[My name is Lawrence Black. The founder and principal content creator for Order from Chaos is my younger brother. He has graciously offered me the opportunity to pen the occasional opinion piece for his blog. We are both Objectivists, but we do not always hold the same opinions on every subject. Thus, this Disclaimer: The opinions presented in this essay are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Order from Chaos, it’s employees or affiliates. Any errors,
So, this post isn’t what I had planned on posting this week. I started working on a post about Horatio Alger stories and why people today, even adults, should read them but it isn’t close to being ready yet. Also, one of my free days for writing and editing, Saturday, got taken up with getting a garden going which brings me to this post.
My last really successful garden. Lots of time and money put into it.
Growing up in rural Vermont, a college classmate of mine once called me a hick, having a garden in is nothing new. When I was younger, my parents always
This article is late in being written. I first thought about writing something about my opposition to Donald Trump’s candidacy back before the Vermont primary, but somehow I never got around to writing it. Then, as he was battling with Ted Cruz, I thought it would be a good time to write it finally. Again, I never seemed to find the time or energy to write it then either. Now, now that Trump is the presumptive nominee for the Republican party, I finally do have the energy and time, though
Justice George Sutherland photo from Wikipedia
In the part 1 and part 2 of this series I reviewed how, before the Great Depression and the New Deal, the courts largely still protected the rights of employees and employers to freely contract with regards to wages. The courts agreed that each individual was the best judge of the wages that
If you have heard any news from Vermont lately it is likely a story about the allegations of fraud in an EB-5 regional center here. The SEC is investigating a pair of Vermont developers for running what some reports are characterizing as a ponzi scheme, improperly using money from investors intended for new projects to make up for cost overruns and or losses from earlier projects. In total, these developers have taken in about $350 million in EB-5 funds some $200 million of which was allegedly
The usual suspects, Vermont statists, are at it again. They are seeking to manage the behavior of citizens in a direction that they deem to be “better” and to penalize those who do not fall in line.
This latest assault is the renewal of a proposal to impose a 2 cent per ounce tax on beverages that contain added sugar such as soda and sports drinks. Based on prices at a local minimart, this would result in about a 27% increase in the cost of a bottle of soda. Supporters of the law
On Thursday, January 8, 2015 the joint legislature of the state of Vermont will perform its obligation to elect the next governor of the state from among the top three candidates from the recent general election: Governor Peter Shumlin, Scott Milne and Dan Feliciano. The legislature has this obligation because none of these candidates received the 50% plus 1 required by the state’s constitution. This is not all that uncommon in Vermont, and happened most recently in 2010.
Largely, the
What solution to the “problem” of health insurance would an advocate of the the principles of individual rights, look like? First, we should probably be clear on what exactly we mean by insurance.
Insurance: Act of insuring, or assuring, against loss or damage by a contingent event.
Insure: to secure against a loss by a contingent event, on certain stipulated conditions, or at a given rate or premium.
Contingent: liable, but not certain, to occur
So taken together we get the fact that
In a recent email from the Politix website there was asked the question of whether income inequality concerned me. The first paragraph of this post was my answer, which I expand on.
In and of itself, income inequality is not a problem and is simply a fact of reality. Everyone has different levels of skills, different interests, different levels of ambition to actually make a larger income and different things are more or less in demand than others – to name just a few factors that can go
December last year I wrote a blog post in which I made the case that in the last several decades Republicans have more and more become pale versions of Democrats. I pointed out that while, during an election season at least, Republicans often use the rhetoric of protecting rights and limited government when it comes time to actually govern their policies are not very different from those of the Democrats. You can check the original post to see my arguments, which I still stand by.
One of the comments