The Good Life – for the Individual and the Public Administrator

One of the age-old philosophical questions, what does it mean to live a good life, is one that has not been answered sufficiently. But with a continually advancing global and scientific community, people are closer than ever to answering what makes a good life. There have been many who claimed to have answered this question,...

The Experience Machine

The thought experiment referred to as “the experience machine” was first put forth by Robert Nozick in his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia in an attempt to destroy the hedonistic and perhaps the utilitarian position that pleasure, happiness, and avoidance of bad is the only good. In this experiment, Nozick asks if given the...

The Ethics of Reparations

“there was an original traceable offense - a taking, a theft, a rape, a dispossession, a confiscation [and] there isn't a thinking person who can say ‘no’ to that. The evidence is very clear and it mounts with every every chapter of historical inquiry” - he goes on to explain that there is “hardly one official brick piled on another that wasn't piled there by unpaid labor...and [the wealth from that labor is] piled, actually in the Treasury Department and the federal financial system who took that free labor in those dead souls and turned it into capital and it's back pay and it's owed and it's overdue”

The Queen vs. Dudley and Stephens

THE FACTS OF THE CASE: The English yacht Mignonette was a 52-foot cruiser built in 1867. In 1883, Australian lawyer John Henry Want paid a crew to sail it from England to Australia. Due to the nature of the journey, the yacht was not suited for the high seas, so a crew was hard to...

Letters to a Young Contrarian [Book Review]

There are very few books that earn a place on my bookshelf. I have 3 bookshelfs, but I have one shelf that hangs right over my desk that holds my absolute favorite, thought provoking books. Even then, there are some that seem to stand out - but none can match Letters to a Young Contrarian...