All this does is make the best of a bad situation, practically speaking.
An excellent way to phrase it. An anarchist accepting handouts from the government is making the best out of a bad situation. Kudos on this.
Hot off the presses: an article by Walter Block posted today on this very topic.
I urge you to apply for all of the grants you possibly can. Murray Rothbard said that a man’s contribution to society is proportional to the profits he earns. I say in similar vein, other things equal, the more money you take from the coffers of the state the better libertarian you are.
Great article on the subject!
Disappointing.
I mean, really it’s impossible to pass on state favors and stay a functioning member of society. You would never be able to use a non-toll road. You wuold have to dispose of your garbage and waste yourself. You couldn’t get your bills sent to you through the mail (which is a little easier now, with direct deposit and online bill pay. You probably couldn’t use the internet, the state has its hand all over it.
This could go on for days. So, is there a problem taking favors from the state? It depends on how you approach it, imo. If you’re coming at it honestly; you pay your dues and don’t manipulate the system to get more than you’re owed, that seems much more respectable.
Hot off the presses: an article by Walter Block posted today on this very topic.
I urge you to apply for all of the grants you possibly can. Murray Rothbard said that a man’s contribution to society is proportional to the profits he earns. I say in similar vein, other things equal, the more money you take from the coffers of the state the better libertarian you are.
After reading the article, instead of the out of context quote… I felt differently. Fairly disingenuous.
They aren’t favors.
That’s closer to my POV.
I think Block’s position is very poor and without principles. Grants are welfare. Telling libertarians they are better libertarians the more welfare they take is ridiculous.
Conza, do not accuse me of insincerity/deceitfulness for simply sharing a new relevant article and the concluding passage of the article. I don’t know what you found so out-of-context about the concluding passage, but I was not trying to mislead. I have not even taken a position in this debate. I would have shared a new article by a prominent Austrian relevant to a hot topic no matter what conlusion it arrived at. Unclench.
I was merely pointing out that highlighting & providing only the conclusion without reference to the reasoning results in a completely different feeling / grasp of what it’s about, for me anyway.
“I have not even taken a position in this debate.”
Oh, my bad… I thought you had. Must have mistaken you with Catalan on that one. Apologies. Read it somewhere.
“Unclench.”
That’d first require me to clench.
You may have indeed read me speak to this issue in another thread a long time ago. I do have a position, and it does happen to conincide more with Block’s conclusion than with Liberty Student’s. But I wasn’t engaged (or trying to engage) in the debate in this thread (the question doesn’t interest me right now), and again, I would’ve shared what Block had to say about a hot topic in the forum no matter what conclusion he arrived at. While I roughly agree with his conlusion, I don’t even agree with how Block arrived at his conclusion, because I have a fundamentally different meta-ethical philosophy than Block. So I wasn’t posting the article to espouse its propositions, since I don’t even agree with most of them.
Nothing wrong with expressing your opinion about that; just do it without accusing me of insincerity/deceitfulness.
Block’s method is easy to live with. Call ourselves libertarians and then act any old way we want. It’s not welfare when we take it!