Category: Thoughts

IT APPEARS to be in the process of failing, but for institutional reasons.  I dont know if i can get it across, but the simple analogy is a ponzi scheme. Although given any rate of growth, a ponzi scheme of this nature can be sustainable as long as there is an arithmetic connection between inputs…

Luce is best IMHO.  Although Cannoli’s at Illiano’s are the main reason I look forward to food in Middletown.  (I kind of love eating at restaurants alone – habit from traveling all the time.)  If you are really asking if any are good for dating, or meeting people then the answer is ‘none’. Middletown was…

THANK YOU FOR ASKING. I WILL TRY TO DO YOUR QUESTION JUSTICE ( You will, very likely, obtain moralistic, and therefore meaningless answers. I will try to give you the most scientific answer that I can.) We have to define some terms here, because your question confuses economic systems (means of allocating control over property)…

There are only two ‘good’ career paths in the present economy: Medicine and Programming. Medicine requires intelligence, reading comprehension, discipline, stamina, and exceptional memory skills. (It is not really mathematically rigorous. And is the last high paying occupation that we can say that of.) Programming (at least most of it) requires fairly good reasoning and…

I am not sure that there are problems mathematics cannot illustrate.  That seems unlikely.  I think there are LOGICAL problems with number theory that cannot necessarily be solved with certainty.  Math is  a pretty good way of describing the physical world.  It is a pretty good way of describing complex relations.  But that is different…

PEOPLE AREN’T AGAINST TAXES THEY’RE AGAINST WHAT THEY CONSIDER IMMORAL USES OF THEM. People do not object to Taxes. They object to what they’re used for. All of them object to some aspect or another.  Why? …. Because some people’s moral uses of taxes are immoral to others, and vice versa. The definition of necessary…

(This is an ideological question.  And a loaded question. But I will try to do it justice anyway.) Summers is a ‘status quo’ economist with personal relationship with both the president and prominent wall street Democrats.  He is unobjectionable to conservatives since he has said impolitic but true things at times that they agree with.…

INFLUENTIAL TO WHOM? Economists influence each other. Economists influence other academics. Economists influence policy makers. Economists influence members of the financial system Economists influence business and industry leaders Economists influence the interested public. The group of economists who influence each group varies considerably.  In fact those who influence each other are very different from those…

Well, it makes you feel like you’re profoundly stupid actually. And to feel horrified about how much more stupid everyone else is.  But to live in AWE of how we manage to work together using habits, norms, traditions, myths, narratives, writing, property rights, money, prices, accounting, contracts, law, measurements, and the scientific method.  That’s actually…

[I] am trying to steer some of libertarian criticism away from socialism onto Postmodernism. And that’s partly why I spend so much time on the “Dark Enlightenment” and their attempt to dethrone universalism. The question is, if we dethrone universalism and admit our differences, then moral ends and therefore moral statements will be likewise different.…

Because if he is living peacefully, he lives peacefully because he and those like him have guns. https://www.quora.com/Why-would-a-civilian-living-peacefully-need-a-semi-automatic-gun

It appears that way.  Yes. It is declining. What is the difference between Quora and Yahoo forums or internet Newsgroups if there is no way to insulate questions and answers that meet scientific standards of argument from segmental and moral opinions and surveys? None. For example. A few commenters have referred to physics as a…

INCOME REDISTRIBUTION IS A PROBLEM FOR EVERYONE Otherwise we wouldn’t have a 1% movement. https://www.quora.com/Why-is-income-redistribution-such-a-problem-for-Republicans-Provide-data-and-any-other-quantitative-evidence

GOOD ANSWERS HERE, SO I’LL ADD ONE POINT OTHERS SEEM TO MISS It is a collection of children’s and campfire stories from an era of profound poverty, ignorance and violence, and most of the new testament was an attempt to rebel against the roman empire the same way that the primitive world attempted to adopt…

CAPITALISM DOESN’T HAVE A FLAW – IT’S INSUFFICIENT It’s a necessary tool for cooperating in a vast division of labor. Humans are not all that meritocratic by nature, and don’t like lotteries.  And capitalism is a necessary, meritocratic, lottery. It isn’t just. It isn’t fair. It’s just necessary.  So how do you take what’s necessary…

The ingredients are actually known, and available on the internet.  Water, sugar, salt, and eight or nine oils in very small quantities.  The countries that ban it do it to reject cultural influence, not because of ingredients.  In Coca Cola, the caffeine (unless something has changed) still comes from the Kola nut itself.  And the…

[A]ll philosophy is class philosophy. All philosophies give precedence to one class or another. Libertarianism is a class philosophy as well. A CLASS PHILOSOPHY (a) Just as socialism suggests that all are better off if we give primacy to the objective of equality, and political power to the lower classes; (b) just as postmodernism suggests…

GREAT QUESTION. ILL TRY TO DO IT JUSTICE Because Karl Marx made a catastrophic error in basing his system of thought on the Labor Theory of Value, and amplified that with a complete failure to understand the necessity of prices and incentives as information systems – a combination that invalidated everything else he concluded from…

GREAT QUESTION. I WILL TRY TO DO IT JUSTICE. BUT I HAVE TO GO BEYOND THE SCOPE OF YOUR QUESTION TO DO THAT. For you to consider yourself an Austrian in ECONOMIC theory, the minimum requirement is to subscribe to 1) the subjective theory of value, 2) the austrian theory of the business cycle and…

Starting with the minimal to the maximal:Level 1) Myth and Ritual Level 2) Myth, Ritual, and PromiseLevel 3) Myth, Ritual, Promise, FalsehoodLevel 4) Myth, Ritual, Promise, Falsehood, DogmaLevel 5) Myth, Ritual, Promise, Falsehood, Dogma, Formal InstitutionLevel 6) Myth, Ritual, Promise, Falsehood, Dogma, Formal Institution, Political InfluenceLevel 7) Myth, Ritual, Promise, Falsehood, Dogma, Formal Institution, Political…

(From FB) Curt, what is your opinion about the relation between knowledge and information? Francesco, I am very skeptical of these definitions. For example, 1) Deduction, Induction and Abduction all describe the process of deduction but with decreasingly available information. 2) Knowledge, Information, Data, and Phenomena, likewise describe only our decreasing confidence in any theory’s…

[T]hose who try to master fields usually end up with the Socratic opinion that ‘I don’t know anything (for certain)’. We have simply collected large sets of examples that we know do not work. But this knowledge informs us. If we cannot know much of anything, then why would we create a political system that…

[T]he totalitarian system, whether it’s the military or the communist system, is very useful for doing very simple things: fighting wars, imposing education, imposing some system of property rights, and building infrastructure. These are processes of execution, not of invention, research and development in consumer goods. But the totalitarian system cannot improve affairs when there…

POSTMODERNISM IS AN ATTEMPT TO RECONSTRUCT TOTALITARIANISM DESPITE THE FAILURE OF SOCIALISM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE BY PROMOTING A NEW SECULAR RELIGION THROUGH REPETITION OF DESIRABLE BUT FALSE AND IRRATIONAL STATEMENTS AND REJECTING REALISM, SCIENCE AND HISTORY – THE PROMISE OF EQUALITY AS THE EQUIVALENT TO THE PROMISE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH. Postmodernism is a…

What books should be banned for being offensive to males? 🙂 Troll question.  But the consistency of the responses to the question is encouraging. https://www.quora.com/What-books-should-be-banned-for-being-offensive-to-women