Everything Voluntary with Skyler J. Collins

Post by Skyler J. Collins (Editor). Episode 419 has Skyler and Julieta giving their commentary on the following questions from Quora: "How important is family in society?"; "Why are daughters raised to take on adult responsibilities at an early age but not sons?"; "What would you do if your child won't return the toy he was allowed to play with and throws a public tantrum?"; and "What would you do if your only child came up to you at age 19 and said they were going on a one-way mission to help setup a colony on Mars?"

Post by Skyler J. Collins (Editor). Episode 418 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following aphorisms written by Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski: "A good economist believes that his role is to improve the public’s understanding of the market. A bad economist believes that his role is to improve the market’s understanding of the public."; "A democratic state is a device whereby everyone gets a chance to assert his nuisance value on a social scale."; "A foolish environmentalist wants to save nature from the greed of the market by exposing it to the tragedy of the commons. A smart environmentalist wants to save nature from the tragedy of the commons by exposing it to the greed of the market."; "Happiness without liberty is no more possible than wisdom without knowledge."; "Believing that the state can promote culture is like believing that putting a gun to someone’s head is a gentleman’s offer."; "A utopian believes in changing human nature. A realist believes in unleashing its potential."

Post by Skyler J. Collins (Editor). Episode 417 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics: an article he wrote in August 2011 titled, "Scarcity and Property Rights"; and an article he wrote in May 2018 titled, "Involuntarily Celibate: Clever Rhetorical Trick".

Post by Skyler J. Collins (Editor). Episode 416 welcomes Lauren Carlson to the podcast to chat with Skyler on the following topics: growing up in a small town and later moving to a bigger city; kids and coronavirus normalization; their respective stories from 9/11; her books on consent for kids, parents, and educators; when parents force their children to show affections to others; the practice of forced feeding of children; how humanity has treated children; the roots of human violence in childhood trauma; children and learning to feel and deal with big emotions; kids taking risks and getting hurt; respecting children saying "No!"; and more.

Post by Skyler J. Collins (Editor). Episode 415 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics: the 2020 United States election results (thus far), local to national; why government failure is commonplace, should always be pointed out, and usually leads to government taking more power and resources from its constituents; the times, places, and circumstances in which antinatalism makes a lot of sense; how government is like a more or less clever and effective parasite on the body politic; and more.

Post by Skyler J. Collins (Editor). Episode 414 has Skyler giving his commentary on a new website he discovered called "The Price of Panic". From their introduction: "The negative effects of lockdown are too often dismissed as small sacrifices, necessary to keep a highly deadly disease from spreading. These sacrifices are, in fact, neither necessary nor small, and the disease is only a threat to a minority of the population that can be protected without lockdowns. Sometimes, when major harms become hard to ignore, they are lamented as further damage caused by Covid, even though it is our panic-driven measures that are to blame. This is an effort to bring focus to the magnitude of suffering taking place around us because of lockdowns."

Post by Skyler J. Collins (Editor). Episode 413 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics from r/blackpeopletwitter and r/whitepeopletwitter: why stuff costs so much more now than they did in 1965; whether we should talk about Halloween parties or put all our focus on COVID-19; who cares how old modern politicians are when the problem is their power; this asshole who doesn't care when businesses are looted and burned so long as it's done in the name of racial justice; when cops say they don't make the laws, just enforce them, but also say they won't enforce social distancing and gun control; and the problem of law enforcement that has nothing to do with national elections.

Post by Skyler J. Collins (Editor). Episode 412 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following questions from Quora: "Is economics the study of how a society is?"; "Are the rich more important than the poor?"; "Why is the truth so important?"; and "Is anarchy the true state of humanity?"

Post by Skyler J. Collins (Editor). Episode 411 welcomes back Dennis Pratt to chat with Skyler on the following topics: the shutdown of Rodger Paxton's Pax Libertas Productions; his multi-year career writing thoughtful answers to libertarian questions on Quora; New Hampshire's Free State Project; life and politics in NH; how the locals are responding to the influx of libertarians to NH; what taxes are levied in NH; his involvement in building community centers for NH residents; why all economic regulations are a type of hidden tax; libertarianism as a paradigm shift; respecting cultural diversity among libertarians; slavery reparations as federal land divestments; why everyone is owed reparations by government for its many crimes; the dangers of cultivating and maintaining victimhood mentality; Porcfest, freedom festival; Joe Biden on the minimum wage; and more.

Post by Skyler J. Collins (Editor). Episode 410 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following news stories: from ABC News, "Breonna Taylor grand jury members say they were not presented with homicide charges"; from NewsTimes.com, "John Oliver donates to two charities after Danbury sewer plant renaming" (Episode 360); from Reuters, "Russia gives whistleblower Edward Snowden permanent residency rights"; from LiveScience.com, "Scientists discover new organ in the throat"; and from Newsweek, "Over 27 Million People Have Recovered From COVID-19 Globally".

Post by Skyler J. Collins (Editor). Episode 409 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following entries to r/unpopularopinion: this_justin__ writes, "Dads dont get enough credit for the work they put into raising a kid"; real_mangle_official writes, "If the only reason you can think of for your children to respect you is that you gave birth to them, you have no reason to be respected"; diobreads writes, "Useable organs of dead people should be harvested, no matter what the family says"; Ocean_faux writes, "Judging past historical figures actions by today's standards is totally unfair to them."; and Kaktus_ writes, "Unpaid internships should be illegal".

Post by Skyler J. Collins (Editor). Episode 408 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics: the obligation that social media companies have to ensure US election integrity; the manipulative and abusive practices that are gay conversion therapy from the right and body conversion therapy from the left; and the conclusion to the Wizard's Rules mini-series with Wizard's Fourteenth Rule: "In this world, everyone must die. None of us has any choice in that. Our choice is how we wish to live."

Post by Skyler J. Collins (Editor). Episode 407 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following entries to r/shitstatistssay: @TikTokInvestors shares, "So capitalism is an economic system based on infinite 'growth' and infinite consumption..."; buttstuff_magoo writes, "In fact, not paying taxes is as communist as it gets. It’s free riding and profiting off of the contributions of others while contributing nothing yourself."; Stunning_Capital writes, "I don't see anything un-libertarian about repealing Section 230. These companies are protected from defamation suits on the grounds that they merely provide a public square. Well if they don't want to provide a public square, that's fine, but then they should be held liable for defamation just like the rest of us."; and @omidG9 tweets, "Well one reason congress doesn’t work is libertarians don’t know how to run a government so they just blame the institution instead of themselves".

Post by Skyler J. Collins (Editor). Episode 406 has Skyler giving his commentary on The Great Barrington Declaration, "a proposal drafted at the American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, Massachusetts and signed there on October 4th, 2020. It advocates an alternative, risk-based approach to the COVID-19 pandemic that involves "Focused Protection" of those most at risk and seeks to avoid or minimize the societal harm of lockdowns." Skyler signed the declaration as a "concerned citizen" after recording this episode.

Post by Skyler J. Collins (Editor). Episode 405 has Skyler giving his commentary on a quote by Don Freeman on the government's bank account and source of it's credit; by Devin Michael Lowe on crossing a dangerous border for your children; by Laurie Halse Anderson on censorship; and by Albert Jay Nock on the origins of every state on planet Earth.