When I attended the 2013 Property and Freedom Society Conference in Bodrum, Turkey I met an astonishingly beautiful young woman from eastern Europe. Months later an op-ed entitled “Ron Paul Gets It Wrong When He Speaks about Secession and Crimea” penned by Students for Liberty (SFL) President and co-founder Alexander McCobin appeared on the blog Panam Post. The article sparked controversy at the Ron Paul Peace and Prosperity Institute (RPI); Director of the Institute, Daniel McAdams responded with a scathing critique. McCobin’s co-author of the Panam Post piece then published another article, this time with the Daily Caller, provoking another, equally scathing response from McAdams. I shared the McAdams reply with my friend from eastern Europe. She was outraged and thought that the McAdams response was “offensive.” What could be going on?

Here was a young woman, near to me in age, on...

I’m not sure what’s going on here with Mises Institute Quarterly editor Ryan McMaken’s analysis of the status of the Bundy Ranch in Clark County, NV. In one breath he “dispute[s] that any state has the moral right to own land,” even “agree[ing] with those who want to see all government lands sold and privatized,” yet in the next breath seems to recognize the federal government’s right to own land in advocating that “[t]he feds … auction off the lands in question.” After all, how can one sell something without owning it in the first place? This leaves the reader wondering which position McMaken takes: does the federal government have a legitimate ownership right in property or not?

McMaken seems inclined to think it does. He thinks it would be “great … [i]f the Bundy family [could] come up with the capital to buy those lands” if the USFG were to auction them off. So according to McMaken...

Blogging is a pain. And blogging platforms don’t help. If the mainstream of the internet had its way, everyone would be using Wordpress. I flirted with that before, maybe 3 years back, to no avail. I was caught up in the modern complications with ferocious blogging. Wordpress and all the rest (Blogger, Tumblr, SquareSpace, etc.) inject a level of complexity that makes international trade look simple, and I’m computer savvy! At least somewhat so.

But as someone who dares enter the very lofty field of economic academia at the professional level, yet who lives in a digital age (a real paradox, actually), writing is essentially required. I had to choose. Svbtle became the go-to. It’s free. It’s clean. It’s intuitive. It’s navigable. And it’s totally devoid of the cramped, unnecessary complexity of other blogs. Here, the writing matters.

These pages, posts, spaces – whatever you want to...