Category: Thoughts

ITS POSTMODERNISM, NOT SOCIALISM [A]ll generals try to fight the last war. And it seems like all our libertarian intellectuals try to fight central control: socialism. Which is … fighting the last war. A war that we won, by the way, at least against the statist intellectuals. The strategic, political and economic war was won…

(Following up on Salman Rushdie’s argument that Islam is a weaponized and militarized religion) Serious Stuff – The New Republic [T]he author reiterates the point that Islamic fundamentalism is a totalitarian political movement. I’ve been saying this for years. And it’s true. It may be structured as a religion, the way marxism was a religion…

FALSE Conservatives and Sewars – The NYT 1) It doesn’t follow that a one time expense, followed by fees for use is the same as redistribution that creates dependencies. the first requires action, the second does not. THe free-rider problem is different from the progressive-fees problem. Free riding is a negative signal that says free…

[C]ultures are portfolios of property rights. The composition of, and distribution of those property rights, varies from culture to culture. In each culture, those rights are expressed as norms. Property rights themselves are a norm. Those property rights perpetuated by norms may be more or less beneficial than other portfolios of property rights. But any…

The Economist: Don’t Flaunt It *That’s what a Republic is. A Natural Rotation Of Oligarchs.* [E]very country has an oligarchy. Oligarchies are NECESSARY and they are unavoidable. The question is which composition of people do you want to be governed by: (a) soldiers, (b) priests or (c) commerce? Why that list of three? Because there…

“There is no such thing as objective morality only preferences and demonstrated preferences.” I’m not sure that’s true. [I]n every society, the portfolio of norms consisting of maners (signals of fitness for voluntary transfer), ethics and morals (prohibitions on involuntary transfer), vary considerably. But all of them are signals of fitness, signals of contribution to…

[U]nfortunately, while humans demonstrate a preference for the consumption that is made possible by the combination of private property, the division of knowledge and labor, and the experimental innovation the market drives us to, humans also demonstrate an equal preference for violence, theft, fraud, omission, interference, free riding, privatization of the commons, socialization of losses,…

[T]he common law depends upon experience (scientific evidence), not logic or reason (untested theory), and is relatively impervious to authoritarian influence. In any reading list on Law, I don’t necessarily want to communicate the history of law, so much as emphasize the pervasive problems of the social cognitive biases: a) False Consensus bias, b) the…

A MORE INTERESTING QUESTION THAN IT FIRST APPEARS. I”LL TRY TO DO IT JUSITC. 1) Americans have the highest confidence despite middling education by comparison to other countries. (Google it.) 2) Americans are disproportionately wealthy so our lower classes can express their ideas, and are more confident expressing those ideas. 3) Our education system promotes…

INTERESTING QUESTION. I”LL TRY TO DO IT JUSTICE. The west has been more ‘capitalist’ since its inception 4500 years ago, because it’s been more individualistic, and it’s property rights have been more widely distributed and therefore power has been distributed and balanced for most of our history.   It’s also true that enfranchisement in those property…

Depends upon the technical dependency of the business. You start with designing the product or offering, and building a team. You end up selling to customers, administering talent, constraining budgets,  allocating in investments, and briefing (educating) the management team.   If you educate the rest of the management team well enough then your job should simplify…

Sacrifice time, sleep, security, health, wealth, relationships – everything. The only limit is your ability to do something or not. These sacrifices must be balanced against the rewards.  So, there is only whether a) you CAN endure sacrifices and b) whether the sacrifices you make are worth the return to YOU. https://www.quora.com/How-dedicated-should-an-entrepreneur-be-to-their-start-up-how-much-is-too-much

1-2 Address who is included in these rights. 3-20 Address negative rights. These rights prohibit everyone, including government, from violating the life, body, movement, association, speech,  and property of individuals in various ways. 21-29 Address positive rights.These are ambitions that all governments are chartered with attempting to achieve. 30 closes prohibiting exception. https://www.quora.com/Which-articles-of-the-Universal-Declaration-of-Human-Rights-are-negative-rights

1) Corporeal Assets. Because “marriage” under the corporeal state is in fact a CORPORATION, with two shareholders, and all property not specifically set aside in a prenuptial agreement is contributed to, and an asset of, the CORPORATION upon creation of the marriage corporation.  A marriage corporation is a significant benefit to those who enter into…

GENERAL NOTE ON AMERICAN IGNORANCE AND ANNOYANCE1) Our nationalism was intentionally created in order to fight the world wars, then to win the cold war against the plague of international communism. Americans are actually naturally insular.  THe problem is that we’re stuck with running this empire that we inherited from the brits, and the europeans…

THE ANSWER IS MORE COMPLICATED THAN OTHER POSTERS SUGGEST. I’ll try to do it justice. The answer is yes, that it’s correlative. Empirically, yes in the aggregate atheists have fewer children.  And yes, its partly causal. 1) Reproduction is losing it’s economic utility as a guarantee of old age security. 2) Consumer capitalism raises the…

THANK YOU FOR ASKING ME TO ANSWER THIS QUESTION I’ll try to do give the the best answer that is available to us today. 1) If we define anarchy as the absence of RULES (MORALS AND NORMS), then no – without morals and norms humans cannot cooperate.2) If we define anarchy as the absence of…

Noam Chomsky, a radical leftist, a man filled with hatred, the only philosopher supporting left intellectuals, and perhaps one of the most immoral men in the world, convinced Hawking not to go.    This is neither a criticism of Hawking, nor support for israeli policy, but a statement about Chomsky’s career as a purveyor of destructive…

AN INTERESTING QUESTION – THANK YOU FOR THE REQUEST TO ANSWER IT.  I’ll try to give you the best answer currently available. “We have laws because we have property, we do not have property because we have laws” – Frederic Bastiat. PROPERTY AS A SPECTRUMWe define private property as something over which one EXPECTS TO…

Believe it or not, this subject has been given quite a bit of treatment in the literature – mostly during the early part of the last century in response to the communist, socialist and fascist movements. REALITY:Almost everyone, on the planet,  except for perhaps ~500M subsistence farmers would die in the first 30-90 days.  Yes. …

The mass necessary to fuel the transport a nuclear weapon across light years of space is so large that there would have to be some reason to do such a thing in the first place.  I mean, if you can move something that far, you don’t need to use a nuclear weapon, just move a…

All philosophy is class philosophy.  Libertarianism is a class philosophy.  All philosophies give precedence to one class or another. 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; just as postmodernism suggests that we will all be better off…

[W]hite males (the european, or perhaps germanic, race) seek status under the ancient indo-european proscription for heroism via competition. The west is unique for having produced this philosophy of aristocratic egalitarianism – inclusion in equalitarian leadership, and therefore obtaining the reward of property rights, by demonstrated heroism. And the high trust society of the west…

[A]ll philosophy is class philosophy. Libertarianism is a class philosophy. All philosophies give precedence to one class or another. 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; just as postmodernism suggests that we will all be better off…