Far from being environments conducive to learning, schools across the world coerce students to conform to the whims of politicians and bureaucrats. Billed as bastions of free expression, intellectual honesty and rigor, administrators have turned schools into prisons for the mind, where one-size- fits-all policies are forced upon youth and where independent thoughts are discarded. It’s a world in which the government will tell a student what they can and can’t think, wear, say, or do. It’s a world that crushes the individual for the benefit of those in power — a practice we’ve dubbed “Teensploitation.”
Tax Slavery Sucks
June 5, 2010 By 2 Comments
This article is #19 of a weekly series highlighting the former memes of Bureaucrash, an organization once headed by my friends Pete Eyre and Jason Talley of the Motorhome Diaries. The memes were originally authored by Pete Eyre and Anja Hartleb-Parson, and were intended as means of communicating ideas about liberty in catchy and succinct [...]
Stop Statism
June 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Statists are anti-progress. Statists claim their policies are for the common good. For some this claim is just a front to get more power, but for others it is a genuine goal. Nevertheless, even the most well-intentioned statists, who believe that granting government the power to control individual actions will result in a better outcome, violate rights and cause harm.
Stop Rent-seeking
May 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Rent-seeking refers to the behavior of individuals or groups expending resources to achieve public policy decisions that transfer wealth to them at the expense of others. Some examples:
A nonprofit organization might seek for the government to spend taxpayer money on their pet cause, such as protecting the environment or researching a disease.
A workers’ union might want the government to force employers to provide higher wages, more benefits and greater job security.
A corporation might seek subsidization to support an unsustainable business model instead of working to become more profitable.
While the rent-seekers should be faulted for the behavior, it is the government granting rent-seekers what they want that is the real problem. As it shells out more benefits and privileges, government has to collect more taxes to administer and pay for them, thus vastly increasing its size and scope.
Smoking is Healthier than Fascism
May 8, 2010 By Leave a Comment
This article is #15 of a weekly series highlighting the former memes of Bureaucrash, an organization once headed by my friends Pete Eyre and Jason Talley of the Motorhome Diaries. The memes were originally authored by Pete Eyre and Anja Hartleb-Parson, and were intended as means of communicating ideas about liberty in catchy and succinct [...]
Progressives Against Progress
May 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment
“Progress” is an abused word these days, especially by bureaucrats and the special interest groups that cater to them. Yet such groups, in the name of progress and social justice, support government intervention through intervention in the market, minimum or living wages, and universal healthcare. We find neither progress nor justice in government actions that advance one group at the expense of another.
Politics Hurt
April 24, 2010 By 2 Comments
When confronted with a problem most people today turn to the government—but in reality, it’s often the government that created the problem and its continued involvement only exacerbates the problem. Politics distorts free market signals, quashes rights, and, quite bluntly, kills individuals.
I Am Not a Number
April 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Homeland Tyranny
April 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” In the wake of terrorist attacks against the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, and others, governments of these countries have found it easy to usurp sweeping new powers by claiming they will be better able to protect citizens. Such logic allows government to justify its power grab, which ultimately restricts the rights of innocent individuals — especially when governments view the threat of terrorism as a never-ending war. Apparently taking a cue from the “War is Peace” mantra found in George Orwell’s 1984, Dick Cheney has called such a perspective “a new normalcy.”
