sociologists, that Terry stops are one of the worst things that has ever happened to black America. Stop and frisk policies, along with racial profiling, rose to prominence largely as a part of the 1960s “tough on crime” rhetoric and hysteria. In 1968,the Supreme Court held that, upon reasonable suspicion, the police may detain someone and “lightly frisk” them for weapons if they have reason to believe the suspect is “armed and dangerous.” This vague language, combined with the rampant racism...

By Students For Liberty Vote3 10

WASHINGTON, DC – With the national debt surpassing $18,000,000,000,000, Congress has decided to put out tip jars all over Capitol Hill in a mass effort to reduce the overwhelming and rapidly increasing national debt. “We’re all taking steps to be proactive,” said Representative John Boehner, “we can’t just all sit around and do nothing. So we’ve been brainstorming ways to alleviate this immense burden from the shoulders of American citizens. Because we care.” In fact, it was concern for the well-being of the nation that led to the measure in the first place. “When you consider that the debt per...

By Students For Liberty Vote0 0

The world we live in is full of imperfections. As one looks around society, it’s not hard to find examples of externalities, imperfect information, or collective action problems that leave public goods insufficiently dispersed. But from these failures, it’s all too easy to leap to advocating idealized solutions. The problems we’re trying to solve arose from imperfect institutions populated by imperfect people. Positing perfection on the part of the institutions one advocates to solve a problem is unrealistic. Economist Harold Demsetz called this error the “nirvana fallacy.” Demsetz wrote that: “the view that now pervades much public policy economics implicitly presents the relevant...

By Students For Liberty Vote2 0

California looms at the precipice of a water crisis unseen in the history of the region. While many commentators and politicians are quick to blame markets for over-consumption, the current management system represents anything but open markets. For years, the government of California has encouraged costly and inefficient use of water in a largely arid state by preventing the establishment of a transient and functional water market. Rather than encourage water use based on actual need and efficient allocation determined by price, the current system in California massively subsidizes the price of water and serves special interests. The western United...

By Students For Liberty Vote3 2

Earlier in this series, I argued that punishment, prisons, and criminal law are inherently unjust, and that a purely restitution-focused system of tort law would be a suitable replacement. Even those who end up agreeing may still wonder what practical impact this theoretical framework has on how we actually think about law and politics in the real world. Addressing that question will be the focus of this final installment. A Shift in Focus The first answer is that keeping goals like prison abolition in mind structures the way we evaluate other policies and arguments. For instance, libertarian opposition to gun control and the drug war becomes even more important when we remember...

By Students For Liberty Vote2 1

The last three posts of this series have been focused on the injustice of punishment and criminal law, and the justice of a tort-based pure restitution system. Even if punishment itself were legitimate, however, we would still have reason to reject the main form of punishment that exists today. Prisons– especially as they exist in the United States– can be attacked from several angles. For instance, their inherent tendency towards abuse, how they feed recidivism (freed prisoners’ relapse into criminal behavior), or the way they break up families. There are also the economic incentives they provide, both to prison guard unions and...

By Students For Liberty Vote2 0

In the previous couple of posts of this series, I argued that the practice of punishment and the institution of criminal law are inherently unjust. As an alternative, I proposed that we replaced them with a purely civil system, with no law but tort law. All cases would then be cases of dispute resolution, where aggressors are not punished, but instead forced to pay restitution to their victims. Here, I’ll provide some brief responses to some of the most common criticisms of this idea. Insufficient Deterrence One problem that is often raised against an exclusively tort-based legal system is that it...

By Students For Liberty Vote6 1

In the first post of this series, I gave some reasons why libertarians ought to reject the practice of punishment. As an alternative, I suggested that the only proper role of law is dispute resolution, and that law’s violence can only be used in either direct defense or the collection of restitution. In effect, this eliminates criminal law, leaving only civil law in its place. In what follows, I’ll try to bolster that conclusion by briefly showing why libertarians ought to oppose criminal law, beyond just the illegitimacy of punishment. Victim-Centric vs. Sovereign-Centric Views of Law Libertarians (rightly) spend a lot...

By Students For Liberty Vote2 0

As the pain, suffering, and sheer cost incurred by the criminal justice system in America spirals further and further out of control, more and more people have come to push for reform. Even Texas Governor Rick Perry, who once proudly declared to have never struggled with issues like the death penalty, has begun to advocatereducing the number of prisons. However, what we need, now more than ever, is something much more radical than mere reform to the criminal justice system: we need abolition. We must abolish the institutions of criminal law and punishment, including the system of slavery we call...

By Students For Liberty Vote1 2

The Obama administration recently announced a plan to give $263 million to local law enforcement,which is somewhat concerning considering how this intrusion of the federal government may affect local governments. There may be a silver lining in this plan as $75 million will go to providing officers with body cameras. This is interesting to say the least as many people have been calling for this move to make the police more accountable. Yet while body cameras may prove to be a good tool to keep the police accountable, what the rest of this money will go to is not quite...

By Students For Liberty Vote1 0

For years now we’ve heard about the rising costs of college tuition, the student debt problem, and how minimum wage jobs don’t pay enough. Too many people are caught in the same Catch-22: unable to pay for more schooling with their current income and unable to earn more money without more schooling. Some blame greedy banks and greedy schools, libertarians blame government loans, and certainly there is more than one contributing factor to the problem. Unfortunately, not enough people talk about how our K-12 system deserves partial blame. Why do we spend twelve years and tens of thousands of public...

By Students For Liberty Vote4 1

As protests in Ferguson and elsewhere have brought police militarization to the forefront of public debate, some voices suggest that reigning in police militarization requires stricter gun control laws. For example, Matthew Yglesias argues at Vox that “when civilians are well-armed, police have to be as well.” Yglesias claims, “The officer always has to worry that if he doesn’t reach for and use his own gun, the suspect will.” He further contends that the disproportionate rate at which blacks are shot by police means “Young black men pay the price for gun rights.” While “officer safety” is the common refrain...

By Students For Liberty Vote3 0

On December 7, 1972, Apollo 17 would make its way back from the last manned mission to the Moon. From a distance of 45,000 kilometers (28,000 miles), the crew of that flight decided to take a snapshot of our lovely home, Earth. The photo would be called “The Blue Marble” and it would be one of the few photos we have that encapsulates our planet in its intrinsic glory. The image quickly became iconic, representing the frailty of humanity’s propensity towards division. It simply depicted Earth and challenged us to think differently about our role in it. The ecological harm...

By Students For Liberty Vote7 9

Since the first implementation of mandatory minimum sentencing, tens of thousands of citizens have been stripped of their freedom for decades at a time. Though most regard incarcerated peoples as little more than statistics in a government database, each individual who loses 5, 10, 20 or more years of their life for a crime which, in many instances, is non-violent, falsely alleged, or a first time offense, represents a horrific perversion of justice. Let’s look at some victims of mandatory minimums: Algernon Lundy, who maintains his innocence, was given a mandatory sentence of life in prison on crack conspiracy charges....

By Students For Liberty Vote5 0

Last call for ISFLC16 Discounts! Feb 16, 2016

The Rise of ISIS: A Lesson in How it Might End Jan 24, 2016

I Want Lew Rockwell to Be Libertarian on Immigration Jan 19, 2016

Libertarians, It’s Time to Decide: Compassion or Free Speech Purism? Nov 18, 2015

We Need More Philosophers and Fewer Politicians Nov 17, 2015

Monopolies Are Not the Way to Legalize Marijuana Nov 11, 2015

Congress Puts Out Tip Jars In An Effort To Reduce National Debt Sep 9, 2015

The Nirvana Fallacy Sep 3, 2015

Free markets are the solution to the California water crisis Aug 29, 2015

Against the Criminal Justice System, Pt. V: Escaping Prison Forever Aug 26, 2015

Against the Criminal Justice System, Pt. IV: Free All Prisoners Aug 25, 2015

Against the Criminal Justice System, Pt. III: For Actual Justice Aug 25, 2015

Against the Criminal Justice System, Pt. II: The Criminality of Criminal Law Aug 22, 2015

Against the Criminal Justice System, Pt. I: No One Should Ever Be Punished Aug 21, 2015

Pessimism and Optimism for Police Body Cameras Aug 20, 2015

School Choice: A Weapon Against Poverty Aug 19, 2015

Gun Control and the Police State Aug 18, 2015

Libertarians Should Be Environmentalists Too! Aug 18, 2015

Mandatory Minimums: A Perversion of Justice Aug 17, 2015