EXOTICS
I love the Ferrari. But if a boat is a hole in the water that you pour money into, then the Ferrari is a hole in the pavement that serves the same purpose. And I get pretty tired of an oil change that costs 3K. Just annoys me.
The Porsche’s on the other hand, are as close to bullet proof as a car can be. (If only the cabin was wider…) If I didn’t have to replace the front spoiler every six months it’d be a perfect car.
Source date (UTC): 2012-03-11 17:52:00 UTC
http://www.capitalismv3.com/menu/glossary/AT 42,000 WORDS AND COUNTING
The Glossary of Political Economy on capitalismv3.com is up to 125 pages. I’ll guess it’s 70% complete. Unfortunately what’s left is the hard work.
Building Propertarianism one brick at a time.
Source date (UTC): 2012-03-11 17:38:00 UTC
He frames the argument as pragmatic:
In Eastern and Western philosophy there are two forces usually at work against one another which (it is assumed) helps bring balance to the world. In Asian philosophy it is the conflict between Yin and Yang. In Christianity the conflict is between the ideas of Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo while in secular philosophy the conflict is between the outlook of Aristotle and Plato. In her book The Future and it’s Enemies, Virginia Postrel outlines the conflict between the dynamists and the statists. Dynamists embace a world of choice and competition which includes economic prosperity, technological progress and cultural innovation. Statists, on the other hand, envision a society that upholds the status quo, while embracing the values of a simpler past and authoritarian rule. …
The fact remains that Western civilization is embroiled in a struggle for it’s very survival against enemies (Islam and the left) openly hostile to secularism and capitalism along with the freedoms open societies embrace. Israel, for example, is surrounded by theocratic dictatorships, and groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and their leftists allies work diligently to undermine her in the court of public opinion. Their delegitimization campaign is only part of an effort that will result in a second Holocaust of the country’s Jewish population while obliterating the only country in the Middle East that is a prosperous, secular island of sanity which makes Islamist countries look bad. With Israel gone it will give Islamists will have less of a hurdle to convince their followers to join them in their quest to destroy Western infidels since by doing will have a far off faceless enemy to demonize.
via Libertarian Republican: The Libertarian case for Gingrich.
And because of these factors, he recommends Gingrich. Sure I would love to see Ron Paul in office. But having disbanded much of his campaign yesterday, I don’t see it as possible. Even if he were elected, the president’s power to enact policy is severely limited by the bureaucracy, by process, by the courts, by lobbyists, and by the other two houses of government. What I do believe, is that libertarian ideals are not achievable without the western tradition. And that tradition is under attack by the Left and by Islam. And that our chances of defending ourselves are decreasing by the day. I don’t know if Gingrich is electable. But I would vote for Gingrich just to have him debate Obama and destroy him every time. I usually try to stay away from promoting candidates, and I stick with policy and strategy under the assumption that the marginal difference between them is limited. But I am very afraid of another Obama presidency. And I’m afraid for my civilization. And I’m not afraid of maintaining libertarian ideals if we retain our civilization.
He frames the argument as pragmatic:
In Eastern and Western philosophy there are two forces usually at work against one another which (it is assumed) helps bring balance to the world. In Asian philosophy it is the conflict between Yin and Yang. In Christianity the conflict is between the ideas of Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo while in secular philosophy the conflict is between the outlook of Aristotle and Plato. In her book The Future and it’s Enemies, Virginia Postrel outlines the conflict between the dynamists and the statists. Dynamists embace a world of choice and competition which includes economic prosperity, technological progress and cultural innovation. Statists, on the other hand, envision a society that upholds the status quo, while embracing the values of a simpler past and authoritarian rule. …
The fact remains that Western civilization is embroiled in a struggle for it’s very survival against enemies (Islam and the left) openly hostile to secularism and capitalism along with the freedoms open societies embrace. Israel, for example, is surrounded by theocratic dictatorships, and groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and their leftists allies work diligently to undermine her in the court of public opinion. Their delegitimization campaign is only part of an effort that will result in a second Holocaust of the country’s Jewish population while obliterating the only country in the Middle East that is a prosperous, secular island of sanity which makes Islamist countries look bad. With Israel gone it will give Islamists will have less of a hurdle to convince their followers to join them in their quest to destroy Western infidels since by doing will have a far off faceless enemy to demonize.
via Libertarian Republican: The Libertarian case for Gingrich.
And because of these factors, he recommends Gingrich. Sure I would love to see Ron Paul in office. But having disbanded much of his campaign yesterday, I don’t see it as possible. Even if he were elected, the president’s power to enact policy is severely limited by the bureaucracy, by process, by the courts, by lobbyists, and by the other two houses of government. What I do believe, is that libertarian ideals are not achievable without the western tradition. And that tradition is under attack by the Left and by Islam. And that our chances of defending ourselves are decreasing by the day. I don’t know if Gingrich is electable. But I would vote for Gingrich just to have him debate Obama and destroy him every time. I usually try to stay away from promoting candidates, and I stick with policy and strategy under the assumption that the marginal difference between them is limited. But I am very afraid of another Obama presidency. And I’m afraid for my civilization. And I’m not afraid of maintaining libertarian ideals if we retain our civilization.
Philosophy Needs More Than Rebranding — It Needs A Reformation. (NYT Followup) http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/03/10/nyt-followup-philosophy-needs-more-than-rebranding-it-needs-a-reformation/
Source date (UTC): 2012-03-10 18:15:40 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/178544668244590593
I suggested in my earlier essay that philosophy so conceived is best classified as a science, because of its rigor, technicality, universality, falsifiability, connection with other sciences, and concern with the nature of objective being (among other reasons). I did not claim, however, that it is an empirical science, like physics and chemistry; rather, it is an a priori science, like the “formal science” of mathematics.
As I understand it (and I am a practitioner, albiet a pragmatist, and I operate within the narrow field of political economy): 1) Philosophy is the process of creating, organizing, disassembling, and reorganizing categories according to their properties in order to expose causal relations which may be used by human beings for the purpose of improving their actions in the physical world — a world in which they possess fragmentary knowledge, experience pervasive material scarcity, limited time, are challenged by instincts and abilities unsuited to a complex society in an ever changing division of knowledge and labor, where those instincts must be sated and intentionally retrained by new ideas on a periodic basis in response to unanticipated change. 2) Philosophy as such is the study of norms: a) existing norms and theories of alternative norms (ethics) b) improvement of our process of reasoning itself by testing against the real world evidence of our norms (which must exist as a norm to function), c) improvement in public rhetoric, so that we may cooperate in large numbers toward shared ends whether by direct political or indirect market action. (which again must exist as an norm). So philosophy is the study of adapting and perpetuating norms, and the tools of constructing and deconstructing norms. Where norms are a tool of human cooperation. 3) Philosophy suffers from association with, and embracement of, mysticism, platonism and religion — in no small part because these allegorical systems are a means of establishing norms.. It suffers from a failure to incorporate empirical data as a means of testing expressions. It suffers from its distraction by the metaphysical program as practitioners attempted to legitimize their discipline as a hard science. It suffers from the desperate attempt of the entrenched institutional careerism by academics who are invested in these irrelevancies. And because of that, philosophy has lost its respect in society — a society that is suffering from the loss of its means of judging and propagating norms. A society that is suffering because of the failure of philosophy to fulfill its role at developing and justifying norms — in a vain attempt at becoming a science. A science is a process of discovery. Philosophy, as a vehicle for norms, is the process of invention. In effect, philosophy has sought to become a science by the process of introspection – which must naturally become recursive and meaningless — rather than the process of experimentation and analysis of the real world and our actions in it. 4) As a study of norms, economics is the means by which we can measure norms. (Albiet limited by our paucity of information collection, but evolving in response to our skill at information collection). Therefore philosophical concepts can be empirically tested. Behavioral psychology is the study of the human instinct and propensity for error. Politics is the means by which we define institutional mechanisms of cooperation. 5) Philosophers work too hard at either justifying existing norms, trying to find utopian norms, or trying to justify existing human instinctual preferences. Political scientists, Economists and behavioral psychologists, are in the process of replacing philosophy as a discipline. if they were to do nothing other than adopt the clarity of analytical philosophy’s language, or if philosophy would do nothing but export this skill to these disciplines, then they would succeed. 6) Philosophy has only one future, and that is to return itself to the study of norms, and a necessary feature of political action and to repudiate the metaphysical program as a series of catastrophic errors born out of the envy of the physical sciences, and the need of careerists and devotees to find relevance. Branding is not the problem. Content is. And any decent marketer will tell you that the best brand is quality that is self evident to the observer. The discipline of philosophy is anything but materially relevant today. It is a profession lost. Gilding a lilly is unnecessary and gilding a dustbin doesn’t help.
I suggested in my earlier essay that philosophy so conceived is best classified as a science, because of its rigor, technicality, universality, falsifiability, connection with other sciences, and concern with the nature of objective being (among other reasons). I did not claim, however, that it is an empirical science, like physics and chemistry; rather, it is an a priori science, like the “formal science” of mathematics.
As I understand it (and I am a practitioner, albiet a pragmatist, and I operate within the narrow field of political economy): 1) Philosophy is the process of creating, organizing, disassembling, and reorganizing categories according to their properties in order to expose causal relations which may be used by human beings for the purpose of improving their actions in the physical world — a world in which they possess fragmentary knowledge, experience pervasive material scarcity, limited time, are challenged by instincts and abilities unsuited to a complex society in an ever changing division of knowledge and labor, where those instincts must be sated and intentionally retrained by new ideas on a periodic basis in response to unanticipated change. 2) Philosophy as such is the study of norms: a) existing norms and theories of alternative norms (ethics) b) improvement of our process of reasoning itself by testing against the real world evidence of our norms (which must exist as a norm to function), c) improvement in public rhetoric, so that we may cooperate in large numbers toward shared ends whether by direct political or indirect market action. (which again must exist as an norm). So philosophy is the study of adapting and perpetuating norms, and the tools of constructing and deconstructing norms. Where norms are a tool of human cooperation. 3) Philosophy suffers from association with, and embracement of, mysticism, platonism and religion — in no small part because these allegorical systems are a means of establishing norms.. It suffers from a failure to incorporate empirical data as a means of testing expressions. It suffers from its distraction by the metaphysical program as practitioners attempted to legitimize their discipline as a hard science. It suffers from the desperate attempt of the entrenched institutional careerism by academics who are invested in these irrelevancies. And because of that, philosophy has lost its respect in society — a society that is suffering from the loss of its means of judging and propagating norms. A society that is suffering because of the failure of philosophy to fulfill its role at developing and justifying norms — in a vain attempt at becoming a science. A science is a process of discovery. Philosophy, as a vehicle for norms, is the process of invention. In effect, philosophy has sought to become a science by the process of introspection – which must naturally become recursive and meaningless — rather than the process of experimentation and analysis of the real world and our actions in it. 4) As a study of norms, economics is the means by which we can measure norms. (Albiet limited by our paucity of information collection, but evolving in response to our skill at information collection). Therefore philosophical concepts can be empirically tested. Behavioral psychology is the study of the human instinct and propensity for error. Politics is the means by which we define institutional mechanisms of cooperation. 5) Philosophers work too hard at either justifying existing norms, trying to find utopian norms, or trying to justify existing human instinctual preferences. Political scientists, Economists and behavioral psychologists, are in the process of replacing philosophy as a discipline. if they were to do nothing other than adopt the clarity of analytical philosophy’s language, or if philosophy would do nothing but export this skill to these disciplines, then they would succeed. 6) Philosophy has only one future, and that is to return itself to the study of norms, and a necessary feature of political action and to repudiate the metaphysical program as a series of catastrophic errors born out of the envy of the physical sciences, and the need of careerists and devotees to find relevance. Branding is not the problem. Content is. And any decent marketer will tell you that the best brand is quality that is self evident to the observer. The discipline of philosophy is anything but materially relevant today. It is a profession lost. Gilding a lilly is unnecessary and gilding a dustbin doesn’t help.
OUR REGALIA IS OUR IDENTITY
“Our Regalia is our identity. Our everyday clothing is our costume. The costume we wear to avoid standing out in the marketplace. The marketplace that requires we conform. ” – BadEagle.
Where is my SCA gear anyway?
Source date (UTC): 2012-03-10 14:47:00 UTC
http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/03/10/nyt-followup-philosophy-needs-more-than-rebranding-it-needs-a-reformation/Philosophy is the study of norms: existing norms, suggested norms, and the tools by which we construct and deconstruct norms. And the discipline’s avoidance of the material value of norms was an abandonment of its purpose. And it’s why the discipline has lost respect of the public, and lost its relevance to contemporary society. The strange fear of empirical data is its most conspicuous failing.
Source date (UTC): 2012-03-10 13:15:00 UTC
I’ll have to ask him if I get the chance.