I decided to move some discussion from this post up to the top level here. Specifically, Watoosh wrote: "Well, if violence is defined as initiation of force (which, of course, presupposes certain property rights), then I think Rockwell is correct..." Well, if we define cats as elephants, then many people keep elephants in their house. More seriously, firstly, violence is not usually defined that way. It's defined as, you know, violence, so that, say, someone may respond violently or non-violently to someone who aggresses against them. Otherwise, it would make no sense to say, for instance, "He punched me, but I did not stoop to violence in response." And, secondly, the libertarian usage of "initiation of force" is very offbeat. If I wander onto someone's meadow, most people would not say I had "initiated force" -- I mean, sure, I used "force" against the earth to push off walking, but that's not force directed against...
Bob,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the referral.
A little explanation on why this is here: I've had this idea since the old ASC days, but I never followed up on it because video editing was just too difficult back then. That's since changed, but it was really a bizarre happenstance that provoked me to start working on this. I was talking to a fellow student in one of my math classes yesterday when the topic turned to gasoline prices; he mentioned to me that he'd seen a video on YouTube showing how the price of gas has stayed fixed in terms of gold over the last 40 years. I had seen the video he was talking about (the first one in the list of examples), and he admitted that he was bored silly by economics, but that he was still interested in learning about how inflation impacted him directly. Apparently, the slow and graphic-heavy YouTube video explained more to him in 5 minutes than two college courses could. I immediately had an epiphany about connecting the freedom movement in its entirety with the wider public through a light but serious documentary series. On that note, I threw together the wiki with some requests for ideas from anyone and everyone that I know.
Long story short, thanks for passing this along. It might wind up being something worthwhile.