Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

  • Spinoza: Philosophers Should Have A Trade

    [I]’m not a big fan of Spinoza’s ideas, but am very much a fan both his writing style and his work ethic. Spinoza earned his living as a lens-grinder. He wrote his extremely parsimonious book, taking most of his life, from a musty apartment. It’s what, 200 pages long? A brutally concise work of numbered and ordered sentences. The first statement that struck me was ‘endeavor to speak in a manner comprehensible to the common people’. I’ve always viewed this as my curse. Which is why I work so hard at it. Because I’m aware of my frame of reference, and my near absence of conceptual empathy. The other influential thing that he said, can be roughly translated as “Every man who does not have a trade must eventually become a rogue”. A sentiment I agree with. And have tried to imitate. I’ve always tried to earn enough money that I could research and write either part time or full time. I don’t like the idea of philosophers trying to earn money from their work. I don’t trust it at all. I can barely respect teaching as a way to pay for writing. Nassim Nicholas Taleb reflects this same sentiment when he says: “…as a practitioner, my thinking is rooted in the belief that you cannot go from books to problems, but the reverse, from problems to books.” And I practice philosophy the same way. I’m trying to find a solution to the problem of ethics. In particular, the problem of deception in ethics, politics, and economics. Learn a trade so that you experience the real world. Identify a problem that exists in the real world. Use the accumulated wisdom of centuries to solve a problem in the real world. Otherwise you invent a mystical hammer and go on and endless search for the appropriate nails – which you seem to find all over the place. Curt Doolittle

    COMMENTS by Roman Skaskiw 3 QUOTES ABOUT ACADEMIA ” Learn a trade so that you experience the real world. Identify a problem that exists in the real world. . . . Otherwise you invent a mystical hammer and go on and endless search for the appropriate nails – which you seem to find all over the place.” ~ Curt Doolittle “Every man who does not have a trade must eventually become a rogue” ~ Baruch Spinoza “…as a practitioner, my thinking is rooted in the belief that you cannot go from books to problems, but the reverse, from problems to books.” ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  • Spinoza: Philosophers Should Have A Trade

    [I]’m not a big fan of Spinoza’s ideas, but am very much a fan both his writing style and his work ethic. Spinoza earned his living as a lens-grinder. He wrote his extremely parsimonious book, taking most of his life, from a musty apartment. It’s what, 200 pages long? A brutally concise work of numbered and ordered sentences. The first statement that struck me was ‘endeavor to speak in a manner comprehensible to the common people’. I’ve always viewed this as my curse. Which is why I work so hard at it. Because I’m aware of my frame of reference, and my near absence of conceptual empathy. The other influential thing that he said, can be roughly translated as “Every man who does not have a trade must eventually become a rogue”. A sentiment I agree with. And have tried to imitate. I’ve always tried to earn enough money that I could research and write either part time or full time. I don’t like the idea of philosophers trying to earn money from their work. I don’t trust it at all. I can barely respect teaching as a way to pay for writing. Nassim Nicholas Taleb reflects this same sentiment when he says: “…as a practitioner, my thinking is rooted in the belief that you cannot go from books to problems, but the reverse, from problems to books.” And I practice philosophy the same way. I’m trying to find a solution to the problem of ethics. In particular, the problem of deception in ethics, politics, and economics. Learn a trade so that you experience the real world. Identify a problem that exists in the real world. Use the accumulated wisdom of centuries to solve a problem in the real world. Otherwise you invent a mystical hammer and go on and endless search for the appropriate nails – which you seem to find all over the place. Curt Doolittle

    COMMENTS by Roman Skaskiw 3 QUOTES ABOUT ACADEMIA ” Learn a trade so that you experience the real world. Identify a problem that exists in the real world. . . . Otherwise you invent a mystical hammer and go on and endless search for the appropriate nails – which you seem to find all over the place.” ~ Curt Doolittle “Every man who does not have a trade must eventually become a rogue” ~ Baruch Spinoza “…as a practitioner, my thinking is rooted in the belief that you cannot go from books to problems, but the reverse, from problems to books.” ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  • Caplan's Dishonest Redistributive Argument In Favor Of Open Immigration

    [C]aplan’s argument does not account for costs. He’s wrong. Always has been. This argument is just an extension of Cosmopolitan justification for identitarian incorporation of subgroups into host countries. It is simple literary and economic obscurantism that seeks to ignore the costs of heterogeneity on a population. In an homogenous population under universal absolute nuclear families, we still see high costs of relocation of individuals to changes in capital centers that doe NOT offset the increases in productivity – which are merely artifacts of the change in prices as demand increases in geographies. In homogenous populations containing ANF families, it takes time for the introduction of heterogeneous forces to play out, but temporary increases do simply to increases in demand for consumption due to relocation are not increases in production, and those costs have to measured against the long term decline of the trust as well as socialistic costs of incorporating lower trust groups into the society. Trust and homogeneity of high trust, is the most expensive capital to create. And heterogeneity consumes that capital asset – rapidly. The fallacy of the economic benefit of immigration is that there is no cost to norms. If high trust ethics were fully codified in law, then we could enforce high trust ethics at low cost. However, the immigration of low trust peoples has produced precisely the erosion of our constitution and our liberties that the protestants predicted would happen. The majority does not desire liberty. The minority desires liberty. And the aristocratic (noble) minority imposed high trust ethics upon the northern european peoples by force. It was that forcible imposition that caused the high trust society, plus the restoration of science, that resulted in european miracle – the only people to possess liberty. I don’t want to say Caplan is a LIAR, so much as engaged in intentional deception, but he’s no better than the progressives who abuse statistics to tout changes family incomes instead of individual incomes. Its sort of like his arguments as to why he’s not an austrian. They’re just word games. (There is no difference between the argument for prices and incentives. Obverse and Reverse of the same concept.) My purpose is to promote my genes, even at the expense of others genes. If we can cooperate while I do that then that’s fine. But if we cannot cooperate while I do that, then there is no point in cooperation. We all demonstrate our time preference. That’s mine. That’s everyone other than W.E.I.R.D’s – who are demonstrably suicidal. You don’t get to determine what my preference is. Thats totalitarian. If you dictate my preferences that is by definition not a state of liberty. I agree to cooperate if it’s beneficial to my ends, but not if it is not. That is all that can be said. I don’t subscribe to the leftist proposal of Rawls, nor the left libertarian position of open borders. I subscribe to the aristocratic proposal that if cooperation is beneficial to me and mine then we should cooperate, but if it’s not then no. I don’t know what’s libertarian about favoring dysgenics. I mean, why should I squander my earnings through redistribution? Why should I squander my culture’s high trust norms through redistribution? And why should I squander my genes through dysgenic redistribution? I mean, if you’re a libertarian and you claim to have rights to your earnings, then why do you only have rights to your earnings and not the right to your other forms of capital? I can spend my inheritance too. That isn’t an increase in production, that’s just rapid destruction of accumulated capital.

  • Caplan’s Dishonest Redistributive Argument In Favor Of Open Immigration

    [C]aplan’s argument does not account for costs. He’s wrong. Always has been. This argument is just an extension of Cosmopolitan justification for identitarian incorporation of subgroups into host countries. It is simple literary and economic obscurantism that seeks to ignore the costs of heterogeneity on a population. In an homogenous population under universal absolute nuclear families, we still see high costs of relocation of individuals to changes in capital centers that doe NOT offset the increases in productivity – which are merely artifacts of the change in prices as demand increases in geographies. In homogenous populations containing ANF families, it takes time for the introduction of heterogeneous forces to play out, but temporary increases do simply to increases in demand for consumption due to relocation are not increases in production, and those costs have to measured against the long term decline of the trust as well as socialistic costs of incorporating lower trust groups into the society. Trust and homogeneity of high trust, is the most expensive capital to create. And heterogeneity consumes that capital asset – rapidly. The fallacy of the economic benefit of immigration is that there is no cost to norms. If high trust ethics were fully codified in law, then we could enforce high trust ethics at low cost. However, the immigration of low trust peoples has produced precisely the erosion of our constitution and our liberties that the protestants predicted would happen. The majority does not desire liberty. The minority desires liberty. And the aristocratic (noble) minority imposed high trust ethics upon the northern european peoples by force. It was that forcible imposition that caused the high trust society, plus the restoration of science, that resulted in european miracle – the only people to possess liberty. I don’t want to say Caplan is a LIAR, so much as engaged in intentional deception, but he’s no better than the progressives who abuse statistics to tout changes family incomes instead of individual incomes. Its sort of like his arguments as to why he’s not an austrian. They’re just word games. (There is no difference between the argument for prices and incentives. Obverse and Reverse of the same concept.) My purpose is to promote my genes, even at the expense of others genes. If we can cooperate while I do that then that’s fine. But if we cannot cooperate while I do that, then there is no point in cooperation. We all demonstrate our time preference. That’s mine. That’s everyone other than W.E.I.R.D’s – who are demonstrably suicidal. You don’t get to determine what my preference is. Thats totalitarian. If you dictate my preferences that is by definition not a state of liberty. I agree to cooperate if it’s beneficial to my ends, but not if it is not. That is all that can be said. I don’t subscribe to the leftist proposal of Rawls, nor the left libertarian position of open borders. I subscribe to the aristocratic proposal that if cooperation is beneficial to me and mine then we should cooperate, but if it’s not then no. I don’t know what’s libertarian about favoring dysgenics. I mean, why should I squander my earnings through redistribution? Why should I squander my culture’s high trust norms through redistribution? And why should I squander my genes through dysgenic redistribution? I mean, if you’re a libertarian and you claim to have rights to your earnings, then why do you only have rights to your earnings and not the right to your other forms of capital? I can spend my inheritance too. That isn’t an increase in production, that’s just rapid destruction of accumulated capital.

  • Caplan's Dishonest Redistributive Argument In Favor Of Open Immigration

    [C]aplan’s argument does not account for costs. He’s wrong. Always has been. This argument is just an extension of Cosmopolitan justification for identitarian incorporation of subgroups into host countries. It is simple literary and economic obscurantism that seeks to ignore the costs of heterogeneity on a population. In an homogenous population under universal absolute nuclear families, we still see high costs of relocation of individuals to changes in capital centers that doe NOT offset the increases in productivity – which are merely artifacts of the change in prices as demand increases in geographies. In homogenous populations containing ANF families, it takes time for the introduction of heterogeneous forces to play out, but temporary increases do simply to increases in demand for consumption due to relocation are not increases in production, and those costs have to measured against the long term decline of the trust as well as socialistic costs of incorporating lower trust groups into the society. Trust and homogeneity of high trust, is the most expensive capital to create. And heterogeneity consumes that capital asset – rapidly. The fallacy of the economic benefit of immigration is that there is no cost to norms. If high trust ethics were fully codified in law, then we could enforce high trust ethics at low cost. However, the immigration of low trust peoples has produced precisely the erosion of our constitution and our liberties that the protestants predicted would happen. The majority does not desire liberty. The minority desires liberty. And the aristocratic (noble) minority imposed high trust ethics upon the northern european peoples by force. It was that forcible imposition that caused the high trust society, plus the restoration of science, that resulted in european miracle – the only people to possess liberty. I don’t want to say Caplan is a LIAR, so much as engaged in intentional deception, but he’s no better than the progressives who abuse statistics to tout changes family incomes instead of individual incomes. Its sort of like his arguments as to why he’s not an austrian. They’re just word games. (There is no difference between the argument for prices and incentives. Obverse and Reverse of the same concept.) My purpose is to promote my genes, even at the expense of others genes. If we can cooperate while I do that then that’s fine. But if we cannot cooperate while I do that, then there is no point in cooperation. We all demonstrate our time preference. That’s mine. That’s everyone other than W.E.I.R.D’s – who are demonstrably suicidal. You don’t get to determine what my preference is. Thats totalitarian. If you dictate my preferences that is by definition not a state of liberty. I agree to cooperate if it’s beneficial to my ends, but not if it is not. That is all that can be said. I don’t subscribe to the leftist proposal of Rawls, nor the left libertarian position of open borders. I subscribe to the aristocratic proposal that if cooperation is beneficial to me and mine then we should cooperate, but if it’s not then no. I don’t know what’s libertarian about favoring dysgenics. I mean, why should I squander my earnings through redistribution? Why should I squander my culture’s high trust norms through redistribution? And why should I squander my genes through dysgenic redistribution? I mean, if you’re a libertarian and you claim to have rights to your earnings, then why do you only have rights to your earnings and not the right to your other forms of capital? I can spend my inheritance too. That isn’t an increase in production, that’s just rapid destruction of accumulated capital.

  • Caplan’s Dishonest Redistributive Argument In Favor Of Open Immigration

    [C]aplan’s argument does not account for costs. He’s wrong. Always has been. This argument is just an extension of Cosmopolitan justification for identitarian incorporation of subgroups into host countries. It is simple literary and economic obscurantism that seeks to ignore the costs of heterogeneity on a population. In an homogenous population under universal absolute nuclear families, we still see high costs of relocation of individuals to changes in capital centers that doe NOT offset the increases in productivity – which are merely artifacts of the change in prices as demand increases in geographies. In homogenous populations containing ANF families, it takes time for the introduction of heterogeneous forces to play out, but temporary increases do simply to increases in demand for consumption due to relocation are not increases in production, and those costs have to measured against the long term decline of the trust as well as socialistic costs of incorporating lower trust groups into the society. Trust and homogeneity of high trust, is the most expensive capital to create. And heterogeneity consumes that capital asset – rapidly. The fallacy of the economic benefit of immigration is that there is no cost to norms. If high trust ethics were fully codified in law, then we could enforce high trust ethics at low cost. However, the immigration of low trust peoples has produced precisely the erosion of our constitution and our liberties that the protestants predicted would happen. The majority does not desire liberty. The minority desires liberty. And the aristocratic (noble) minority imposed high trust ethics upon the northern european peoples by force. It was that forcible imposition that caused the high trust society, plus the restoration of science, that resulted in european miracle – the only people to possess liberty. I don’t want to say Caplan is a LIAR, so much as engaged in intentional deception, but he’s no better than the progressives who abuse statistics to tout changes family incomes instead of individual incomes. Its sort of like his arguments as to why he’s not an austrian. They’re just word games. (There is no difference between the argument for prices and incentives. Obverse and Reverse of the same concept.) My purpose is to promote my genes, even at the expense of others genes. If we can cooperate while I do that then that’s fine. But if we cannot cooperate while I do that, then there is no point in cooperation. We all demonstrate our time preference. That’s mine. That’s everyone other than W.E.I.R.D’s – who are demonstrably suicidal. You don’t get to determine what my preference is. Thats totalitarian. If you dictate my preferences that is by definition not a state of liberty. I agree to cooperate if it’s beneficial to my ends, but not if it is not. That is all that can be said. I don’t subscribe to the leftist proposal of Rawls, nor the left libertarian position of open borders. I subscribe to the aristocratic proposal that if cooperation is beneficial to me and mine then we should cooperate, but if it’s not then no. I don’t know what’s libertarian about favoring dysgenics. I mean, why should I squander my earnings through redistribution? Why should I squander my culture’s high trust norms through redistribution? And why should I squander my genes through dysgenic redistribution? I mean, if you’re a libertarian and you claim to have rights to your earnings, then why do you only have rights to your earnings and not the right to your other forms of capital? I can spend my inheritance too. That isn’t an increase in production, that’s just rapid destruction of accumulated capital.

  • Immoral, Unethical, Irrational, Liberty Destroying Rothbardians.

    [O]nce you realize that rothbardian libertarians are genetically biased to act immorally, and that Rothbardianism helps them justify their immorality, then you realize that they’re just as impossible to discourse with rationally as progressives. Both are morally blind to the majority of the moral spectrum. Conservatives see the entire moral spectrum. The problem is that they use allegorical language, so it’s very hard to get them to talk about this subject in rational, economic terms. It’s just not intuitive to them that their philosophy is simply one of hyper efficient economics – the most trustworthy society yet developed. And since they’re the most trustworthy, they’re the most economically productive. Meanwhile they’re losing the battle against deceitful left, and immoral libertarians. The only solution for libertarianism is to return its foundations to their original ethics of aristocracy and nobility, and as a consequence to the thought leadership of the conservatives.

  • Immoral, Unethical, Irrational, Liberty Destroying Rothbardians.

    [O]nce you realize that rothbardian libertarians are genetically biased to act immorally, and that Rothbardianism helps them justify their immorality, then you realize that they’re just as impossible to discourse with rationally as progressives. Both are morally blind to the majority of the moral spectrum. Conservatives see the entire moral spectrum. The problem is that they use allegorical language, so it’s very hard to get them to talk about this subject in rational, economic terms. It’s just not intuitive to them that their philosophy is simply one of hyper efficient economics – the most trustworthy society yet developed. And since they’re the most trustworthy, they’re the most economically productive. Meanwhile they’re losing the battle against deceitful left, and immoral libertarians. The only solution for libertarianism is to return its foundations to their original ethics of aristocracy and nobility, and as a consequence to the thought leadership of the conservatives.

  • Trust Is The Most Scarce And Most Expensive Form Of Capital

    Rothbardian Libertarianism is an attack on the high trust society. It an obscurant, rationally justified, excuse for advocating, low trust, parasitic ethics of the ghetto. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital

  • Trust Is The Most Scarce And Most Expensive Form Of Capital

    Rothbardian Libertarianism is an attack on the high trust society. It an obscurant, rationally justified, excuse for advocating, low trust, parasitic ethics of the ghetto. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital