Source: Facebook

  • should be more like the Swiss, atomized into a large number of tiny cantons run

    http://theumlaut.com/2013/11/25/nassim-talebs-probabilistic-minarchism/”….we should be more like the Swiss, atomized into a large number of tiny cantons run on the basis of direct democracy. This is another way of bounding negative outcomes—any extremely bad local policy can only have an impact on a very limited number of people.”

    Preaching to the Choir. However, this position is irreconcilably contradictory to the progressive self image and narrative: that we can do anything we can get away with and we will fix any negative outcomes later.

    Conservatism is an anti-fragile social philosophy.

    Progressivism is a fragile social philosophy.


    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-20 13:22:00 UTC

  • QUALITATIVE EASING : INSURING ARTIFICIAL PRICE LEVELS CAUSED BY STATE MONETARY P

    http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/12/19/how-to-stop-financial-panics-say-hello-to-qualitative-easingCONTRA QUALITATIVE EASING : INSURING ARTIFICIAL PRICE LEVELS CAUSED BY STATE MONETARY POLICY

    (un-libertarian) (recession insurance) (PSST) (insuring against busts)

    This solution in the paper that is referred to in the article is weaker than simply buying down debt on real property from consumers and SMB’s that do not have access to capital markets,in sectors of the economy undergoing crashes. Further, buying down debt by fiat allows the state to penalize lenders by paying them off at a discount, by fiat. This is a better incentive than regulation of inputs. Because consumers are protected by the state and lenders are harmed in terms profits but not balance sheets.

    Reasons are multiple, but mostly, that the preservation of false price levels is distortionary, while the redistribution of discounted debt restores balance sheets. And specific sectors can be addressed quickly, which reduces downward pressure on prices.

    In effect, by this method, the state insures large asset prices against booms and busts.

    I recommended this solution in 2008, and Galbraith did as well, before he died.

    And the longer I have worked on the problem the more certain I am that it is a MUCH MORE effective policy than either government spending or lowering interest rates. Neither of which help the PSST (pattern of sustainable specialization and trade) within a given sector.

    Prices are information. We can insure the quality of information. And this method insures that bottom end of the asset price even if all profit is wiped from the transaction.

    This puts cash in people’s pockets within a collapsing sector without allowing the repricing in that sector to easily spread to the broader economy.

    Imagine if every home owner had received a formulaic payment against his or her home’s debt, and contributions to 401K’s for any balance over their debt amount. This would rapidly have put cash in everyone’s hands, while adjusting balance sheets, and would have stopped the fear of prices falling.

    I’ve written enough about this. But the point is, libertarian or not, just or not, insuring state induced prices is the most effective technique for controlling the spread of relative price changes as they percolate through the economy and cause disruptions in additional patterns of sustainable specialization and trade.

    Cheers.


    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-20 03:09:00 UTC

  • THE FIRST KILLER APP FOR THE ENTERPRISE OF THE 21ST CENTURY I think we did it. I

    THE FIRST KILLER APP FOR THE ENTERPRISE OF THE 21ST CENTURY

    I think we did it. I didn’t really realize it until the past week. But I think we did it. Don’t want to get ahead of myself. But…. I think. I think we might have done it.

    Why can’t, say Google+, compete with FB – really? Because FB collected so many users that the network effect wasn’t possible to break. Why hasn’t something like FB or Gmail really penetrated the enterprise? Why are Outlook and exchange still so popular despite being two generations behind?

    Didn’t get the value prop right. No reason to change.

    Now there is.

    Might be crazy but I don’t think so. Might blow it. Easy to blow it. But honestly, I think I’ve got it. Need to spend more on it. Different launch now. Different pitch. Broader value prop.

    Sure, all those people who work in services businesses will want to use it just like we’d planned.

    On the other hand – just about every company would be better off with Oversing than whatever email or collaboration system they’re using today.

    We have started collecting beta sites. Got a few now. I don’t want to get too many. Just a handful.


    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-19 19:10:00 UTC

  • Mr. Doolittle, Would you be willing to offer a counter view?

    Mr. Doolittle, Would you be willing to offer a counter view?


    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-19 16:58:00 UTC

  • FORCIBLE REDISTRIBUTION IS MISSED OPPORTUNITY FOR EXCHANGE Forcible redistributi

    FORCIBLE REDISTRIBUTION IS MISSED OPPORTUNITY FOR EXCHANGE

    Forcible redistribution via taxation deprives us of the ability to ask for something in exchange for our earnings.

    What we would most often like in exchange are conformity to norms (predictability of signals), and social status (reward).

    If redistribution is politically necessary to prevent friction in politics, but undesired by the population, then the government needs to be broken up.

    The reason being that governments that act on the behalf of constituencies can negotiate trade policy to effectively form redistribution from those who DESIRE to trade with others, versus those that do not.

    Conformity is how we prefer to determine whether someone has access to our market. However, if they do not conform, that does not mean that they cannot extract from us something that we wish to give them in exchange for granting us access to THEIR market.

    It isnt necessarily mandatory that governments possess a monopoly over territory. Collective trade bargaining can be conducted by currency differences. But only if currency is entirely digital – so that we can make use of many of them.

    Technology makes interesting political options available to us today,t he same way that the invention of money made new political options available in the past.

    It’s fascinating.


    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-19 16:49:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://shar.es/OZ3H4


    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-19 04:25:00 UTC

  • In our pretend world, we have a benevolent monarch. He resides in a city. The hu

    In our pretend world, we have a benevolent monarch. He resides in a city. The hub of a wheel. He administers the territory using a sales tax of 5%.

    The city has 10,000 people living in it, or 1/2 of the total population.

    The city is 100 acres x 100 acres in size, or roughly 4x4miles, and so the edge of the city is 2M from the center, and 30m walk. And 1hr total time to walk across.

    Our geography is mapped out as a set of villages of no more than 1500 people.

    Each building in the village occupies no more than 10K square feet of land, or, roughly 100 buildings, and therefore covers about 25 acres, roughly 5×5 acres, or roughly 2x2miles.

    Each village 30 minutes walk apart (2 miles)

    The closest village is 2m from the center, or 30 minutes walk.

    The circumference the city then is roughly 12miles.

    There are six villages, totaling 6×1500, or 9-10,000 people.

    How much land for food production?

    How much land for “wilderness”, on which one can either enjoy nature, or ‘hunt’ for consumption but not sale?

    (It takes an absurd amount of land to feed hunter gatherers btw)


    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-18 07:34:00 UTC

  • THE DIALECTIC IS BETWEEN OUR FRAGILE MINDS AND OBJECTIVE REALITY… And that deb

    THE DIALECTIC IS BETWEEN OUR FRAGILE MINDS AND OBJECTIVE REALITY…

    And that debate is conducted in four languages, each of which supplies only one quarter of the solution, but togehter, explain all.:

    THE FOUR MORAL SCIENCES

    1) Reason = The instrumental logic of Perception.

    2) Mathematics = The instrumental Logic of Relations

    3) Physics (Science) = The instrumental logic of Causes

    4) Property (Economics) = The instrumental logic of Cooperation

    We have spent more than a century trying to construct morality as a science, without grasping that the scientific method is in fact, moral philosophy.

    You don’t need to go to a place if you’re already standing there.

    We were standing there all the time.


    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-18 06:56:00 UTC

  • OUR WEALTH OF VIOLENCE Under anarchy, we agree NOT to use our natural capacity f

    OUR WEALTH OF VIOLENCE

    Under anarchy, we agree NOT to use our natural capacity for violence, theft and fraud, and by each of us agreeing to not use violence theft and fraud, we obtain property rights. Property rights are the RESULT of forgoing violence, theft, fraud, fraud by omission, obstruction, externalization and shaming and rallying. When we forgo all of these forms of involuntary transfer, nothing is let to us but that narrow means of cooperation we call honest, fully informed, voluntary exchange.

    By many of us agreeing not to use our natural capacity for violence, theft fraud, fraud by omission, obstruction, externalization, shaming, rallying, and organized extortion, and instead forcing ourselves to cooperate voluntarily, by honest, fully informed, voluntary exchange, we create a market.

    Governments are monopolistic insurers, usually formed by nobility, and oligarchy, or a conquerer.

    Under a monopoly government, we pay our wealth of violence to the state, as the first, and ultimate tax. And in return, we expect defense, arbitration of differences.

    We also agree to paying for the necessity of supporting defenders (warriors and soldiers), administrators (sheriffs), and arbitrators (judges), in exchange. It is a convenient division of labor to hire specialists. Warriors, sheriffs and judges are necessary arbiters of war, violence, theft and fraud.

    Although, in English history, the militia is the check and balance on the insurers, rather than competing insurers. In fact, the militia, of armed men, is the only check on monopoly government.

    Violence is the answer, and the only answer.

    We were born with a wealth of violence. We let the state borrow our violence on our behalf, as a division of labor, so that we may specialize in what we wish to. But if the state does not justly use our violence, it is our obligation and our moral right, and our personal necessity, to withdraw our wealth of violence from the state, and to use that wealth to enact a new order.

    I am tired of poor people being dragged into court, fined and losing work for no other reason than choosing to eat or sleep or work, rather than pay taxes, fines, and fees. I am tired of families struggling or the elderly struggling, so that the impulsive and unconstrained bearers of children can obtain succor at their expense.

    I am tired of white males being prosecuted for trying to take great risks to create wealth and protect it so that they no longer must take great risks.

    Withdraw your wealth of violence. Cease paying your tax of violence. Become a protestor of the violence tax, and return your violence to your own control, and use. Take back your first and greatest wealth.

    VIOLENCE IS OUR FIRST NATURAL RIGHT.

    USE IT.


    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-17 14:07:00 UTC

  • A song about a “red, vermillion, Ukrainian unicorn” (The title of the song is “R

    A song about a “red, vermillion, Ukrainian unicorn” (The title of the song is “Russian Unicorn” – probably it refers to its ethnicity)


    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-17 13:20:00 UTC