writing timeline for The Ethics of Anarcho-Capitalism

gitAs a software engineer, I use a program called git to track the changes I make to source code files. So, when I started writing The Ethics of Anarcho-Capitalism, it seemed natural to use git to track changes to the book as I went along. I am glad that I did, because now I can look back and visualize how the manuscript changed over time.

Here is a plot of the word count I had over the four years I spent writing. I averaged a blazing 55 words per day.

timeline
From 0 to 80,000 words over 4 years.

Looking at the graph above, a few things jump out at me. Continue reading “writing timeline for The Ethics of Anarcho-Capitalism”

Honoring Ron Paul podcast

Dr. Howard Grattan invited me to be on the Honoring Ron Paul podcast this week to discuss The Ethics of Anarcho-Capitalism, Ron Paul, and the connection between the two. It was great reminiscing about Ron Paul’s presidential campaigns, the good times we had promoting libertarianism, and the friends we made along the way. Click the image below to go to the episode, or listen directly here.

Screenshot from 2020-06-16 08-40-54

The Ethics of Anarcho-Capitalism audio book

ethics_of_ancap_audibleI am excited to announce that The Ethics of Anarcho-Capitalism is now available as an audio book on Audible.

I had considered narrating the audio book myself. I even recorded the first few chapters. After listening to my recordings, though, I decided to find a professional. I’m glad that I did.

Madeleine Brolly produced the audio book with style. She brings the text to life in a way that most non-fiction books only dream of. Her narration is engaging and her character voices are distinct and charming. I had hoped that the book would be fun to read, but Madeleine’s performance makes it a pleasure to listen to.

So, even if you don’t normally go for non-fiction books, and maybe you aren’t that excited about ethics, this audio book may be the reason to dip your toe into the wild world of libertarianism.

book layout with Scribus

scribusI used the free, open-source layout program Scribus to design the interior of The Ethics of Anarcho-Capitalism. It took several hours to learn but, after that, it was a pleasure to use.

There are already good tutorials available for how to do book layout with Scribus, but I thought it would be helpful to describe the solution to one of the bigger challenges that I faced in producing a print-ready PDF.

The difficulty was not due to Scribus itself, but rather that I chose to use IngramSpark as the manufacturer for my hardcover books. When I was comparing them to Lulu.com, it seemed that the main difference was that IngramSpark makes slightly nicer books but is harder to use. Quality seemed worth a little extra effort, but I did not realize how much harder it would be.Continue reading “book layout with Scribus”

Word Cloud book visualization

I thought it would be fun to visualize The Ethics of Anarcho-Capitalism as a word cloud, so I wrote a little script to produce one. Here is the result:

wordcloud_04

I was a little disappointed that the words freedom, liberty, and capital were not more prominent, but it’s my own fault for using other words more frequently.

Here is the python script (pastebin). It uses the WordCloud library to do most of the work:Continue reading “Word Cloud book visualization”

ebook file format conversion

calibreWhile writing The Ethics of Anarcho-Capitalism, I made heavy use of the excellent Calibre software suite to create and view ebooks. Specifically, I used the ebook-convert program to generate .mobi and .epub files. Then I used the Calbre ebook viewer to check the results.

On Ubuntu you can install Calibre with the following command:

    sudo apt install calibre-ebook

Then you can convert an html file to .epub with

    ebook-convert book.html book.epub

To make things easy, I used the following bash script (pastebin). It makes use of a few options and outputs to a few different formats.Continue reading “ebook file format conversion”

The Ethics of Anarcho-Capitalism

The Ethics of Anarcho-Capitalism coverToday, I’m releasing a new book called The Ethics of Anarcho-Capitalism. It explains what libertarianism is and how to use it to solve ethical problems. It is different from most books on libertarianism, though.

First, it is narrative non-fiction. It weaves the ethical theory into a story for a little flavor. If you prefer dry books full of academic references, you might be disappointed.

Second, it focuses on describing how libertarianism works using the idea of purposeful behavior. Libertarian ethical systems are most commonly based on property rights, though some authors have used anything from contracts to intuition. In contrast, this book builds a libertarian ethical system from praxeological foundations.

Finally, it emphasizes ethics over economics and, even within ethics, focuses more on personal ethics and problem solving rather than policy and politics.

The narrative introduces libertarianism in a gradual way, so it should be accessible to beginners. It also has a few advanced concepts that seasoned libertarians will appreciate.

You can buy an ebook or softcover copy here. A hardcover version will be available later this month and the audio book will be released in April. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments.

Amazon author page: amazon.com/author/krisborer