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Squid Games
Hwang Dong-hyuk Squid Games was a fascinating, yet gruesome, look at the problem of consumer debt. When people get into massive debt, they become desperate to absolve themselves of it; in this case, they become desperate enough to engage in violent games where they are killed for not being successful or kill each other to get ...
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Dave Filoni This site is dedicated to reviewing popular content in a libertarian perspective. As such, I assume that you don’t mind me giving away some details of the plot during our walk-through and analysis of important parts of these books, TV shows, and other media. Even still, it’s not often that I reveal the surprise ending ...
The Joker, The Movie
Todd Phillips I love a good comic book movie. This one was different; it was sad and had no action packed super hero battles. It showed the story of the permanent victim, one Arthur Fleck, who is at the mercy of his boss, his peers, his society, and most importantly the rich as embodied by Thomas ...
Anne with an E
Multiple Directors This show is just plain excellent. The characters are emotional, passionate, and deeply developed. There’s so many scenes that are so sad or so happy beyond words, and Anne’s vocabulary and way of thinking and speaking is powerful and endearing. “ the State was nowhere to be seen.” Ralph Waldo Emerson In the first 2 seasons of ...
Harry Potter 7: The Deathly Hallows
J.K. Rowling The final book in the Harry Potter series gives us a lot of insight into the Ministry of Magic and how Voldomort takes over society through the legal framework of Wizarding law. Early on in the story, we learn that the Ministry falls and is now being led by the Deatheaters. While at the ...
Harry Potter 6: The Half Blood Prince
J. K. Rowling While certainly less political than the previous book, the 6th book in the series offers some interesting insights into Harry’s relationships and loyalties both to his schoolmaster, Dumbledore, and the Ministry of Magic, now headed by Rufus Scrimgeour who supplanted Cornelius Fudge. At the beginning of the book, Rufus and Fudge both teleport into ...
The Titan of Industry: John D. Rockefeller
Ron Chernow The Titan refers to John D Rockefeller, Sr. He is called that because of his Titanic role in forming American industry into what would become the future of large scale industry as well as his incredible Philanthropic charitable actions such as founding the University of Chicago or The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. This ...
Harry Potter 5: The Order of the Phoenix
J.K. Rowling I’m starting off discussing the 5th book in the series for a reason: while the earlier books mention some interesting things about politics and ethics, such as Hermione’s quest for the rights of house-elves to not be slaves to their masters or the struggle of racism between the muggles and pure bloods, the 5th ...
The Trial: A Forgotten Dystopian Masterpiece
Franz Kafka This book is what I imagine the modern, surrealist painter movement of the likes of Picasso and Dali is when applied to the art of literature. It is disjointed and contains dream-like, hazy scenes that leave you wondering if the character ever experienced it at all or was just daydreaming it. This book swirls ...
The Handmaid’s Tale
Bruce Miller – HULU I wasn’t sure if I was going to write something about this show. In it, the State is so omnipresent and abusive that it hardly needs much explanation; one simply must walk away from it with a desire for a more libertarian world that allows for more individual choice for the Handmaids ...
Soul
Pete Docter / Kemp Powers – Disney/Pixar Soul is a powerful movie about a jazz musician who passes away but refuses to go peacefully away to the “great beyond”. It is essentially a story about life and how wonderful and precious it is; we should not linger and waste the one chance we get to live ...
Red Rising
Pierce Brown It’s easy to read the first book in the Red Rising series and dismiss it as “just another hunger games”. It feels very similar; a young man named Darrow lives a harsh, totalitarian society built around slavery ruled by the higher, elite classes of which he is told he will never be a part ...
Walking Dead: The World Beyond
AMC, Michael Cudlitz In the new Walking Dead series, we are teleported into the future of the zombie apocalypse. Taking place 10 years after the initial introduction of zombies into the world, it’s story line has, at first, evolved far from the tribal wanderings of disparate, small groups of ragtag people sewn together on the road ...
Westworld S3
HBO, Jonathan Nolan Westworld Season 3 changes dramatically from the first 2 seasons. Gone are the dust bowl ridden, western Cowboy and Indian gunslinger storylines. Enter the real world: a slick, futuristic technological paradise in which all your dreams come true, or maybe not. This season is so different that it warrants it’s own column. While staying ...
Westworld S1-2
At first glance, Westworld is just another Jurassic Park rehash: man builds a theme park with robots, robots go crazy and start attacking people, chaos ensues. Yet, the first episode makes it abundantly clear that there is a philosophical depth and grand complexity to this psychological thriller that makes this show stand out in the ...
The 1619 Project
The 1619 project is a recent set of articles published by the New York Times. Several of the articles were written by academic scholars, but I want to focus on the article by Nikole Hannah-Jones as the first article in the series and the headliner and the flaws and biases on full display in ...
An Introduction to Libertarianism
Libertarianism is a prescription for a system of ethics for societies. Let’s explore some of it’s premises.
Fathers and Sons
This book is a wonderful story of love, family, and ideas. Turgenev was banned from Russia partially for writing this book. While the story of love and a son venturing out on his own and figuring out his own path are excellently told albeit politically benign, there is a lot of talk among the characters ...
Crime and Punishment
This book is one of the most acclaimed books in literature history, and it’s not hard to see why. The intensity of the writing, the passion and depth of the characters, and the mystery and intrigue of the plot all weave together into an incredible story.
Contagious Diseases and the State
Disease, viruses, and other contagious medical disasters have been a major concern for humanity. Throughout history, we have experienced such terrifying events as the black plague wiping out 75 to 200 million people. What can we do?
The Walking Dead and Negan’s State
Rakkur Spoilers ahoy! Rick Grimes is the leader of a group of survivors in the post-apocalyptic world of the walking dead. I say the word “leader” because I do not mean King, Monarch, President, or any other title that would designate that Rick holds political power over his group. Rick has always been a leader chosen by ...
How Free Societies Deal With the Problems of Mass, Indiscriminate Shootings
Rakkur It is with a very emotional and heavy heart that we look upon the recent and tragic killings in Colorado as another instance in a legacy of public shootings. One particularly terrifying property of these shootings is that the participants are generally random and the killers don’t have any particular emotional or relational attachment to ...
Web Development and Intellectual Property
Rakkur I have worked as a web developer and a computer enthusiast for most of my life. The ability to harness a machine’s memory, where bits of data can be stored and retrieved at later time, always amazed me. It’s invention and production unlocked many doors which were previously unavailable: we are now able to build ...
The Lone Well of the Village
Rakkur It has often been said to me that public services are necessary because they prevent monopolies from coming into town, claiming up the most important resources which people survive upon, and then selling those goods at ridiculous prices or refusing to sell at all. These high prices and scarcity cause poverty and strife, and people ...
Digital Currencies
Rakkur A new way of trading has emerged in the form of a digital money. The actual product is to be unnamed in this broadcast, but this currency is now being used to purchase things from a growing number of internet businesses and even local businesses. Sending money to people becomes as easy as sending an ...
Digital Currency challenges the Federal Reserve Monopoly
Rakkur A new way of trading has emerged in the form of a digital money. The actual product is to be unnamed in this broadcast, but this currency is now being used to purchase things from a growing number of internet businesses and even local businesses. Sending money to people becomes as easy as sending an ...
How do we actually kill jobs?
Rakkur There was a recent speech in which Jesse Jackson, Democratic Congressman from Illinois, focused on a recent technological advancement concerning flat, touchscreen monitors which have computers and which allow users to go online, read books, run applications, and otherwise increase their enjoyment and productivity. In his speech, he accused these devices as being something which ...
Iron Man 2
Marvel Studios, Jon Favreau Far too often in entertainment, government provided security is shown to be the harbinger of order and peace. Shows like Law and Order, Cops, Dragnet, CSI, NYPD Blue, and many others portray the virtue of government provided security/arbitration services as the only thing keeping us from chaos and disorder. Never is it ...
The Paradox of Trade
Rakkur I think a lot of the misunderstandings about the market and human behavior stem from a misconception of what’s called the “paradox of exchange”. This paradox has puzzled economists throughout the ages. Adam Smith and all the classical economists, incredibly important as their contributions were, failed when they were unable to correctly understand the concept ...
Can the Government create jobs?
Rakkur “It is true that we cannot depend on government alone to create jobs or long-term growth. But at this particular moment..only government can break the cycle that is crippling our economy.” ~Barack Obama I read this in my paper this morning, and I am not sure where to begin with regard to this incredibly fallacious statement. ...
Minimum wages harm those it tries to help
Rakkur When I say that I am completely against the minimum wage, most people are appalled. They say that I hate poor people and that I want to see them impoverished and unemployed. They say that the people on minimum wages can barely survive with prices the way that they are today. I believe that is ...