http://blog.independent.org/2013/07/22/obamacare-all-your-intimate-details-available-to-almost-anyone/WE KEEP INCREDIBLY GOOD DATABASES ON OUR LIVESTOCK
Now we can treat people even more like livestock.
I am a cow to be milked. I understand. I understand.
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-23 14:21:00 UTC
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THE AUSTRIAN METHOD
Science is useful in two dimensions: X) It allows us to sense what we cannot sense – by making the unobservable, observable by reducing those phenomenon to some form of analogy to experience. And Y) It helps us compensate for the unfortunate strength of our cognitive biases.
The Austrian method asks us to use one of the methods of science, by describing any human behavior in OPERATIONAL LANGUAGE (in terms of human actions) and to SYMPATHIZE with each of those steps, and when in sympathy, to TEST whether each step meets the test of rational incentives. If it doesn’t there are two possible answers: the first being that ‘humans won’t do that, so that can’t be true’, and the second being ‘humans might do that but this will be the external consequence of it’.
I don’t think there is any mystery to the Austrian method: it is another scientific process that allows us to test by sympathetic experiences, whether any give statement can be constructed as steps of human action, and where each step is subject to the scrutiny and test of rational incentives.
Using the methods of science we reduce phenomenon to something we can experience, and test. I don’t like that we describe these processes as apodictically certain. But it is irrational to state that I can use science to reduce something beyond experience to experience, so that I can interpret it, but on the other hand, suggest that sympathetic interpretation of incentives is less ‘scientific’. It’s just as scientific as anything else, because human cognitive biases are reasonably universal, and need to be INCLUDED in any such analysis of human behavior – not excluded from it. That’s not logical either.
I apologize to other Austrians for using somewhat different language, but there is a method to my madness: in trying to articulate what it is that we are doing in this particular way I hope to correct praxeology as Mises stated it and Rothbard, well, ruined it – if not in theory but in practice, as those ideas have spread with common use.
Most of us in our field tend to contrast empirical evidence with tests of Austrian rationality. I think this is what separates us from other fields. We do not make deductions without bounding them by the theory of rational incentives. We are skeptical of everything. In particular, we have internalized as a scientific principle, the concept that hubris and cognitive bias are ever present challenges to our interpretations.
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-23 14:17:00 UTC
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION NIT
If you and I are in the same community and we operate by the same code, we can use the law to resolve our conflict peacefully. If we are at war, then that isn’t possible. If our legal codes are incompatible, that isnt possible. So if my legal code says I an conquer primitive, illiterate, stone-age people in order to gain territory before one of the other competing nations conquers the illiterate stone age people in order to obtain their land, and my people will not prosecute me for it or they permit it, then it is by definition LEGAL.
You might confuse illegal with immoral. But that would require that you define MORAL. Because MORAL rules among the tribal people were pretty freaking terrible.
The ‘LAW’ at that time, was that you could conquer people who were ‘savages’. And they did. It was legal.
Now, you could in fact, argue that lower classes have an unwritten law, or a moral obligation, that they can conquer others by waves of invasion, just as the whites conquered their ancestors by waves of invasion.
And that’s true. But the question is not between members of the invaders and the population, it’s between members of the population who WANT the invaders and those that DON”T WANT the invaders.
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-23 12:56:00 UTC
BOETTKE’S HYPOTHESIS WHY AUSTRIANS ARE NOT MAINSTREAM
“Verbal logic is not adequate to explain economic relationships. In the absence of formal logic, one cannot really test propositions. In other words, syntactic logic matters more than semantic logic.” (Hypothesis H4)
AND
“Science is not about absolutes, but about refutation. If AE is about (apodictic) certainty, then it is not a science, but a pastime.” (Hypothesis H5)
Well I disagree with AE as apodictic unless it’s complete. As I’ve written elsewhere it’s not complete. However, if expressed as complete, then it’s possible to propose means of falsification. And “m not sure it isn’t possible to model. Just very, very difficult, because we need much, much more data than we have today. Tis is where experimental psychology comes in.
In this sense, AE has a higher bar, because it tries to provide greater explanatory power than mainstream economics.
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-23 11:17:00 UTC
WHY YESTERDAY’S ABHU GRAIB ATTACK UNDER OBAMA IS CARTER’S IRAN AND REGAN’S BERUIT
You cannot let desert-raiding tribal people attack a standing fortress and win. It is the system of thought and ethics that their culture’s status signal hierarchy is built upon. It’s how their empire was built – by desert raiding the exhausted Byzantines. All that will happen now, is that every single group will try to attack physical assets, after spending the past decade trying to export attacks.
I’m not countering the libertarian argument that we should or should not do anything. I’m pointing out that if you’re stupid enough to do X, then you need to be smart enough not do to it too badly – externalities often worse than the problem we seek to cure.
What kind of idiot left that place vulnerable to the OBVIOUS? Gets our guys killed in Bahrain. Gets our people killed, and motivates the opposition in Abhu Graib. This administration is even worse at geopolitics than the last.
Amateurs. We should eliminate the state department and make the military as independent as the judiciary and the central bank. Soldiers like to sit in barracks and only go out of them when they know they’ll win. This sitting duck in a hazard nonsense is only possible with moronic civilians using the military as a policy tool, rather than a line of last resort.
If I was on the other side I’d be out recruiting more men, and planning my next ten adventures. A bunch of mobile guys with AK47’s and RPG’s are pretty much Unstoppable. Or did we not learn that using the Seals ourselves way back in Vietnam?
Sigh.
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-23 10:54:00 UTC
http://scienceblog.com/64835/want-to-be-safe-move-to-the-city-no-really/IT’S A PHYSICALLY DANGEROUS WORLD OUT HERE IN RURAL AMERICA 🙂
And you wonder why people are conservative there….. Conservatism is a prohibition on hubris. Rural opportunity costs are high, risk is higher. But most of rural danger come from just fixing your house, and driving a car. 🙂
“Although the risk of homicide is higher in big cities, the risk of unintentional injury death is 40 percent higher in the most rural areas than in the most urban. And overall, the rate of unintentional injury dwarfs the risk of homicide, with the rate of unintentional injury more than 15 times that of homicide among the entire population. “
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-23 09:59:00 UTC
http://bloom.bg/1bGSoKjTHE SPREAD OF TECHNOLOGY AND INSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE IS NOT JUST CAUSING UNEMPLOYMENT FOR PARKING LOT ATTENDANTS – BUT FOR LAWYERS TOO.
We can never have the 50’s again. We’re in the new normal. Immigration is BAD for this reason.
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-23 09:02:00 UTC
GEM – ON THE STATE OF LAW:
QUOTE: “The Average Joe Structured His Life To Never Need A Lawyer”
“Contrary to popular belief, there really aren’t that many unresolved legal questions these days, the 20th century was so litigation heavy that the courts issued ruling on practically every kind of scenario imaginable and if the corporations were ever on the losing end of those cases the court usually said something like “if only they had done x” and so the corporation either did x or made the employee sign a contract specifically agreeing to the situation.
“Basically the corporations spent the 20th century learning how to cover their arses, and now we are starting to see that the plaintiff almost always loses.
Furthermore, lawyers were so expensive for so long that the average joe structured his life in a way so as to never be in a situation that would require a lawyer…with the exception of family law.” – Joe Black
(From comments on Megan McArdle’s Blog)
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-23 08:37:00 UTC
I WANT A KING (OR QUEEN)
I know that the Queen says that she is the head of the English speaking peoples. And in my world, she’s the head of my extended family. But I can’t live under her protection, just her influence. And as a minarchist, I’d prefer to live under her protection, in a private government, with some defense from the predatory state.
Someday maybe there will be the level of unrest in the UK that there is currently in the states, and Windsor will issue Passports, for which I will gladly pay taxes in exchange for.
One can only hope. 😉
Right now I’m farmed by the US Government, the IRS, the NSA, the FBI, and both political parties.
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-23 08:28:00 UTC
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3v9pl6/MY GOVERNMENT THINGS THAT I AM A FARM ANIMAL.
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-23 08:17:00 UTC