voluntaryway

web developer - computer science teacher - nature enthusiast - advocate for a more voluntary society

[Joel Berry @JoelWBerry]

Capitalism is just another name for freedom.

Socialism is just another name for slavery.

[MW4Liberty @MW4Liberty]

I want a government so small it doesn’t matter who wins elections.

[Marc A. Wilms @mawilms]

Die galloppierenden Mietpreise sind übrigens nicht gierigen Vermietern geschuldet.

Der große Treiber ist die illegale Migration.

Niemand kann mit den Preisen mithalten, die der Staat zahlt, wenn es um Wohnraum geht.

Die Verlierer sind die, die ihre Mieten selbst bezahlen.

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

"The very same people who say that the government has no right to interfere with sexual activity between consenting adults believe that the government has every right to interfere with economic activity between consenting adults."

— Thomas Sowell

[Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy]

When I first came to the U.S. to finish school, a professor told us to take an exam at home and simply said, “Don’t use Google or open your books.”

As someone who grew up in the Middle East, I couldn’t believe it. What kind of society trusts people like that?

But over time, I began to understand what I was witnessing.

This wasn’t naivety. This was a high-trust society, something so rare in the world that most people born outside the West have never even seen it.

After the Catholic Church banned cousin marriage, people in the West started marrying outside the family. That forced individuals to move out, build broader social networks, and rely on strangers for daily life.

Trust wasn’t just a virtue, it became a survival mechanism. You couldn’t build a working society unless you believed, at some basic level, that others would do the right thing.

That trust was reinforced by Biblical values.

Add to that the stability of wealth, people didn’t need to cheat or steal to get by. So trust flourished.

That’s why in the West, you can check out at a grocery store with no cashier.

That’s why the government lets you self-report your taxes.

Because here, truth is assumed, until proven otherwise.

But Westerners, sadly, think the rest of the world works this way. It doesn’t, and especially not Islamic societies.

Islamic cultures are low-trust by design, the result of centuries of tribalism, aggressive theological systems, and economic instability.

Islam doesn’t nurture trust. It nurtures surveillance, control, and suspicion.

In the Muslim-majority societies, you’re not even trusted to be alone in a room with your cousin or sister-in-law, because the assumption is you can’t be trusted.

Allah doesn’t trust you. That’s why every move you make must be regulated.

In those societies, deception is excused, even celebrated, especially when used against non-Muslims.

Lying is seen as a tool for survival and advantage.

That’s the mindset many immigrants bring with them.

When they arrive in high-trust Western nations, they don’t see a system to protect, they see a system to exploit.

They take advantage of your honesty, your openness, your kindness.

They see how your society was built on the idea that love believes all things, and they weaponize that belief against you.

[sparbuchfeinde @sparbuchfeinde]

Es ist einfache Mathematik.

Arbeiter
Mieten: Steigen
Heizkosten: Steigen
Gesundheitskosten: Steigen
Reallöhne: Sinken

Bürgergeld-Empfänger
Miete: Zahlt Amt
Heizkosten: Zahlt Amt
Gesundheitskosten: Zahlt Amt
Bürgergeld: Konstant

Der Anteil der Menschen, für die sich Arbeit nicht mehr lohnt, nimmt kontinuierlich zu.

Keine Volkswirtschaft der Welt hält das über längere Zeit aus.

Das System wird brechen. Und zwar zeitnah.

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

“If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.”

— Walter E. Williams

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

“If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.”

— Walter E. Williams

[Dan Mitchell @danieljmitchell]

The great results that @JMilei is achieving are not a surprise. Shifting from statism to markets will always produce good outcomes. What’s surprising, at least to this outsider, is the way @jmilei_english has been able to rally the Argentinian people in favor of economic liberty. We need to clone him! https://t.co/N6ozw9y2Rl

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

"Has anyone asked the question, 'How could so many people across the country spend so much time at night marching, rioting and looting, if they had to get up and go to work the next morning?'"

— Thomas Sowell

[MAGA Voice @MAGAVoice]

BREAKING 🚨 Argentina President Milei stuns the room saying America is actually SAVING the world from leftism and wokeism

"The rebirth of the ideas of LIBERTY. The Americas will be the beacon of LIGHT to illuminate the west”

HE IS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT

[George @BehizyTweets]

WOW! So-called experts predicted that poverty would skyrocket in Argentina when President Javier Milei OBLITERATED the welfare state & cut spending, but the opposite is happening. The poverty rate in Argentina is hitting historic lows.

In Buenos Aires, poverty dropped from 28.1% to 17.3% and extreme poverty fell from 11.0% to 5.3% in Q3 2025.

The same "experts" said rents would go up when he terminated the rent control law. The exact opposite happened. Landlords put thousands of units back on the market and rents came way down.

Capitalism is the greatest system for pulling people out of poverty the world has ever seen.

[Mossad Commentary @MOSSADil]

🚨 STARLINK ACTIVATED OVER IRAN AMID INTERNET BLACKOUT

Amid an almost complete nationwide internet shutdown in Iran, Elon Musk quietly enabled free Starlink access across the country.

Musk reportedly committed to keeping the network active to prevent Iranian authorities from cutting connectivity.

Stay connected, follow, subscribe @MOSSADil

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

Sentiments of Venezuelans

I’m going to say this once, and I don’t care if it makes people uncomfortable.

If you have never lived in Venezuela
If you did not grow up there
If you did not watch your country collapse in real time
If you did not stand in food lines
If you did not watch your parents lose everything they built
If you did not have to leave your home with nothing

Then shut the fuck up.

You do not have an opinion.
Your opinion does not matter.
And you don’t get to lecture anyone about what’s happening there.

I’m Venezuelan.
I lived there most of my life until my early twenties.
I watched my country go from a functioning democracy to full blown socialism right in front of my eyes.

This is not politics to me.
This is trauma.

Before socialism, Venezuela was not perfect, but it worked.
There was trade.
There was money coming in.
There was investment from the US.
There were jobs.
There was food.
There was medicine.

My family had five businesses.
We had our home
We had investments.
We had a future.

Then the government started nationalizing everything.
Private companies were taken.
Foreign investors were pushed out.
Imports were blocked.
Price controls destroyed production.
Corruption exploded.

And everything died.

Not slowly.
Violently.

People didn’t suddenly become poor because of “capitalism” or “the US” or whatever bullshit slogan people like to repeat online.

They became poor because socialism destroyed incentives, destroyed production, destroyed trust, and destroyed hope.

People today in Venezuela are not debating ideology.
They are trying to survive.

They are trying to find food.
Trying to find medication.
Trying to keep their families alive.

So when I see people in the West posting from comfortable homes, full fridges, stable currencies, and safe streets talking about “imperialism” or “US bad” or “Trump this or that”

No.
It’s not complicated.
You’re just ignorant.

China is not rebuilding Venezuela.
Russia is not rebuilding Venezuela.
Cartels are not rebuilding Venezuela.

They are stealing.
They are extracting.
They are draining what’s left.

If the US comes in and reinvests
If refineries get rebuilt
If infrastructure gets restored
If imports open back up
If food, water, and medicine become accessible again
If people can work and earn with dignity

Then yes.
Let them take all the oil they want.

Because at least something gets built instead of destroyed.

This is something to celebrate.
Not because it’s perfect.
But because for the first time in a long time, there is hope.

Hope that families can eat.
Hope that people don’t have to flee their country.
Hope that Venezuela can function again.

If you’ve never lived through a country collapsing
If you’ve never watched socialism destroy everything around you
If you’ve never had to leave your home because staying meant starvation

Then again
Shut the fuck up.

This isn’t theory.
This isn’t politics.
This is lived experience.

By Stephen Subero

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

Productivity doesn’t rise because workers suddenly “work harder.” It rises because capital investment improves tools, processes, and technology.

If you work in a pizza shop and the owner buys a better oven that cooks twice as many pizzas per hour, the oven is what raised productivity. The owner paid for it, maintained it, and took the risk. You’re still being paid for your labor, not for owning the oven.
Wages are tied to the market value of labor, not to total output.

Output is shared among:
• wages
• capital costs
• reinvestment
• risk and losses

If workers automatically received the full gains of productivity increases, no one would invest in capital in the first place. And without capital, productivity collapses.
Marxists look at the result and erase the cause.

They see higher output and pretend it came from labor alone.
It’s entitlement with a graph.

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

Here it is, kindergarten level, without the moral sleight of hand.
Rent is something you chose to pay for yourself.
A job is something you chose to accept from someone else.
Those two things are not connected.
Your landlord doesn’t owe you cheaper rent because you’re bad with money.
Your employer doesn’t owe you a higher wage because you want a nicer life.
Wages are not based on what someone needs.
They’re based on what the job is worth and what someone agrees to do it for.
If a business “buys fewer yachts,” no extra money magically appears for wages. That money was never earmarked for you. It belongs to the owner, who took the risk, put up the capital, and might lose everything. Employees don’t share losses, so they don’t get automatic claims on profits either.
If you want more money, you have three options: Get skills that are worth more
Find someone willing to pay more
Start your own business and pay people whatever you think is “fair”
What you don’t get to do is redefine someone else’s success as your entitlement.
“Buy fewer lattes” is advice about your choices.
“Buy fewer yachts” is a demand about someone else’s property.
That’s the difference.

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

I took delivery of a beautiful new shiny HW4 Tesla Model X today, so I immediately took it out for an FSD test drive, a bit like I used to do almost daily for 5 years. Basically... I'm amazed - it drives really, really well, smooth, confident, noticeably better than what I'm used to on HW3 (my previous car) and eons ahead of the version I remember driving up highway 280 on my first day at Tesla ~9 years ago, where I had to intervene every time the road mildly curved or sloped. (note this is v13, my car hasn't been offered the latest v14 yet)

On the highway, I felt like a passenger in some super high tech Maglev train pod - the car is locked in the center of the lane while I'm looking out from Model X's higher vantage point and its panoramic front window, listening to the (incredible) sound system, or chatting with Grok. On city streets, the car casually handled a number of tricky scenarios that I remember losing sleep over just a few years ago. It negotiated incoming cars in tight lanes, it gracefully went around construction and temporarily in-lane stationary cars, it correctly timed tricky left turns with incoming traffic from both sides, it gracefully gave way to the car that went out of order in the 4-way stop sign, it found a way to squeeze into a bumper to bumper traffic to make its turn, it overtook the bus that was loading passengers but still stopped for the stop sign that was blocked by the bus, and at the end of the route it circled around a parking lot, found a spot and... parked. Basically a flawless drive.

For context, I'm used to going out for a brief test drive around the neighborhood to return with 20 clips of things that could be improved. It's new for me to do just that and exactly like I used to, but come back with nothing. Perfect drive, no notes. I expect there's still more work for the team in the long march of 9s, but it's just so cool to see that we're beyond finding issues on any individual ~1 hour drive around the neighborhood, you actually have to go to the fleet and mine them. Back then, I processed the incredible promise of vehicle autonomy at scale (in the fully scaleable, vision only, end-to-end Tesla way) only intellectually, but now it is possible to feel it intuitively too if you just go out for a drive. Wait, of course surround video stream at 60Hz processed by a fully dedicated "driving brain" neural net will work, and it will be so much better and safer than a human driver. Did anyone else think otherwise?

I also watched @aelluswamy 's new ICCV25 talk last week (https://t.co/RdaM23kvez) that hints at some of the recent under the hood technical components driving this progress. Sensor streams (videos, maps, kinematics, audio, ...) over long contexts (e.g. ~30 seconds) go into a big neural net, steering/acceleration comes out, optionally with visualization auxiliary data. This is the dream of the complete Software 1.0 -> Software 2.0 re-write that scales fully with data streaming from millions of cars in the fleet and the compute capacity of your chip, not some engineer's clever new DoubleParkedCarHandler C++ abstraction with undefined test-time characteristics of memory and runtime. There's a lot more hints in the video on where things are going with the emerging "robotics+AI at scale stack". World reconstructors, world simulators "dreaming" dynamics, RL, all of these components general, foundational, neural net based, how the car is really just one kind of robot... are people getting this yet?

Huge congrats to the team - you're building magic objects of the future, you rock! And I love my car <3.

[_horizont_ @hori_____zont]

Niemals vergessen &gt;&gt;&gt;

Lanz:
„Also Sperre für Kimmich. Kimmich spielt dann nicht mehr.“

Merz:
„Man kann ihm sagen: ‚Also, es gibt zwei Möglichkeiten: Entweder du lässt dich impfen, dann spielst du, oder du lässt dich nicht impfen, dann spielst du nicht.‘ Konsequent.“

[Per Bylund @PerBylund]

The economy in a sentence: we produce in order to consume (satisfy wants) and trade to get what we want more, whether this contributes to our production or directly to consumption.
Conclusion: if you mess with it, you can at best reallocate wealth created--but not create more.

[The Atlas Society @TheAtlasSociety]

The whole progress of mankind has been away from the collective toward individualism. Toward the independent man.

— Ayn Rand