Form: Quote Commentary

  • CLARITY OF THINKING – OPERATIONALISM IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES —“Bridgman also ex

    CLARITY OF THINKING – OPERATIONALISM IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

    —“Bridgman also extended his operationalist thinking by considering its implications outside physics. This was important to him at least from the time of The Logic of Modern Physics, in which he ventured: “many of the questions asked about social and philosophical subjects will be found to be meaningless when examined from the point of operations. It would doubtless conduce greatly to clarity of thought if the operational mode of thinking were adopted in all fields of inquiry as well as in the physical” (30–32).”– S.E.P. Operationalism (Bridgeman).


    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-15 04:57:00 UTC

  • Sovereignty Begins with Violence, Morality is Made by Violence

    —“Right is not the offspring of doctrine, but of power. All laws, commandments, or doctrines as to not doing to another what you do not wish done to you, have no inherent authority whatever, but receive it only from the club, the gallows, and the sword. A man truly free is under no obligation to obey any injunction, human or divine. Obedience is the sign of the degenerate. Disobedience is the stamp of the hero.”—

    [I]f we apply our wealth of violence to the suppression of free riding in all its forms, then we create the most productive and meritocratic moral code for any body of people that is possible. But that result is an aristocratic moral code – a meritocratic moral code. Merit is to the disadvantage of the incompetent and degenerate. Christianity is merely a rebellion against aristocracy. But unable to suppress aristocracy, and aristocracy uninterested in suppressing christianity, the west was a product of the dialectic between the christians and the actions, habits and traditions of the aristocracy. Might makes whatever right it’s wielder chooses to. But there is only one optimum moral principle available to man, to which we all adhere to different degrees: upon choosing not to use violence, and instead to cooperate, we create the problem of free riding. To suppress free riding we create moral rules. To enforce moral rules we create authority. By creating moral rules we create free riding by corruption. To enforce moral rules against free riding by corruption we must suppress the state. To suppress the state requires that we use violence to suppress free riding in all its forms: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial, and statist. Might makes whatever right we choose. One can choose an objectively moral right: the suppression or free riding. Or one can choose one of the many others – all of which institute some form of free riding.

  • Sovereignty Begins with Violence, Morality is Made by Violence

    —“Right is not the offspring of doctrine, but of power. All laws, commandments, or doctrines as to not doing to another what you do not wish done to you, have no inherent authority whatever, but receive it only from the club, the gallows, and the sword. A man truly free is under no obligation to obey any injunction, human or divine. Obedience is the sign of the degenerate. Disobedience is the stamp of the hero.”—

    [I]f we apply our wealth of violence to the suppression of free riding in all its forms, then we create the most productive and meritocratic moral code for any body of people that is possible. But that result is an aristocratic moral code – a meritocratic moral code. Merit is to the disadvantage of the incompetent and degenerate. Christianity is merely a rebellion against aristocracy. But unable to suppress aristocracy, and aristocracy uninterested in suppressing christianity, the west was a product of the dialectic between the christians and the actions, habits and traditions of the aristocracy. Might makes whatever right it’s wielder chooses to. But there is only one optimum moral principle available to man, to which we all adhere to different degrees: upon choosing not to use violence, and instead to cooperate, we create the problem of free riding. To suppress free riding we create moral rules. To enforce moral rules we create authority. By creating moral rules we create free riding by corruption. To enforce moral rules against free riding by corruption we must suppress the state. To suppress the state requires that we use violence to suppress free riding in all its forms: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial, and statist. Might makes whatever right we choose. One can choose an objectively moral right: the suppression or free riding. Or one can choose one of the many others – all of which institute some form of free riding.

  • THE INTELLECTUAL TABLE Cowen on War

    http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-wars-may-be-hurting-economic-growth.html?referrer=SETTING THE INTELLECTUAL TABLE

    Cowen on War.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-14 05:56:00 UTC

  • immoralism

    http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/06/the-moral-inversion-of-economic-thinking.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+marginalrevolution%2Ffeed+%28Marginal+Revolution%29Economic immoralism


    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-13 06:47:00 UTC

  • READING: stagnation for and against. I dont like recommending this blog because

    http://www.tutor2u.net/blog/index.php/economics/comments/res-essay-are-the-advanced-economies-in-for-a-long-period-of-economic-stagn?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+economics_news+%28tutor2u+Economics+Blog%29#When:07:07:00ZWORTH READING: stagnation for and against.

    I dont like recommending this blog because its one of the two that have banned me, but its a good collection of links to relevant third party arguments – both left and libertarian – on the possibility of stagnation.

    (I’m in the punctuated equilibrium group.)


    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-13 06:44:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://www.balancedandbarefoot.com/blog/the-real-reason-by-children-fidget


    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-12 04:49:00 UTC

  • REFORMING EDUCATION AGAINST THE WILL OF THE STATISTS Court case in California. S

    http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2014/06/california-judge-rules-tenure-laws.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MishsGlobalEconomicTrendAnalysis+%28Mish%27s+Global+Economic+Trend+Analysis%29ENTREPRENEURS REFORMING EDUCATION AGAINST THE WILL OF THE STATISTS

    Court case in California. Strangely a win. Ending tenure in the public interest.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-11 10:58:00 UTC

  • UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS: PARENTING IS OVERRATED —“Good” parenting simply can’t re

    UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS: PARENTING IS OVERRATED

    —“Good” parenting simply can’t rescue the genetically predisposed from delinquency, and neither can “bad” parenting (provided it’s not too extremely so) hold back the genetically gifted. These should serve as final nails in the coffin for the case for the efficacy of parenting. There is simply no more to debate.”—

    Love your kids. You will determine whether they are happy or not. But your genes determine whether they will be successful of delinquent.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-10 05:39:00 UTC

  • LIBERTY AS LUXURY, POSSIBILITY, OR IMPOSSIBILITY (worth repeating) —“So whethe

    LIBERTY AS LUXURY, POSSIBILITY, OR IMPOSSIBILITY

    (worth repeating)

    —“So whether one chooses the necessary and sufficient arguments of Aristocratic Egalitarian Libertarianism (Aristocracy), or the luxuries of humanitarian libertarianism (Classical Liberalism), that is merely a preference, not a question of possibility. While the choice of rothbardian ‘thin’ libertarianism (Libertinism) is just the opposite: it’s impossible.”—

    We do not get to choose the incentives that will produce a voluntary anarchic polity. We can estimate them. Wet can test them. We can demonstrate them. We can measure them. But we cannot choose them.

    Transaction costs determine the desirability of different polities. The rational choice of a voluntary, anarchic polity over a statist polity requires a high trust society.

    Once one possesses a voluntary, high trust society, one can also engage in the production and consumption of luxuries – commons. But luxuries are not the same as necessities.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev


    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-10 02:29:00 UTC