A Better Analysis Of Libertarianism: “Why don’t I kill you and take your stuff?”
As Camus said, the first problem of philosophy is why we do not commit suicide. But that is followed by the first problem of political philosophy, which is not “how do we best get along?” It is “Why don’t I kill you and take your stuff?” I opt for freedom by advocating the organized application…
A Centralized NY, and a Distributed LA
From Peter Gordon, referring to an article in the Atlantic. “The LA metropolitan area is actually spread over parts of five counties and includes twice as many cities as writer Conor Friedersdorf cites. The Orange county-LA county boundary is invisible to most of us. And even granting Friedersdorf’s view of the world, trading the 88…
Translating Complaints About Private Sector Services
When people disparage the private sector and seek services from the government what they really mean is one or more of the following: 1) DISCOUNT ON RESEARCH / RISK REDUCTION: “I am not able to judge the services in the marketplace, and unable to determine which of the inexpensive choices at my disposal in the…
What Would You Learn From A Lifetime Of Studying Politics And Economics?
Fundamentally, assuming you were intellectually honest, if you were to spend the next twenty years of your life studying political science, with the goal of long term stability and prosperity, then you would come to these conclusions: 0) The Problem a) Time: b) Space (distribution): d) Acting: c) Choosing an Action: d) Memory: e) Limited…
No Whoopie, It’s Not About Race.
Over on Real Clear Politics, Whoopie Goldberg says she’s Playing The Race Card. To which I reply: It’s not about race. It’s about the welfare state’s collectivism vs classical liberalism’s individualism. Three Rules of Politics: RULE 1: “People will not tolerate rulership by someone who despises them and their values.” RULE 2:“People will not tolerate…
The Questionable Ethics Of Climate Scientists And Economists
Karl Popper (who wrote the Logic of Scientific Discovery) and Thomas Kuhn (who wrote the structure of scientific revolutions) approached the problem of knowledge in the domain of DISCOVERY, which we call the physical sciences. At the same time, the CLOSE FRIEND of Karl Popper, Friedrich Hayek, worked on the problem of hubris in the…
Camus Didn’t Take It Far Enough
Camus starts The Myth of Sisyphus with this insight. “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.” To which I’ll add: “There is but one truly serious problem of political philosophy, and that is, why not kill others and take their property?” We always assume common interest, and that politics starts…
Correcting Our Uses Of Taxes, Law, Money And Credit
There is a natural conflict between the need to avoid a scarcity of cash and credit, such that all opportunities for increases in productivity within the economy can be exploited, and the fact that fiat money and fiat credit tend to mask, obscure and distort the information that would come from climbing interest rates. The…
Fiat And Private Money From Both Sides Of The Coin
The first reason that the USA wanted it’s own money is so that it did not export profits to England or France in the form of currency appreciation. The second reason was to reduce trade friction between the colonies. The third was because private money is a riskier proposition, and trade was artificially limited by…
Governments Should Be Empirical Not Moral
All societies in history, without exception, appear to have a ‘referee’ or ‘judge’ — usually an elder male. This topic has been researched to death: Egalitarian tribal warfare societies have some elder male. Chieftain societies tend to concentrate decision making power. Urban societies develop specialists. Advanced civilizations have micro-specialists (judges). Likewise, as they grow, societies…
All Cultures Developed Religions Of Some Sort
Mystical Political Religion and the concept of good and evil was invented by the Persians to separate the persian people from the indians who were, at that time, similar peoples. Mystical religion was invented to cause conflict and political division. All cultures developed religions of some sort. If by religion we mean a body of…
Ayn Rand’s ‘Selfishness’ Is A Play On Words In Order To Hook Your Attention
Selfishness, as defined by Rand, is a play on words in order to hook people’s attention. It is a classic marketing trick. It assists her in marketing her ideas specifically because the word ‘selfish’ has negative connotations. While she uses the word ‘selfishness’ the general idea is used by other writes as any one of:…
It Will Take All The Cuts From Ryan, Obama And Rand To Balance The Budget
From Mish Shedlock: “Look at it this way: If we take all of the cuts the Ryan has proposed and all of the cuts the administration has proposed, we are still not there. However, if we add them together, then kill the department of energy and the department of education, and cut still more from…
The Remaining Marxists Are Not Trying To End Poverty
From a Comment on Cafe Hayek: “Marxists must define poverty as a relative phenomenon. Otherwise, they couldn’t in good conscience be marxists.” Or perhaps, better said, they wouldn’t have a semi-rational reason to justify class envy, and therefore attempt to obtain unearned social status through political power rather than through market service of others. [callout]Social…
On Happiness: Prospective and Retrospective
To be happy, people desire access to new stimuli – ‘relishes’ as Aristotle put it, or ‘new experiences’ as we put it today. People prefer working on optimistic ends. They prefer to work successfully to accumulate new stimuli, rather than at planning to prevent negative stimuli, or at planning to conserve resources so that they…
Stocks Are Not Currency. We Buy Companies Because We Like Them. And We Like Them For Different Reasons
Felix Salmon writes: … it’s maybe no coincidence that the Russian clients of Goldman Sachs who are falling over each other to bid ever-higher prices for Facebook shares are much the same people as the Russians paying $100 million for trophy Picassos, or Los Altos mansions. The theory here is that Goldman Sachs, SecondMarket and…
Anarcho Capitalism Is As Logically Ridiculous As Marx’s Communism – But Both Have Something To Teach Us
Marxist doctrine states that steps are required to create the utopian communist society. The eventual result of marxism’s destruction of the system of property was for the purpose of creating an anarchic society where everyone had what they wanted, and wanted nothing more – the fixed-pie fantasy. The state was only necessary as a first…
Americans May Be Wiser Than We Think After All
Newsweek did another poll that purports to measure our cultural ignorance. How Dumb Are We? NEWSWEEK gave 1,000 Americans the U.S. Citizenship Test–38 percent failed. The country’s future is imperiled by our ignorance. Which brings to mind a chain of reasoning: 1) To increase productivity and therefore decrease prices, we must all participate in a…
If You Want To Celebrate, Join A Church – A Wet Blanket On The World Bank’s Sentimental Talk.
(Copied here for documentation purposes.) Over on The World Bank OTAVIANO CANUTO solves for happiness by actively working against it. We economists tend to see well-being, and poverty in particular, as a matter of finances and income. But fortunately, at least in the Bank, we have come a long way from that simplistic view. Reducing…
Is There An Unassailable Argument Against The Religion Of Rand? (And Whacky Derivatives Like Galambos?)
Regarding Philosophy, Religion, and Government: a) A Philosophy is a set of related ideas for the purpose of allowing humans to take actions that accomplish ends in the face of necessary uncertainty about the future. b) A Religion is a habituated philosophical framework, for political purposes, using pedagogy for indoctrination, and which relies ostensibly upon…
Yes, It Would Be Nice If We Could Withdraw The Empire And It’s Costs – In Exchange For Reduced Standard Of Living
Having created, by accident, the empire, and having done so for the purpose of exporting our market system, and its trade routes, we are stuck with the very real consequences of creating power vacuums if we withdraw our military power, and create opportunity for the greater cost of NOT acting as we are acting. We…
You Can’t Define Away ‘Structural Unemployment’
The term “Structural unemployment” has a technical definition and a colloquial definition. And authors frequently criticize the colloquial as not matching the technical, rather than the premise put forth by the colloquial. However, the colloquial definition is correct. That is, that there are people trained and experienced in skills that will not return to the…
Economics Is A Moral Philosophy Because It Solves For Political Ends
From Economist’s View (In reference to Schiller’s argument (in an exceptional recent paper) that economists should be more interdisciplinary.) Is Adam Smith Partly an Economist, or Wholly a Moral Philosopher?, by Brad DeLong: Tiago at History of Economics Playground reacted very negatively to an AEA Annual Meeting presentation by Robert Shiller and Virginia Shiller: This…
Doolittle’s Law: Any Mention Of Sweden In An Economic Discourse Means The Argument Is False
Do you know Godwin’s law? That any internet discourse eventually devolves into something involving Hitler? There is a new law. I’m coining it, as Doolittle’s law: The minute someone mentions Sweden in an economic argument, you know that they’re analysis is wrong. 1) As Felix Salmon states, Wealth is very different from Income. The WEALTH…
Zeus: The One True God. The One True Religion.
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