Theme: Governance

  • TO THE STATUS OF FARM ANIMAL: THE STORY OF YOUR ENSLAVEMENT – IT”S WORSE THAN OR

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbp6umQT58AWELCOME TO THE STATUS OF FARM ANIMAL: THE STORY OF YOUR ENSLAVEMENT – IT”S WORSE THAN ORWELL’S ANIMAL FARM

    I am not a libertarian that requires every one of our factions to put forward rigid analytical arguments in pursuit of some absolutely persuasive scripture.

    Like Roderick Tracy Long, proposes, I think any advocate of liberty must be accommodated if at all possible, as long as they expand interest in and passion for liberty. We scribblers largely debate other scribblers, but political movements are won or lost by numbers, and ideology aims not to produce either internally consistent argument or empirical evidence for purposes of persuasion. The purpose of ideology is to motivate the passions of the many to act. If religion required articulated reason, and empirical support, the world would be populated by atheists.

    Now, Molyneux’s attempts at analytical philosophy are pretty weak. But his sentiments, his analogies, his narratives, and his advocacy advance ideological and sentimental liberty, even if they don’t really contribute to analytical rigor in our field.

    Stefan’s recent video “The Story Of Your Enslavement” is exceptionally well done. It promotes a very simple meme by analogy to farming, that unites the sentiments and aggravates the passions.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbp6umQT58A

    It’s great work. And please share it. Even those of who dismiss ideology and seek the certainty of the ratio-scientific can appreciate the craftsmanship – the ARTISTRY, in this kind of message.

    It’s brilliant.

    Curt

    (PS: If you don’t think so, then you’ve never seen the effect of Schoolhouse Rock. 🙂


    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-20 10:31:00 UTC

  • Necessity vs Preference In Political and Ethical Theory

    [I]t is all well and good to attempt to construct political and ethical philosophy as the family becomes the village, the tribe becomes the city with a division of labor, and the people become the nation with an anonymous market. It is necessary to do so. But preferences must compete with necessities. We may prefer something but it must in practice be possible. We can temporarily distort necessity, as we with fiat money – because we can. We can permanently distort morality by sanctioning competition as virtuous – because we can. But in human history there are many preferences and few necessities. Those tools that compensate for our limited intellectual abilities: our senses, perception, memory, reason, calculation, and planning are the necessities of human existence. We adapt our norms and institutions to those necessities. Not the other way around. We are not wealthier than our cave dwelling ancestors. The only human currency is time. But through the division of knowledge and labor we have increased the purchasing power of our time to levels unimaginable to those who came before us. [R]omantic, egoistic, anthropocentric vanities encourage us to believe we make directional choices in our evolution but we do not. We seize opportunities good and bad. We forgo opportunities good and bad. And we pay or gain the consequences – by trial and error. Then we congratulate ourselves on our wisdom, and justify to ourselves our errors. The future is opaque and kaleidic. At best, we can attempt to improve our suite of tools, and choose those norms and institutions that increase our sense, perception, memory, calculation, planning, and information sharing. So that we constantly narrow the scope of our trial and error, and in doing so, increase the purchasing power of our time in this earth.

  • NECESSITY VS PREFERENCE It is all well and good to attempt to construct politica

    NECESSITY VS PREFERENCE

    It is all well and good to attempt to construct political and ethical philosophy as the family becomes the village, the tribe becomes the city with a division of labor, and the people become the nation with an anonymous market.

    It is necessary to do so.

    But preferences must compete with necessities. We may prefer something but it must in practice be possible.

    We can temporarily distort necessity, as we with fiat money – because we can. We can permanently distort morality by sanctioning competition as virtuous – because we can.

    But in human history there are many preferences and few necessities.

    Those tools that compensate for our limited intellectual abilities: our senses, perception, memory, reason, calculation, and planning are the necessities of human existence.

    We adapt our norms and institutions to those necessities. Not the other way around.

    We are not wealthier than our cave dwelling ancestors. The only human currency is time.

    But through the division of knowledge and labor we have increased the purchasing power of our time to levels unimaginable to those who came before us.

    Romantic, egoistic, anthropocentric vanities encourage us to believe we make directional choices in our evolution but we do not. We seize opportunities good and bad. We forgo opportunities good and bad. And we pay or gain the consequences – by trial and error.

    Then we congratulate ourselves on our wisdom, and justify to ourselves our errors.

    The future is opaque and kaleidic.

    At best, we can attempt to improve our suite of tools, and choose those norms and institutions that increase our sense, perception, memory, calculation, planning, and information sharing.

    So that we constantly narrow the scope of our trial and error, and in doing so, increase the purchasing power of out time in this earth.


    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-19 06:01:00 UTC

  • DIVERSITY WORKS FOR THE SMALL Small is how ‘diversity’ can work: diverse inter-s

    DIVERSITY WORKS FOR THE SMALL

    Small is how ‘diversity’ can work: diverse inter-state trade, rather than diverse intra-state politics.

    Switzerland has 27 ‘states’ each with it’s own constitution, direct democracy, only one of which is over 1M people (Zurich), and the majority of which are in the tens of thousands. This is consistent with democratic theory as we understand it: small works. Largely because government cannot be used to accumulate power, and because each small area is homogenous, and has its own signals.

    Denmark consists of 5.7M, in 5 Regions, from .5M – 1.7M, and 89% of whom are ethnic danes, and less than 8% who are immigrants.

    Sweden consists of 9M people 86% of whom are native Swedes and only ~4.1% are immigrants from non western countries. (turkey, iran, iraq, somalia)

    Norway consists of 5M people, 89% of whom are native Norwegian and only ~6% are non western immigrants.

    Small homogenous nation states, and lots of them, are better solutions to free and happy and prosperous people. Big states can accumulate debt, engage in war, and must manage inter-group competition by political and apolitical means, instead of by trade.


    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-17 09:28:00 UTC

  • HOW DO WE SOLVE GLOBAL PROBLEMS? (edited and re-posted from elsewhere) How do we

    HOW DO WE SOLVE GLOBAL PROBLEMS?

    (edited and re-posted from elsewhere)

    How do we solve global problems of pollution, conflict, corruption, and dispute over resources?

    a) a division of knowledge and labor using private property, money prices, accounting, contracts and rule of the common law: the science of cooperation;

    b) a division of knowledge and labor using empirical tests against the natural world: the physical sciences;

    c) a division of labor using rational tests of empirical results – logic and rational philosophy bounded by philosophical realism: the science of reason;

    d) education of the willing in all of the above – cooperative, physical and rational sciences – and the economic, political and social ostracization of the unwilling.

    In other words, the prohibition of authority and the elimination of the need for homogeneity of opinion, through the use of organized and self organizing trial and error by ratio-scientific man – accompanied by the ostracization and impoverishment of the magian and totalitarian man.

    Currently we have insufficiently privatized the capital of the natural commons so that prices limit overconsumption, and we are engaging in redistribution without matching restraint on reproduction largely because of it.

    That is how we solve global problems of pollution, conflict, corruption, and dispute over resources: science and reason bounded by rules of calculation and the elimination of authority, commons and consensus.

    (oh, my, god. I think I made a funny…. Profound, but funny.)


    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-14 17:40:00 UTC

  • BIG SORT – AMERICAN REGIONAL NATIONALISM – AND THE NECESSITY FOR SECESSION “Our

    http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0077FAYES/ref=tsm_1_fb_lkTHE BIG SORT – AMERICAN REGIONAL NATIONALISM – AND THE NECESSITY FOR SECESSION

    “Our continent’s famed mobility — and the transportation and communications technology that foster it — has been reinforcing, not dissolving, the differences between the nations. As journalist Bill Bishop and sociologist Robert Cushing demonstrated in The Big Sort (2008), since 1976 Americans have been relocating to communities where people share their values and worldview …. As Americans sort themselves into like-minded communities, they’re also sorting themselves into like-minded nations.“

    THE BIG SORT

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Sort-Like-Minded-ebook/dp/B0077FAYES

    OUR PATCHWORK NATION

    http://www.amazon.com/Our-Patchwork-Nation-Surprising-ebook/dp/B0052RDI78/

    AMERICAN NATIONS: ELEVEN RIVAL CULTURES

    http://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-Regional-Cultures-ebook/dp/B0052RDIZA/

    THE NINE NATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Nine-Nations-North-America/dp/0380578859

    BETTER OFF WITHOUT THEM MANIFESTO

    http://www.amazon.com/Better-Off-Without-Manifesto-ebook/dp/B0061QB16Y/

    THOMAS WOODS: NULLIFICATION

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1596981490?


    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-13 03:34:00 UTC

  • NO MAN IS FIT TO RULE Plato’s Republic is his attempt to creat a society capable

    NO MAN IS FIT TO RULE

    Plato’s Republic is his attempt to creat a society capable of manufacturing a contemporary heroic general.

    But Tolkien has a different take:that none of us is fit to rule .

    “My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning the abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) — or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word State (in any sense other than the inaminate real of England and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate! If we could go back to personal names, it would do a lot of good. Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so to refer to people. […] Anyway the proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity. ”

    (Thanks to Francesco Principi.)


    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-11 06:07:00 UTC

  • Revisited. Different language. Same meme. Democracy is ignorance and morality. T

    http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=22955#.Ud2wV36pnyY.facebookCaplan Revisited.

    Different language.

    Same meme.

    Democracy is ignorance and morality.

    Thats all it can be.


    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-10 15:06:00 UTC

  • Notes On The Libertarian Reformation (Revised and Edited)

    [D]raft of the principles of the libertarian reformation. 1) Our generation’s challenge is not socialism, it’s the state religion of anti-scientific, anti-rational Postmodernism. (The religion of progressivism.) The dogma, literature, and ideological bias of the libertarian movement is a generation behind. Emphasis on past heroes is not constructive or valuable. It is indicative of the failure to produce successful solutions to the communalist adaptation to the failure of socialism in theory and practice: Postmodernism. 2) Government per se, is not a ‘bad’. What’s ‘bad’ is the corporeal state, monopoly, bureaucracy, majority rule, and legislative law. When we fail to make this distinction we are in fact, ‘wrong’. A government that consists of a monopolistically articulated set of property rights and the terms of dispute resolution, operating under the common law, and a group of people whose purpose is to facilitate investments in the commons by voluntary contract, but who cannot make legislative law, is in fact, a government. And it is a good government. It may not be necessary government among people with homogenous preferences and beliefs. But it is somewhere between necessary and beneficial government for people with heterogeneous preferences and beliefs. It is however, not a bad government. A monopoly set of property rights is necessary for the rational resolution of disputes, with the lowest friction possible. 3) Property is unnatural to man. Tribal human settlement is matrilineal, egalitarian, malthusian and poor. Mate selection is determined by sexual favors within the group, and raiding, capturing and killing for women outside the group whenever there was a shortage of women. 4) Property rights and paternalism were an innovation made possible by the domestication of animals and the ability of males to accumulate wealth outside of the matrilineal order. Property rather than sexual favors was such an advantage that it inverted the relationship between the sexes and determined mate selection. (The feminists are correct.) 5) Property rights were created by a minority who granted equality of property rights to one another in exchange for service in warfare. The source of property rights is the organized application of violence to create those property rights. Because property rights are the desire of the minority. However, property rights created such an increase in prosperity and consumption that others sought to join the ranks of property owners. 6) The redistributive state that was voted into power by women, has reversed the innovation of private property and in concert with feminists, is eroding the nuclear family, and the male ability to collect property. The institutions of marriage, nuclear family, and private property cannot survive when a democratic majority can deprive men of private property rights, and their ability to control mating and reproduction. 7 ) Rothbardian Libertarian ethics are ‘insufficient’.The high trust society forbids involuntary transfers by externality and asymmetry of information, and enforces this demand with a requirement for warranty. The ethics of the high trust society forbid all involuntary transfers except through competition in the market. They also boycott although they do not forbid, profit without demonstrated addition of value. 8 ) Rothbardian ethics are wrong (and bad): The market incentives alone are not high enough to overcome corruption, and create the high trust society without these two additional moral prohibitions instituted both formally and as norms: norms are a commons. They are property. Conservatives are right. “Externality and Symmetry Enforced By Warranty” are ethical constraints necessary for markets to function as the only permissible involuntary transfer: by competition in the market. 9 ) Libertarians do not exist in sufficient numbers. And it is not possible to enfranchise the conservatives (classical liberals) with Rothbardian ‘ghetto’ ethics. Without conservatives, who have the broader set of moral biases, and demand for adherence to norms, the libertarian bias is morally objectionable to too large a population, and libertarians are too small in number to accumulate and hold the power necessary to determine property rights in a geography. It’s important to understand that Rothbardian ethics are ‘wrong’ because they are insufficient to achieve what they claim to.

  • The Causal Problem Of Government Is The Same Causal Problem Of Ethics: The Incorrect Assumption Of The Value Of Monopoly

    [W]hy on earth, would you assume, that ethical principles must assume we agree upon ends? Seriously? Why is it that the study of ethics assumes that there are optimum ends for all? That’s, really, ABSURD on it’s face, isn’t it? I mean. That’s ridiculous. Why not that ethics agree upon means, but not ends? Is ‘group think’ or ‘group-ness’ such an instinct? I think not. I think it is fear of making the wrong decision about which group to belong to. Or simply a cover for theft… We have spent millennia now trying to apply the rules of the family and extended family and tribe to the market, and to justify takings, and thefts and redistributions so that there can be a monopoly of ethical statements. But that’s not necessary. The market doesn’t require that at all. We cooperate on means, but not ends. We don’t even largely know wo we’re cooperating with. The same is true in banking. We don’t know what use our money is put to. We cooperate with people in exchange for interest. The market, and banking, are institutions that help us cooperate on means even if not on ends. [I]f we instead of monopolies imposing homogeneity via law (commands), our institutions relied upon the voluntary exchange of property (contracts) between GROUPS with different property rights internal to the groups, but consistent across the groups, then Law and monopoly are means of one class forcing another class. Democracy is an attempt to legitimize forcing transfers between classes. But why can’t our classes conduct exchanges? There isn’t any reason.