:Fixed Point

In the last part of his documentary, Adam Curtis completed his thesis illustrating how a particular idea of freedom (Berlin’s negative freedom) led to the pursuit of over-zealous policies in post-Communist Russia and Iraq.
The idea is fairly cogent; negative liberty, as pursued most vociferously by rigid libertarians, contends that ‘freedom from…’ is more important than […]

On the subject of the Manchester ’supercasino’.
I am a committed libertarian. It is why I write here, week in, week out about the need for the small state, low taxation, the diminution of welfarism and the promotion of individual responsibility
Thats OK. Then we have this,

Libertarianism can only go so far.

Also OK. And we conclude with this,

After all: can […]

I’m confused over the Catholic gay adoption issue. Regardless of the law banning discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, what gay couple in their right mind would approach a Catholic adoption agency? Surely the problem would just go away (unless there are gay couples who just want to irritate Catholics)
So we are left with […]

An oft-repeated argument against Government intervention is that it can have unintended consequences that often contradict the original intention. An example would be how the mandatory wearing of seatbelts encourages drivers to behave more recklessly and increase accident rates (though this particular example is readily becoming an economics urban myth).
From the BBC yesterday comes a story […]

Some years ago I came up with the idea of writing a frivolous book applying economic theory to analyse religions. Of course, work commitments intruded but I thought I’d share some of the ideas.
Are there increasing returns to religious affiliation?
To the extent that an individual will place a higher value on a larger network than […]

The debate on the veil continues in England. As a libertarian, I cannot endorse the popularly held view that people should be made to dress one way or another, even if it means covering their entire faces and draping their bodies in a shapeless chador. Is it fair, then for Jack Straw to ask Muslim […]