[C]lassical Liberalism cannot be restored with women in the voting pool. Property rights can’t be restored with women voting. It’s not possible. Marriage cannot be restored with high participation rates of women in the work force. Birth rates can’t be restored with women in high participation in the work place. Intergenerational saving can’t be restored because of social programs and tax rates for intergenerational redistribution – boomers spent their income and their grandchildren’s. Immigration can’t be reversed so cultural identity, and civic participation can’t be recreated. Growth can’t be restored with the globalization of the work force. We have consumed much of the low hanging fruit of industrialization and work force participation. Progressives are philosophically wrong, historically and empirically wrong, and conservatives and libertarians are living under the illusion of putting the genie back into the bottle. But, we have developed new institutions before. We’re going to have to do it again. But those institutions will not include universally homogenous property rights. They can’t. Because property rights correspond to the moral intuitions of those that make use of them, and males and females have competing reproductive strategies and corresponding moral codes. In male terms, women are immoral, and vice-versa. Marriage was a truce that worked during agrarianism. That truce is over. We’re back at war. And women have the numbers on their side. Property is the product of the organized application of violence by a minority willing to create it. Property isn’t a moral preference of the majority. The majority are free riders and rent seekers. It’s human nature writ large.
Theme: Governance
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GENIES CAN’T BE PUT BACK INTO BOTTLES Classical Liberalism cannot be restored wi
GENIES CAN’T BE PUT BACK INTO BOTTLES
Classical Liberalism cannot be restored with women in the voting pool. Property rights can’t be restored with women voting. It’s not possible. Marriage cannot be restored with high participation rates of women in the work force. Birth rates can’t be restored with women in high participation in the work place. Intergenerational saving can’t be restored because of social programs and tax rates for intergenerational redistribution – boomers spent their income and their grandchildren’s. Immigration can’t be reversed so cultural identity, and civic participation can’t be recreated. Growth can’t be restored with the globalization of the work force. We have consumed much of the low hanging fruit of industrialization and work force participation.
Progressives are philosophically wrong, historically and empirically wrong, and conservatives and libertarians are living under the illusion of putting the genie back into the bottle.
But, we have developed new institutions before. We’re going to have to do it again. But those institutions will not include universally homogenous property rights. They can’t. Because property rights correspond to the moral intuitions of those that make use of them, and males and females have competing reproductive strategies and corresponding moral codes. In male terms, women are immoral, and vice-versa.
Marriage was a truce that worked during agrarianism. That truce is over. We’re back at war. And women have the numbers on their side.
Property is the product of the organized application of violence by a minority willing to create it. Property isn’t a moral preference of the majority. The majority are free riders and rent seekers. It’s human nature writ large.
(Reposted with multiple typos fixed)
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-09 16:42:00 UTC
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THE CAUSAL PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT IS THE SAME CAUSAL PROBLEM OF ETHICS: THE INCOR
THE CAUSAL PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT IS THE SAME CAUSAL PROBLEM OF ETHICS: THE INCORRECTLY ASSUMPTION OF THE VALUE OF MONOPOLY 🙂
Why 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.
If 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.
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-08 10:17:00 UTC
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LIBERTARIANISM: SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL. 1) “Do not confuse absence of volatility wit
LIBERTARIANISM: SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL.
1) “Do not confuse absence of volatility with absence of risk.”
2) “Avoid optimization; learn to love redundancy. … Redundancy (in terms of having savings and cash under the mattress) is the opposite of debt. … Overspecialization also is not a great idea.”
3) “What is fragile should break early, while it’s still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail.” …. “Compensate complexity with simplicity.”
4) “No socialization of losses and privatization of gains”…..”No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.”
5) “[Build] an economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller firms, a richer ecology, no speculative leverage — a world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks, and in which companies are born and die every day without making the news.”
LIBERTARIANISM IS LOVE OF THE SMALL: ITS JUST MATH.
(All quotes from Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan)
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-07 11:02:00 UTC
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HIGGS’ MORALIZING – PULL OUT OF EUROPE I think the answer to this problem for bo
http://blog.independent.org/2013/06/30/why-fight-for-king-and-country/CONTRA HIGGS’ MORALIZING – PULL OUT OF EUROPE
I think the answer to this problem for both sides is to pull the US military, state and intelligence organizations from Europe entirely so that European defense, international relations, and the stabilization of commodity prices is left to the management of Europeans. It’s not really necessary for Americans to stabilize the price of oil, or any other commodity, now that we’re close to being energy independent. And our dollar will remain the currency of last resort even more durably if we drop our international intrigues.
That would stop the American cultural necessity for jingoism in order to preserve the cultural will to pay for the necessity that we police the world for largely European convenience. And it would allow us to save three quarters of our military expenditures, and focus our efforts on domestic reality rather than ideological propagation as a means of further discounting the cost of our policing. I’d be nice to have a domestic government rather than an internationally focused one actually.
Conversely, it would force holier-than-thou Europeans to do all the nonsense that Americans now do and also to pay for it. Which would require the re-nationalization of european propagandism in order to motivate the already heavily taxed population to pay for.
I’m sorry that you don’t like being a client state of Rome dear Athens-after-the-overreach, but without us you’ll be a client state of ether German political and economic power and cultural discipline, or Russian resource and military power.
It probably doesn’t occur to silly people on the other side of the pond that it’s because Britain was so bad at containing its self interest, rent seeking, politics and policies that Americans ended up with the entire Empire in our lap, and had to militarize our entire country quite against our naturally isolationist inclination and will.
(…)
It is profoundly naive to think that nations have the degree of nationalism that they want to rather than the level of nationalism that they need to. People are too practical to waste their energy.
Glass houses and all that.
(NOTE: I attack my country all day long. I want it split up. But the arrogance of European criticism sometimes irritates the hell out of me – especially from the Brits. We dont directly charge Europe for providing its military, state, and trade policing services directly. We do it through the petro dollar. But Europe now has it’s Euro, and oil can be bought in Euros. So lets pull the USA out of Europe, save the money, and let europeans do their own dirty work so that they don’t have the privilege of insulting americans for it. Looking a gift-horse in the mouth and all. )
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-02 21:44:00 UTC
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WISH OUR MILITARY WAS THIS VIRTUOUS
http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-egypt-military-ultimatum-20130701,0,7120476.storyI WISH OUR MILITARY WAS THIS VIRTUOUS
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-01 15:48:00 UTC
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IMMIGRATION EFFECTS WORLDWIDE
http://www.voxeu.org/article/global-view-cross-border-migrationON IMMIGRATION EFFECTS WORLDWIDE
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-01 05:41:00 UTC
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Best Editorial Photo of 2013 So Far. (Snowden reading about himself in the paper
Best Editorial Photo of 2013 So Far.
(Snowden reading about himself in the paper. )
I don’t support Manning because he exposed our overseas people to danger, and he was a soldier at the time which at least a minority of us understand must not violate certain trusts of the system, while maintaining vigilance on the trusts of individuals who are sanctioned with the right to kill and destroy. And it did nothing but embarrass the government by showing just what an incompetent bureaucracy it is. Snowden on the other hand, very different content and consequence entirely.
Source date (UTC): 2013-06-30 05:04:00 UTC
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OF THE DARK ENLIGHTENMENT Nice piece. Pretty accurate. Shows most of the major p
http://habitableworlds.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/visualizing-the-dark-enlightenment-v-1-5/MAP OF THE DARK ENLIGHTENMENT
Nice piece. Pretty accurate. Shows most of the major players organized by interest area.
I should probably be on this list, but since I don’t COMPLAIN, but instead try to solve the PROBLEM of heterogeneous political cooperation post-majority rule, I guess that I don’t qualify. 🙂
But whining doesn’t solve anything. Any lazy oaf can complain. Any romantic can wish for the past. Any fool can fail to see the change that information and industrial prosperity and consumer capitalism have forced into our social economic and political relations. Any idiot can advocate that his preferred political model is the optimum political model for all others – that there is a ‘common good’ where we have common ends, instead of common goods that allow us to cooperate on means despite having conflicting ends.
So yes. I’m jealous. 🙂
(PS: Tongue in cheek: the fact that I’m whining here is an act of self deprecating humor… ok? I’m not that dim. 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2013-06-27 03:56:00 UTC
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FIVE STRATFOR PREDICTIONS I follow STRATFOR pretty closely. They rely very heavi
FIVE STRATFOR PREDICTIONS
I follow STRATFOR pretty closely. They rely very heavily on geo-strategy and demographics rather than some absurd idealism, or pure economics to make predictive trends. (Economics are more derivative than causal when compared to geography and demographics.)
1) “Turkey will emerge as Iran weakens”
Well Iran is an economic basket case, so this is better stated as “Turkey is Emerging as Iran Weakens” and Turkey is a country that’s the most sane in the Muslim world. While we probably all want a strong Turkey and a strong Russia, the muslim world needs a credible core state that can hold other states accountable for their actions within the civilization. I just have a hard time seeing turkey become the core state, even though it will emerge as the most important economic power. That culture is still too primitive and mired in familialism to join the first world.
2) “Russia will use economic tools to build influence in Eastern Europe”
Well, what do you mean ‘will’? Russia owns big industry in Ukraine through the extensive use of credit, and Russia controls the flow of energy. So either western and Eastern Ukraine split, or Ukraine will have to act as a client state of Russia in every way possible. Personally I think Ukrainians are a sweet people that could join Europe even if Russian’s couldn’t. But the stage is set for at least eastern Ukraine to act as a Russian client state. (Canada’s client-state relationship to the USA for example.)
3) “Certain developing countries will emerge as economic alternatives to an increasingly uncompetitive China”
Already happening. The china miracle is slowing down. Not much surprise there.
4) Economic instability will force change on China’s political foundations
This one I don’t buy. I think that not enough time has passed, and that they will retain their strategy, as has france, of being a pain in the ass to the rest of the world in order to demonstrate their relevance.
5) “The tension between economic interests and cultural stability will define Europe”
Which is saying nothing. Either Europe evolves into a german empire (which is actually what I prefer) or the catholic and protestant countries have to split. Given that the low friction route is to maintain the german empire, I think this will be the result. If we can get the USA militarily and strategically out of Europe, then Germany might get out of her WW2 guilt and take responsibility for Europe once again. (Please). The is the only way I know of to rescue western civilization – to restore the confidence germanic protestant values and mythology.
Source date (UTC): 2013-06-26 09:07:00 UTC