Attention: The world is coming to an end! Buy gold, guns, and gas masks!
The doomsday, Armageddon, impending collapse, mass starvation and war-lording reality, coming to a city or neighborhood near you, is a reoccurring theme among many pro-liberty websites. Whether it’s selling guns, gas masks, and water purification tablets or advising people to place their money into strange and obscure investment vehicles (e.g., nickels), doomsday moneymaking schemes abound throughout the liberty movement.

The yellow journalistic technique of exploiting doom has severe consequences. Not only is the doomsday premise false but its affirmation is damaging to our psyche. It corrupts the virtues of freedom and is counter-productive to the anarcho-libertarian movement. It’s time for a reality check.

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In a corrupt and decaying world, conventional wisdom demands that the answer to our problems is to choose which bitter flavor of government we should endure. Many look to libertarianism as the sweet flavor of change.

There seems to be a plethora of supporters and critics who wish to wax eloquent on this subject.  Yet, the discussion always revolves around the utility of libertarianism. How would it work? Who would provide services like roads, schools, and protection? Who would help the needy? These discussions and critiques go on and on ad infinitum.

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