Violence is a virtue not a vice. Like any resource it is scarce and can be put to good and ill uses. But try to create property rights without it. Try to hold your property rights without it. You can’t. No one has. No one will. Property is a product of the application of violence. Property is a minority preference with majority returns. Liberty is a minority preference with majority returns. Almost all humans seek to consume products of the market. Very, very few humans seek to produce products for the market. The majority of humans seek every possible opportunity to avoid participation in the market. The only people who participate in the market are the self employed, or the commissioned. People who sell there services in exchange for wages are avoiding the market. Government employees are avoiding the market. Unions members who seek security and wages are avoiding the market. (not safety) The wealthy and the retired are avoiding the market. Under agrarianism, everyone was in the market. Everyone produced for both themselves and the market. Under consumer capitalism, very few people participate in the market. Do we wonder why rent seekers are more numerous than producers? Violence is a form of wealth. Do not surrender it unless you receive freedom in exchange. And take back your violence if the warrantee on your freedom is broken.
Source: Original Site Post
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A Hobby Can’t Be A Market Failure
On economics help, we get to see a how political failure is cast as market failure.
Agriculture often appears to be one of the most difficult industries, frequently leading to some form of market failure. In the EU, agriculture is the most heavily subsidised industry, yet despite the cost of the subsidy, it fails to address issues relating to agriculture.
Then the author compounds the error by stating that the volatility of weather creates a volatility in prices:
The problem of volatile prices is that: 1. A sharp drop in price leads to a fall in revenue for farmers. Farmers could easily go out of business if their is a glut in supply because prices can plummet below cost. 2. Cobweb Theory. The cobweb theory suggests prices can become stuck in a cycle of ever-increasing volatility. E.g. if prices fall like in the above example. Many farmers will go out of business. Next year supply will fall. This causes price to increase. However, this higher price acts as incentive for greater supply. Therefore, next year supply increases and prices plummet again!. 3. Consumers can be faced with rapid increase in food prices which reduces their disposable income.
To which I replied: Fascinating. Fascinating that you would consider any of these properties a market failure. 1) Farming has declined as an employer of people since 1900 to the point where it is now little more than a subsidized hobby industry that we support for purely aesthetic reasons. For that reason alone, it cannot experience ‘market failure’. It’s a commoditized industry. Farming is an industrial occupation for conglomerates. Everyone else in the business is in it out of love or habit not profit. 2) The US western expansion was created in an era of farming, and the land settled by farmers (and ranchers). The era of industrial expansion was created to support the expansion of farming. Now that farming has become mechanized and industrialized, people are leaving the breadbasket for the commercial and technological centers – that’s why those parts of the country are being depopulated. 3) It is impossible for farming to experience ‘market failure’. It is only possible for people to cling to an unproductive means of production, and to fail to develop alternative careers. The problem is political failure. Not market failure. Markets can’t fail. They can be insufficient to solve certain problems of capital concentration that only governments can accomplish. The political failure of attempting to persist farming is a failure because the market is telling us that farming is no longer valuable as an occupation. The political system is failing because it cannot develop alternatives to farming fast enough. It’s a problem of political failure not market failure. And it’s human failure. The romantic and luddite desire for antiquated means of production.
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A Hobby Can’t Be A Market Failure
On economics help, we get to see a how political failure is cast as market failure.
Agriculture often appears to be one of the most difficult industries, frequently leading to some form of market failure. In the EU, agriculture is the most heavily subsidised industry, yet despite the cost of the subsidy, it fails to address issues relating to agriculture.
Then the author compounds the error by stating that the volatility of weather creates a volatility in prices:
The problem of volatile prices is that: 1. A sharp drop in price leads to a fall in revenue for farmers. Farmers could easily go out of business if their is a glut in supply because prices can plummet below cost. 2. Cobweb Theory. The cobweb theory suggests prices can become stuck in a cycle of ever-increasing volatility. E.g. if prices fall like in the above example. Many farmers will go out of business. Next year supply will fall. This causes price to increase. However, this higher price acts as incentive for greater supply. Therefore, next year supply increases and prices plummet again!. 3. Consumers can be faced with rapid increase in food prices which reduces their disposable income.
To which I replied: Fascinating. Fascinating that you would consider any of these properties a market failure. 1) Farming has declined as an employer of people since 1900 to the point where it is now little more than a subsidized hobby industry that we support for purely aesthetic reasons. For that reason alone, it cannot experience ‘market failure’. It’s a commoditized industry. Farming is an industrial occupation for conglomerates. Everyone else in the business is in it out of love or habit not profit. 2) The US western expansion was created in an era of farming, and the land settled by farmers (and ranchers). The era of industrial expansion was created to support the expansion of farming. Now that farming has become mechanized and industrialized, people are leaving the breadbasket for the commercial and technological centers – that’s why those parts of the country are being depopulated. 3) It is impossible for farming to experience ‘market failure’. It is only possible for people to cling to an unproductive means of production, and to fail to develop alternative careers. The problem is political failure. Not market failure. Markets can’t fail. They can be insufficient to solve certain problems of capital concentration that only governments can accomplish. The political failure of attempting to persist farming is a failure because the market is telling us that farming is no longer valuable as an occupation. The political system is failing because it cannot develop alternatives to farming fast enough. It’s a problem of political failure not market failure. And it’s human failure. The romantic and luddite desire for antiquated means of production.
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The Economic Spectrum: Five Competing Groups Of Economists
There are five competing ideological groups of economists: Modern Monetary Theorists, Monetarists, Keynesians, Neoclassicals and Austrians. These five groups describe a spectrum of policy actions that are available to government because of its ability to print money, borrow money, spend money, lend money, write laws and enforce them. The government can insert money into the economy in a variety of ways using these tools, but the time frame it necessary to produce a result varies from the short term to the long term. These five competing groups of economists represent ideological schools of thought. For practical purposes they function as political parties within the field of economics. Each of these schools is allied with some combination of political parties in government. This list summarizes each school’s position, and it has at least the appearance of being funny. The list is ordered shortest to longest time needed for money to work its way into consumer hands: 1) MODERN MONETARY THEORY Street Description: “Print money by diluting the existing pool of money and dump it directly into consumer’s hands, and it will work its way through the economy from the bottom up.” Party Afilliation: Extreme Left, Ideological liberals. Ex-communists and their sympathizers. Code Words: MMT Slang Words: digital money, no-currency money, post-currency money Description: In the narrowest terms, MMT means printing as much money as consumers need, and can afford to borrow, and lending it at zero interest. In the widest terms, it means elimination of nearly the entire consumer banking and credit system. Criticisms: no one has ever tried to create MMT money, but in theory, inflation would rapidly expand making it impossible to plan anything in the future at all, and the entire economy would crash from the effect of the inability of anyone to plan anything. Positives: As a targeted solution, bypassing the financial system and putting money directly in consumer’s hands isn’t always a bad idea. During the 2008 housing crash, some of us recommended that instead of using the normal channels, we just pay down all homeowner mortgages by 200,000 dollars, and give anyone who has yet to have a home, a 25% deposit against that home, for a period of six years, wherever that home loan is guaranteed by the federal government. (If you loans your kids money that doesn’t count.) There are a lot of little technical rules that have to accompany that legislation, like forcing recalculation of all home loans to a flat 3%. THis would punish the financial system but leave the rest of the economy and the pricing system intact. Because we didn’t do that, the entire world had to recalculate prices, was unable to plan production, and everything came to a halt, resulting in a lot of unemployment. 2) MONETARISTSStreet Description: Make money really cheap to borrow and it will work through the economy from the top down. Party Affiliation: Mainstream Republicans and Democrats. The moderate right and left. Code Word: Mainstream Economics. Monetary Policy Slang Word: Freshwater School (per Krugman) Description: The government borrows money and then auctions it off to banks. The banks add a few points of profit to it, and then try to lend it. The government constantly adjusts the price of credit while targeting a specific inflation rate. The objective is to allow the private sector to adjust to suppor the changes in the economy. Criticisms: a) While you can make money cheap, you can’t force people to borrow it, and if people don’t borrow, then it doesn’t matter what you do. This was the problem from 2009-2011. 3) KEYNESIANSStreet Description: Borrow money and have the government spend it. It will work its way through government institutions into the economy through the organizations the feed off the government. Party Affiliation: Democrats. Mainstream moderate left and right Code Word: Slang Word: Tax And Spend Liberals, Statists, Big Government Description: Criticisms: 4) NEOCLASSICALSStreet Description: Borrow to Invest in creating and expanding competitive industries and it will work its way through the economy. Party Affiliation: Republicans. Economic Conservatives in particular. Democrats because of union dependence upon large industries. Code Word: Mainstream Economics. Industrial Policy Slang Word: Corporate Subsidy, Corporatism. Description: Involuntary Transfers: Criticisms: 5) AUSTRIANSStreet Description: Borrow to Invest in human skills and knowledge, and people will create productive goods that will work its way through the economy, and create a robust and competitive economy. Party Affiliation: Libertarians. Conservative libertarians, especially the Rothbardians. Code Word: Hard Money Advocates Slang Word: Gold Bugs. (And every other four letter word the other schools can come up with.) Description: Accurate Description: the government allows the boom and bust cycle to function without interference, under the assumption that all the government can do is encourage the continued misallocation of capital which will make the bubble larger and the recovery longer. Involuntary Transfers: There probably aren’t any. It’s just that this model prevents the government from borrowing on behalf of the working classes in order to invest in businesses and infrastructure that that may employ them. In this sense, the people who have money are constraining the ability of the working classes to organize in such a way that they can invest in their future, and gives a substantial portion of that profit to people who do nothing but save and hold money already. While government abuse and corruption are universal, that’s not to say in principle the end result isn’t positive for labor. Criticisms: The criticisms of the school are almost endless. However the most common are: a) it takes a very long time for money to work its way into the economy. b) the gold standard does not leave governments much borrowing capacity c) the gold standard constrains growth. Of course, an Austrian would argue that these are all good things that keep people focused on being competitive while preventing the government from creating an unstable economy and unstable society. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT It is possible that ALL FOUR ARE RIGHT in their theories of policy recommendations. It is even likely that all four are right. It is simply unlikely that we can create a political system that can implement policy along that spectrum. Not because of the affect each of them has on the economy. But because the affect that each of them has on empowering or disempowering the government to interfere with our social lives. So, it’s possible to CONCEIVE of a political system that will make use of the entire spectrum of tools. It’s just not practically possible to implement it. Why? Because the short term tactical approach favors consumption and redistribution while the long term favors innovation and concentration. And without a systemic and procedural means of balancing those two political extremes, it is not possible for the different advocates to compromise on policy. The Propertarian Solution Propertarianism says it doesn’t matter what levers you pull as long as it’s calculable, and is a voluntary inter temporal exchange. That may sound complicated, but all it means is that if you want to borrow now, you have to create a productive investment later to pay for it. The Keynesian and MMT position is that ‘demand’ only matters, and that production will serve to fulfill the demand. Each of the different academic political parties represents a different constituency. And by feeding that constituency they transfer wealth from other constituencies to themselves. The solution is to render these transfers visible and calculable, so that inter-temporal transfers are simply loans from one another that help the entire population produce productive ends, rather than scramble steal from one another by way of the state. Differences Between The Schools While the terminology used in the field of economics is absurdly obscure, the differences between the schools are simple: 1) The progressives schools all assume that unemployment is politically and socially unstable, and morally intolerable. Therefore the government should attempt to use its ability to borrow and spend money, or borrow and loan money cheaply, to increase employment. By increasing employment we reduce human discomfort and stress. When people are employed they consume. When the consume business and industry produce. To increase production they hire. And in theory taxes on the increased consumption more than pay for the cost of restarting the economy. That’s the theory. And there is little dispute over whether this process will actually produce the short term consequences that we desire. The dispute is over the long term consequences. 2) Given that a government can borrow money and sell it, borrow money and spend it, or even just print it and either sell or spend it, the government can stimulate buying and selling in the economy. In theory, this spending fools the citizenry into thinking they have more money than they do, and so they start spending and consuming and this activity restores the economy (and forces people with savings to spend it rather than have it destroyed by inflation). However, there are consequences to borrowing and spending. a) b) c) A thought experiment Let’s pretend we have four houses of government that roughly correspond to ‘The Fiscal House (Keynesians)’, ‘The Monetary House’ (Monetarists), ‘The Industrial Policy House’ (neoclassicals), and the ‘Human Capital House’ (Austrians). And then we have an executive branch that can only execute bills that are approved by all four houses. These houses cannot create laws in the sense that they cannot create binding obligations over the long term. They can only ‘print’, borrow, and allocate fixed amounts of money over fixed time periods with defined dates of conclusion. In that model, all four houses would have to compromise with one another in order for policy to be enacted. The reason the different camps cannot agree on policy is that each side is actually trying to constrain the other’s political not economic preferences and can only do so by advocating the exclusive use of their methodology. It is often impossible to maintain the perspective that the political battle is between the public intellectuals on the left, and the entrepreneurs on the right, over control of the government. Schumpeter told us this would happen. And he was right. But we don’t have to control government if takings are prohibited, and exchanges are mandated. Its not hard really.
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Monetarists Picked The Wrong Ally in Keynesians
Scott, Well, I’m in the middle of the Monetarist-Neoclassical-Austrian spectrum and I agree with the Monetarists and objects to the Keynesians. The unstated argument here is that: 1) The American people do not trust their government. All spending is suspect. And they would rather suffer in order to starve the beast than gain relief by feeding it. This isn’t going to change any time soon. Demographics guarantee it. Tilting at windmills is a waste of time. 2) The monetarists failed to make their case with the public. If the monetarists DID make their case with the public by stating that they would in no way expand the government, the public would have endorsed it. I blame this failure entirely on the monetarist public intellectuals who allied with the Keynesians instead of the Neo-classicals (improve industry) and Austrians (improve human capital) with whom most Americans are more sentimentally aligned – puritan ethics prevail.. 3) The public is justifiably angry at the financial sector as well as the government. Galbraith, myself, and to some abstract degree Arnold Kling, recommended that bypassing the financial sector entirely and paying down consumer debts was a radical idea, but would have won the hearts and minds of the citizenry, as well as avoiding worldwide price recalculation within the Patterns of Sustainable Specialization and Trade, which is the result of the shock to people’s ability to forecast and plan. (I dont think anyone appreciates the value of Kling’s arguments as adding another tool to the neoclassical inventory.) This was a better solution than the Keynesian OR Monetarist solutions. And it would have astronomically cheaper. Keynesian spending only works if people trust the government and people only trust the government in small culturally and ethnically homogenous nation states. Monetarists SHOULD be politically neutral, but by allying with Keynesians they become untenable with the public. By allying with Neo-classicals and Austrians Monetarists can become politically neutral, and the public will accept their recommendations. The importance of this concept is significant – not only for monetarists, but for the country as a whole. Perhaps for the world.
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Bryan Caplan’s Current Work On The Limited Benefits Of Education
Bryan Caplan writes
1. The vast majority of research on the [returns on higher] education – including IVs, RTCs, etc. – does not empirically distinguish between human capital and signaling. The better papers explicitly admit this. 2. Students spend a lot of time learning subjects irrelevant to almost all occupations (except, of course, teaching those very same irrelevant subjects). 3. Teachers often claim that they’re “teaching their students how to think,” but this goes against a hundred years of educational psychology’s Transfer of Learning literature. 4. When education researchers measure actual learning, it’s modest on average, and often zero. And yet employers still pay a big premium to e.g. college students who’ve learned little or nothing. The same goes for the return to college quality. It doesn’t seem to improve learning, but it substantially improves income. 5. There is a growing empirical literature using the El-SD (employer learning – statistical discrimination) approach to measure the effect of signaling. It usually finds moderate signaling, at least for non-college grads. It looks like you have to finish college to quickly get employers to reward you for measurable pre-existing skills. 6. The sheepskin literature finds large effects of merely finishing degrees. They eventually fade out, but it takes 15-25 years. This isn’t iron-clad evidence for signaling (what would be?), but it’s strongly supportive. My book will also argue that ability bias is a much bigger problem than the David Card consensus will admit, and that the positive externalities of education are overrated. So the social return to education turns out to be quite low. In terms of policy implications, I’m going to argue for large cuts in government spending on education, and a lot more vocational education on the German model.
We are not paid for our knowledge. We are paid for the rate at which we assimilate and adapt to information and circumstances. We are paid to quickly and inexpensively solve problems in dynamic economy. Universities successfully filter for those people able to assimilate and adapt to information and circumstances. People who pass the filter are more likely to adapt to the shock of entering the work force and quickly learn the nuances of both organizations and business processes. Since IQ is largely an expression of the RATE someone is capable of learning, the data should show that universities essentially sort by IQ. And it appears to show just that. I am not convinced (and I think you’ve come to the same conclusion) that people learn anything of value in university other than work discipline. (Sowell has been saying this for years.) It also appears that people eventually sort by IQ in the work force regardless of their education. So, it would seem that an education is a means of temporarily increasing your earning capacity at the median, and a way of shortening your access to income at the top. But at the bottom higher education’s a waste of time, and a burdensome debt. Americans try to educate everyone to join the upper middle class, and it’s a waste of effort and produces an incompetent working class. instead, we should, as the Germans do, focus on creating a superior working class, because the upper 20% will succeed as long as we don’t impede them too much. As you’ve stated elsewhere, and as the economic evidence shows, the German model is a superior education system, and perhaps the Finnish model is the best primary school system. For certain, boys should start school later than girls. and should be physically active despite the risk of ‘being boys’.
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What Is Evil?
At a dinner conversation last night, someone seeded the discussion with a common parlor-game question. Although it isn’t a complicated topic, I thought it would serve as an example of how to translate archaic moral speech into contemporary language by applying propertarian reasoning. Now, I’ve shortened it a bit, and probably done a disservice by doing so, but otherwise it would take ten pages to get to the conclusion. QUESTION: “WHAT IS EVIL?”ANALYSIS:1) Analyze the Question: The question itself is misleading – the phrasing is a parlor trick. It takes advantage of the victim’s susceptibility to historical and moral Framing: the victim naturally desires to answer the question as stated even though the use of the generic verb ‘is’ frames the answer. Many Victorian parlor tricks posed false moral dilemmas as a means of providing entertainment. This question is constructed in that same manner. The question should instead be phrased as either “Define Evil” or more thoroughly “Given that we use the term evil in a variety of contexts what does the term mean in those contexts – i.e.: subjective analysis. Given the set of meanings in those contexts, are any or all of those meanings impossible or self-contradictory? i.e.: objective analysis. And of what remains, can such a thing as evil exist?” 2) Explore Evolutionary History: What can we learn from the evolution of the term? Answer: There is a term we call “Evil”. The term has an etymology – a history – a time at which it was invented. The meaning of the term was originally political – to denote ‘a competing way of life against our interests’. The term was then expanded by analogy to address individual actions. The term was then anthropomorphically expanded by analogy to cover random (natural) events. The term was then applied as a criticism of monotheistic divinity in order to illustrate a self contradiction. The term is now – post Darwin and under democratic secular socialism– becoming loaded and archaic. Like most things, understanding something’s history tells us far more than understanding its current state. 3) Collect All Possible Examples: What are all the examples we can think of, or find that refer to the term in context? Both in-group (culture) and out-group? Answer: Murder. Sibling murder. Killing an ant. Undermining institutions. Creating a moral hazard. Selling an immoral product. Plotting terrorism. What about the DC sniper versus the top military sniper? The list is long, and I’m not going to be creative here, other that to suggest that any inventory of examples we create has to be fairly large, and cover the individual, institutional, local political, cultural-political, and geo-political spectrums if this exercise will have any value. 4) Determine Population Dimension: Does the term apply to individuals or groups or both? Answer: Both. From our examples, it applies to both individuals and groups of both actors and victims. 5) Determine Time Dimension: What about different economic eras? Are ‘evil and immoral’ considered to be different under hunter-gathering, agrarian, manorial, industrial, urban technological eras? Answer: yes. Markedly so. Hunter gatherer, agrarian, industrial, and urban ethics are markedly different. 6) Separate Actions from Actors from Consequences: What is the difference between an evil person and an evil action, or an evil semi-autonomous process (a virus, or a viral meme)? Answer: A person is evil with intention and repetition. An action produces evil results regardless of intention, and is evil only by analogy. A process produces evil results but is only evil by analogy. 7) Separate Subjective from Objective: Emotions – how do emotions play into determining ill mannered, unethical, immoral and evil actions, individuals and groups?? Answer: a) Emotions are descriptions of changes in state of perception of an individual’s assets. Moreover, they are reactions to descriptions of changes in state of capital. (Yes, really.) Nothing more. Given the differences in knowledge and experience (and intelligence) emotions are subjective descriptions of the perception of each individual’s inventory. b) Empathy is an ability to imitate the express of the change in state of other individuals. It is pre-verbal communication of changes in property (capital). 8) Narrow the definition until it is exclusive: What can we learn by determining what is not considered ‘Evil’, or which is covered by other terms? What ‘bad actions’ are not classified as evil? Answer? Accidents. And errors that are not repeated. 9) Determine Limits Of The Cases: What is the difference between ill mannered, unethical, immoral, and evil actions? Are displays of bad manners evil? Is someone unethical classifiable as evil? Is someone immoral classifiable as evil? Aren’t unethical and immoral lower bars than evil? Why? Answer: because we are all unethical and immoral at times, but evil we tend to think of ‘evil’ as repetitive systemic and intentional. But let’s look at this carefully: lets say we have a diamond ring dealer that preys upon the dreams of the poor by selling them low-downpayment engagement rings at very high interest rates. (This example is from real life.) Then when they default on the payments he reposesses the ring, pulls the diamond for resale and melts it down. What about the mortgage broker who sold all those mortgages before the crash to people who couldn’t afford them? What about the marxist who, despite the evidence of near genocidal consequences, still advocates marxism? What about the christian scientist who prays rather than takes a child to the hospital? What about the mother who advocates avoiding shots for her children? What is the difference between stealing water, and poisoning a well? 10) Further Refine into a spectrum: What is unique to ‘Evil’ that is not unique to ill-mannered, unethical, and immoral actions? Answer: Knowledge (intent), Destruction, and Frequency (repetition). Ignorance is pervasive, so a single instance that one learns from is not evil, but accidental. Repetitive actions can no longer be made in ignorance. 11) Identify Remaining Causal Dimensions: Are any of the properties we have discovered possible to express in consolidated form as a continuum? Yes, the following continuum can be composed from the discussion: a) ACTORS: Individual->Group->ExtraGroup->”Nature” b) VICTIMS: Individual->group->Humanity->Life->Universe c) KNOWLEDGE: Accidental/Made_In_Ignorance->Intentional/Made_With_Knowledge->Systemic/Habitual/Made_Without_Intent d) CAPITAL:Accumulation->Transfers->Destruction e) FREQUENCY: OneTime->Repetitive->Pervasive 12) Graph Dimensions: Is it possible to graph these continuum in order to show their dependence upon one another (taking into consideration that more than three dimensions is difficult for humans to comprehend.) Answer: Yes. We can create six or eight before they become repetitive. [Graph any two axis, and then attempt to add third, then repeat permutations until all are covered.] EVALUATION What do these graphs tell us about objective evil? And about evil by analogy? a) To the actor(s), knowledge is the only relevant criteria for determining whether he is objectively evil or not. b) To the victim, capital is only relevant if a transfer or destruction of capital is created. Meaning that there is a standard that must be met in order to qualify as ‘evil’. c) To the victim, the actor’s knowledge is only relevant if frequency is repetitive and the actor is a group or individual. Therefore, the necessary and sufficient definition of the term ‘Evil’ consists of repetitive transfer or destruction of capital. (NOTE: This definition applies to the divinity argument as well, since by definition, the divine is all powerful and eternal and therefore repetitive.) PROPOSITION: P.1) ‘Evil’ is an archaic term that refers to the repetitive and therefore willful or systemic destruction of capital – individual or social, by individuals, groups, or ‘nature’. Conversely, ‘Good’ is an archaic term that refers to the repetitive and therefore willful or systemic accumulation of capital – individual or social, by individuals groups or ‘nature’. P.2) ‘Immoral’ is a term that refers to anonymous involuntary transfers of capital because of informational asymmetry. Conversely, ‘Moral’ is a term that refers to refraining from conducting anonymous involuntary transfers of capital due to informational asymmetry. P.3) ‘Unethical’ is a term that refers to non-anonymous involuntary transfers of capital because of informational asymmetry. Conversely, ‘Ethical’ is a term that refers to refraining from non-anonymous involuntary transfers of capital because of informational asymmetry. P.4) ‘Ill-mannered’ is a term that refers to the non-anonymous failure to contribute to normative capital – privatization (theft) of social capital stored in norms. Conversely, ‘well-mannered’ is a term that refers to the non-anonymous contribution to normative capital by habitual demonstration of adherence to norms. WHERE: a) ‘Capital’ consists of life, body, several property, communal (shareholder) property, informal institutions (morals, ethics, manners, myths), formal institutions (laws, government). b) ‘Transfers’ consists of the movement capital from one set of one or more people to another set of one or more people. c) The normative composition of capital, property, and institutions varies from social group to social group. d) The primary purpose of ‘manners’ is ‘Signaling’. (i.e.: class status and demonstrated fitness to the group for the purpose of mate selection and association, and pedagogy through imitation.) NOTE: I am unsure whether ‘capital’ in these contexts also includes opportunities. I think that ‘opportunities’ may be forced expressly outside of all ethical systems that allow for competition (research and development). Any ethical system that did not allow for competition would not survive contact with those that do. In this sense, it is possible to have ‘bad’ ethical systems and ‘good’ ethical systems depending upon one’s time preference. ASSERTION: 1) I believe it will not be possible to define Good and Evil, Moral, and Immoral, Ethical, and Unethical, or well-mannered, and Ill-mannered, by any other form of demarcation that would not be answered by this set of propositions. CONCLUSION: ‘Evil’ is an archaic term that is heavily loaded with mystical connotations– primarily because it has been politically loaded by the consumer class’ public intellectuals in their desire to undermine the social and political status of the church so that they could obtaining status through control of the public dialog. (Which in itself is an economic and political process.) Evil exists as an objective political and economic classification of human actions and effects. Groups can be classified as evil, and individuals can be classified as evil, if they take actions that produce outcomes that systemically or repeatedly transfer or destroy capital. Abstract entities (nature, god) an be classified as evil by analogy because they destroy capital. Ideas can be classified as evil, and abstract processes can be classified by analogy as evil if they produce outcomes that systematically or repeatedly transfer or destroy capital. i.e. Marxism is evil. It may be the ultimate evil that man has yet discovered, since it destroys the institutions that make cooperation in a division of labor possible. Its arguable either way whether, as Nietzsche stated, that the most evil person in history is Zoroaster. And from both an eastern and western perspective, if not Zoroaster, then at least Abraham is a candidate for the most evil person in history. But the monotheistic religions pale compared to the deadliness of Marxism.
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Changing Identity: From American to English-American, to Diasporic Englishman
Sometime within the past six months, I have unconsciously ceased to consider myself an American, and begun to think of myself as an English American – or even just a diasporic Englishman. It wasn’t something I chose. It wasn’t a decision. It was the result of living through these interesting, and increasingly fractious times, while writing on political philosophy. DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE The English population of the States varied from around 50% to around 60% prior to 1800. Over time, due to the immigration needed to fill the Louisiana purchase to keep the west free from another French or English war, then due to the further westward expansion, that number has decreased to about 25% in 1980. And now, it’s declined to something between 9% and 12% — depending upon the various data we refer to. Demographically people of English decent are spread in a band from Maine to Oregon, predominantly along the 40th-46th parallel, with rural northeast, midwest, northern Rocky, and the north west the only places that they are more than 10% of the population.
(As of 2000AD. We do not have the 2010 data yet.) Interestingly enough, if we look at the UK today, almost all the variation in IQ scores occurs within the ‘middle class’ or what we in the states would call the ‘upper middle class’. It’s dramatic enough that it skews the averages upward. There is a subset of the British people that represent the Northern European version of the Ashkenazim. IMPACT Will the decline of Anglos impact the national culture, or it’s legal system? We know that it takes about 10-15% of the population to hold an idea or value before it becomes part of the culture. It’s Pareto’s principle at work yet again: 1% figure out everything, 5% translate it, 10% prosthelytize it, and the rest follow them. If different groups ally together then ideas can be driven into the society’s norms simply by the process of ideological-flocking. Does that mean that Anglo values will, simply by demographic dilution, decline in influence within those norms? Perhaps, very slowly. It takes about two generations to change basic values, and four for them to fully disappear. And the English Americans aren’t alone. Our cousins the Germans are about equal in percentage and distribution across the country. The Irish and Italians had their impact. And now the Hispanic(Indians) join the Africans. The Asians and Hindus aren’t much of an influence yet. But it’s quite clear that those groups will come to dominate certain social classes and therefore have greater and less likelihood to influence the national culture. And if we look at our history, the Catholics achieved precisely what the protestants warned they would, and the Jews accomplished what the Catholics warned about, and now the Supreme court is a mix of Jewish and catholic, with english and germanic protestants noticeably absent. So significant change can occur in less than a century. Somehow I find that oddly fascinating. But the sentiment of collectivism in the catholics (who represent Europe’s lower classes) and the Jews, as well as that of the hispanics, will certainly express itself in institutional changes, as the germanic protestant culture and it’s calvinist roots are out bred and out immigrated, and those people become a minority. This change from majority to minority is the origin of the Tea Party movement in the states and the BNP-related movements in the UK – white people are acting like a minority, and will soon lose all care and guilt over their advantages, or their colonialist history. THE END OF GUILT But what will change, and is changing rapidly, is the desire for whites, whether protestant or catholic, (or those under the self delusion that they’re neither), to demonstrate that they are acting fairly and justly by granting others special rights as a means of getting over ‘white guilt’. What guilt is a remnant of what one side sees as colonialism, and the other side sees as dragging humanity out of agrarian mysticism, ignorance and poverty. That period of ‘guilt’ is about to come to a permanent end. (( See Paul Gottfried’s work on Guilt. )) The protestants, and then the catholics, will hold no privileged position. No inherited advantage. We’ll want our own protections. And we’ll want revocation of those prior advantages that we gave away. (( Instead of simply systematically invalidating Jim Crowe Laws.)) Colonial guilt is especially vivid in the English. English people were effete, technocratic, and messianic as well as colonialist. And the best technologies that they distributed to those cultures was christianity, accounting, empiricism, medicine, and the common law. They surrendered their colonies fairly easily. And in 500 years they dragged civilization into the modern age – despite the attempts of French intellectuals, and Marxists to fight them off. The most illustrative statement about English ethics is a quote my Mao: “If India had been a French colony, Gandhi never would have been an old man”. And the state of British colonies versus french colonies is all the evidence needed to demonstrate the different cultural virtues. THE TRIBE We’re a tribal people. Brits today are tribal in general. Remarkably so. And classicist as well – which is where the tribalism comes from. The English are already a diasporic people. a minority that was once in control of vast continents. But unlike the other diasporic capitalist peoples: the Jews, Chinese, Hindus and Armenians, we have a deep seated love of the land that is buried in our mythology and our values. Without control of land we are permanently frustrated from expressing our ancient desire to work metal, bend nature, and demonstrate our political devotion and social status, by making the world – every inch of it – a work of art that is left behind us, as a record of our character. RETURN TO TRIBALISM So, my country has left me, and I have left it. The romantic attachment I had to the constitution, the bill of rights, the revolution, its ideology — and my fervent patriotism — left along with it. It’s been a long hard attack on the ‘White Protestant Nation’. But like water on a rock, it’s been successful – unfortunately, almost entirely through the evasion and dilution of the 14th amendment, and the democratization of the Senate. The constitution was an innovation, it was brilliant, but it wasn’t strong enough. The most interesting thing, is that this destruction was done largely by women – initially puritan women – who, in America, liberated by the industrial revolution, then later by the availability of consumer appliances, directed their anger at men, rather than the church — as they did in most countries. (Which is what explains the peculiarly inaffectionate businesslike relationship between men and women in the states, versus other western countries that so many foreigners seem to notice.) THE FORBIDDEN TRIBE Political pressure and rent-seeking from other groups under the ruse of equality — but in reality for the purpose of rent-seeking and access to status and political power — has succeeded in forming a normative and institutional prohibition against our forming a separatist identity as does everyone else. It is entirely acceptable to promote a jewish homeland. It is entirely acceptable to have a jewish defense league, or a La Raza, or a black national movement. Everyone else can be sectarian, but we are forbidden it. In Canada, the lowest caste with the least rights, is white males – by law. In England, bureaucrats starve pensioners but pay the bills of ‘asylum seekers’ — in one of the most perverse incentive schemes ever to create a privileged political class. Now, if a people do not promote their country, their government, their institutions, and their way of life? What do they do? If their history is forbidden to them in their schools? If they are demonize? What do they do? The answer is consistent for all diasporic people: they form a predatory capitalist minority that works within the statute law, but profits from asymmetrical observation of all norms. Norms: habits, manners, ethics, morals — they take care of their own. Just as recent immigrants to the USA go through criminal, small business, and integrated phases. We are members of a forbidden tribe. Our religion is forbidden. Our values are forbidden. Our meritocratic, individualist, aristocratic social system is forbidden. Our history is forbidden. So, how do I feel about being a member of the Forbidden Tribe? I wish Mother England would open her doors to us, so that those of us who are still willing may return home to our live among our own. I am sorry that our ancestors waged a revolution in order to avoid paying for the french and indian war. God Save The Queen. And may God save our English people. (EDIT FOUND THIS) If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud. Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it’s written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes, and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation’s OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age. Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Though the differences seem little, We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Mark the differences, moreover, Between mover, cover, clover; Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label. Petal, panel, and canal, Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our and succour, four. Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Sea, idea, Korea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion and battalion. Sally with ally, yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. Heron, granary, canary. Crevice and device and aerie. Face, but preface, not efface. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and wear and tear Do not rhyme with here but ere. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work. Pronunciation (think of Psyche!) Is a paling stout and spikey? Won’t it make you lose your wits, Writing groats and saying grits? It’s a dark abyss or tunnel: Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict. Finally, which rhymes with enough, Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!! English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité
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A Counter To Complaints Against Indefinite Detention
My libertarian friends seem to be making a lot of noise about recent policy that allows the USA to conduct “indefinite detention” in its fight against terroris. And, despite my desire to circle the wagons whenever possible, I don’t have any problem with “Indefinite Detention”. Although, I’ll qualify that later on. We have a long history in the west, of detaining prisoners of war for the duration of the war, and exempting them from punishment, and negotiating the terms of their exchange at the end of the war, in exchange for our prisoners, and other concessions. One of those concessions is that we hold the group we negotiate with accountable for the actions of the released prisoners. Our tradition of holding prisoners, and the laws that surround it, is ancient. It had multiple purposes. It reduced the likelihood of violence against a soldier, which made men on both sides more willing to join the military and fight. It allowed for ransoms to be collected. And it allowed for more peaceable negotiations since the slaughter of prisoners tends to incite the opposition interminably. So, I have no problem with indefinite detention. That is,assuming that Congress has declared war on a group, a state, or a concept. In our secular legal system, we make the false assumption that an antagonist against whom we can declare war must be a state. But that’s not true. We conducted the crusades, not only because of the actions of the islamic states, not only because of their bloody violence against european property, but because of the INACTION of the islamic states in securing the safety of pilgrims to the holy land. (The bulgarians in particular.) So, one of the virtues of a state, is that a state can be held responsible for the actions of its citizens against those of foreign states. Otherwise a state is just an excuse for giving a haven to terrorists, thieves, pirates, brigands, drug dealers and all other despicable people. But it’s not just the abstraction of a state we can old accountable. A state is just an idea, a territory, and a group of people. We can also hold a group, or idea accountable. We certainly held Communism accountable. And if we had been as vigorous as say, (general ww2) wanted us to, we might have saved 70 million chinese, and 20 million Russians from fratricide from starvation and murder at the hands of their own governments due to an absolutely insane economic ideology. We can certainly hold groups accountable for their actions, regardless of their state or lack of one. We can certainly hold peoples accountable for their religious and cultural associates. All that need justify “indefinite detention” is an act of congress that labels a group, a state, a people, or an idea or movement, the subject of a declaration of war. If then people feel a terrible objection they can certainly move their congress, their senate and their president away from war against their own people. It is not citizenship in the abstract that protects an individual from acts of war by his own country. It is his subscription to it’s laws, and covenants, which are demonstrated by his words and actions. War is not a matter for law. Law is for the purpose of resolving conflicts within a state. War is for resolving conflicts outside of law. And if a country declares a group, an idea, a people, or a state the target of war, then individuals who conspire and associate with a group, promote an idea, belong to a people, or are citizens of a state, are no longer criminals, but combatants in a war, or traitors. I don’t have any problem with “indefinite detention” of anyone against whom we declare war. I don’t understand why I should fear my government outlawing me for my ideas, associations, or actions. And, given the political power of my fellow Americans, I am not terribly concerned with outlawing the ideas, association or actions of others. And, taken to the extreme, should my government declare war against me for some reason, then I am no longer prohibited from using my inventory of violence against that state. Because it is my violence that I give to the state to use on my behalf when I become a citizen. A state is nothing but claim to a territorial monopoly on violence. And should my state reject me, or outlaw me, then I no longer must restrain my violence. And I may use it to any moral end that I choose. Be it to overthrow that state, form another, or give my violence to some other state, some other group, in support of some other idea, so that either I, or others may use it on my behalf. Indefinite detention is a meaningless objection by libertarians who are convicted pacifists rather than practical observers of human nature. However, any indefinite detention must be limited to those imprisoned under articles of war. They certainly have a right to military tribunal, but the only argument that must matter to the tribunal is whether they are part of the group, a member of a people, a state, an ideology against which we have made a declaration of war. In our own legal system, the judiciary has determined that legal recourse post-hoc is a sufficient guarantee of liberty for the individual. While I disagree with their position because of the value of time and opportunity, and because it lets the judiciary act too slowly and irresponsibly, any argument that the due process of law is superior to the process of tribunals is at best a false equivalency, and at best an open deceit. Indefinite detention is entirely acceptable as long as there is a declaration of war. In fact, it’s preferred.
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The Second and Further Questions Of Politics
The first question of politics is ‘why do I not kill you and take your stuff?’ (Why should we form a cooperative order, versus a dictatorship) The Second question of politics is ‘what are our property definitions, both communal and several?’ (how shall we break the world into actionable bits) The second question of politics, is ‘what are our norms?’ (‘What is our shareholder agreement over the treatment of those property definitions?’) The third question of politics is ‘how do we prevent corruption, fraud, theft and violence against several and communal property?’ (The privatization of public assets and the involuntary transfer of assets, against the terms of our shareholder agreement.) The fourth question of politics is ‘how do we create institutions to resolve conflict over property and norms?’ ( How do we register citizenship, register property ownership, what requirements we place on individual behavior, and what is the manner of our judiciary for the resolution of disputes) The fifth question of politics is ‘how do we suppress the numan desire for corruption?’ The sixth question of politics is ‘How shall we coordinate, choose and administer investments on the behalf of shareholders?’ The seventh question of politics is ‘how do we distribute the surplus from our investments to our shareholders should we have any?’