Many people who come to the philosophy of liberty from the right hold on to their conservative talking points on corporations and unions. I came here from the radical left. So it was obvious to me that organized labor played a legitimate role in a free market and that corporations were a creation of the state. But I hadn’t committed a lot of time to forging my opinion.

Both unions and corporations are rooted in freedom of association, but it seemed to me that corporations limit legitimate liability, and unions violate freedom of disassociation. They seem fundamentally similar because they both mitigate economic liability with state force. But I wanted to check my own ex-liberal bias. So, I interviewed one person from each side, a radical unionist and a tea-party patriot, to talk me through the gaps in my understanding.

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Many voluntaryists have looked longingly toward Somalia for evidence of our ideas in practice. But it’s a little tough when that real-world example also happens to be the quintessential image of extreme poverty and feuding warlords for most people.

Nonetheless, sometimes an article appears that rightly points out that comparing Somalia to developed nations is a little intellectually dishonest. In fact, Somalia has improved by virtually every measure of standard of living without a state, or when compared to its neighbors that still have a state.
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