Apr 19, 2017 8:15am FIAT MONEY? It’s not that it’s a good thing. It’s that you can’t compete without it. Nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, nitrocellulose, gunpowder, are not ‘a good thing’ in any sense like copper, bronze, iron, and steel are good things. But once extant one must master them or be mastered by them. Fiat money must be mastered or you will be mastered by those who master it. Fiat money is not ‘money’ but a money substitute – a form of token, consisting of tradable shares in the organization we call the state. Just as one used to buy tickets for rides at the amusement park so that the ride-owners would not evade their fees, we buy fiat money so that all commerce in the market is burdened by fees. We cannot chose NO MARKET to participate in (state) so we are left with choosing the markets available. And if we tried to create a libertarian polity without funding that market we would be defeated by any number of forces internal and external.
Theme: Incentives
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Fiat Money? It’s A Necessity Not A Preference
Apr 19, 2017 8:15am FIAT MONEY? It’s not that it’s a good thing. It’s that you can’t compete without it. Nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, nitrocellulose, gunpowder, are not ‘a good thing’ in any sense like copper, bronze, iron, and steel are good things. But once extant one must master them or be mastered by them. Fiat money must be mastered or you will be mastered by those who master it. Fiat money is not ‘money’ but a money substitute – a form of token, consisting of tradable shares in the organization we call the state. Just as one used to buy tickets for rides at the amusement park so that the ride-owners would not evade their fees, we buy fiat money so that all commerce in the market is burdened by fees. We cannot chose NO MARKET to participate in (state) so we are left with choosing the markets available. And if we tried to create a libertarian polity without funding that market we would be defeated by any number of forces internal and external.
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The Information Content of Violence
by Eli Harman It’s an article of faith among many libertarians that violence, and particularly aggressive violence, is necessarily negative sum. Prices contain information and markets broker them (in a subjective utility maximising way.) Violence only short circuits that, disrupts markets, destroy price signals, and makes everyone worse off. But this is not correct. In the first place, market transactions aren’t necessarily positive sum. If they are fraudulent or create negative externalities for those not party, they can be negative sum. And in the second place, violence is itself a signal, and transmits information. A threat expresses a subjective evaluation just as an offer does in the marketplace. “Hey, don’t do that or we’re going to fight.” And the initiation of hostilities demonstrates the authenticity of that information just as a payment does in the marketplace. One undertakes real cost, and real risk, in resorting to violence. (In contrast, whining, and playing the victim DO NOT demonstrate the authenticity of grievances in the way that resorting to violence does, and so are liable and likely to prove negative sum, if indulged, just as theft is liable and likely to prove negative sum, in the marketplace, because it does not make a sufficient demonstration and exchange of value.) Markets and prices on the one hand, and violence and threats on the other, are both necessary components to a stable, functional, and efficient society and economy. To suppress either wholly in favor of the other, would be to forego the benefits they offer, and to pervert incentives towards destructive outcomes. No society which does either will be able to compete, long term, against one which makes a more sensible tradeoff between them, making best use of information supplied by both exchange and conflict. Violence is the means of expressing the subjective evaluations not captured by price signals, which are as vast and varied as those which are.
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The Information Content of Violence
by Eli Harman It’s an article of faith among many libertarians that violence, and particularly aggressive violence, is necessarily negative sum. Prices contain information and markets broker them (in a subjective utility maximising way.) Violence only short circuits that, disrupts markets, destroy price signals, and makes everyone worse off. But this is not correct. In the first place, market transactions aren’t necessarily positive sum. If they are fraudulent or create negative externalities for those not party, they can be negative sum. And in the second place, violence is itself a signal, and transmits information. A threat expresses a subjective evaluation just as an offer does in the marketplace. “Hey, don’t do that or we’re going to fight.” And the initiation of hostilities demonstrates the authenticity of that information just as a payment does in the marketplace. One undertakes real cost, and real risk, in resorting to violence. (In contrast, whining, and playing the victim DO NOT demonstrate the authenticity of grievances in the way that resorting to violence does, and so are liable and likely to prove negative sum, if indulged, just as theft is liable and likely to prove negative sum, in the marketplace, because it does not make a sufficient demonstration and exchange of value.) Markets and prices on the one hand, and violence and threats on the other, are both necessary components to a stable, functional, and efficient society and economy. To suppress either wholly in favor of the other, would be to forego the benefits they offer, and to pervert incentives towards destructive outcomes. No society which does either will be able to compete, long term, against one which makes a more sensible tradeoff between them, making best use of information supplied by both exchange and conflict. Violence is the means of expressing the subjective evaluations not captured by price signals, which are as vast and varied as those which are.
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by Bob Moran We’ve built societies where slavery is counter-productive (or at le
by Bob Moran
We’ve built societies where slavery is counter-productive (or at least much less efficient than the alternatives), but it doesn’t mean it’s never a valuable choice given some the circumstances. Just like high trust, the lack of slavery is part of our privileges.
And yet, we are getting guilt tripped for what we built for ourselves and to a certain extent given to others.
High trust: You’re mean because you don’t trust me like your own. –> Why don’t you have high trust societies? Why should we trust you?
Wealth: You’re mean because you don’t give me the same stuff as your own. –> Why are you poor?
Citizenship: You’re mean because you don’t give me the same rights as your own. –> Why are your laws retarded and corrupted?
Land/Conquest: You’re mean because you took land / you don’t give me land –> Why couldn’t you hold land? Why can’t you take it?
Slavery : You’re mean because you don’t (didn’t) treat me like your own. –> Did you prove we could? Did you enslave each other to be sold to outsiders? Did you lack the force to defend yourself?
Source date (UTC): 2017-04-19 14:10:00 UTC
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FIAT MONEY? It’s not that it’s a good thing. It’s that you can’t compete without
FIAT MONEY?
It’s not that it’s a good thing. It’s that you can’t compete without it.
Nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, nitrocellulose, gunpowder, are not ‘a good thing’ in any sense like copper, bronze, iron, and steel are good things.
But once extant one must master them or be mastered by them. Fiat money must be mastered or you will be mastered by those who master it.
Fiat money is not ‘money’ but a money substitute – a form of token, consisting of tradable shares in the organization we call the state.
Just as one used to buy tickets for rides at the amusement park so that the ride-owners would not evade their fees, we buy fiat money so that all commerce in the market is burdened by fees.
We cannot chose NO MARKET to participate in (state) so we are left with choosing the markets available. And if we tried to create a libertarian polity without funding that market we would be defeated by any number of forces internal and external.
Source date (UTC): 2017-04-19 08:15:00 UTC
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“As opportunity costs for women to enter in monogamous relations rises, men must
—“As opportunity costs for women to enter in monogamous relations rises, men must pay more premium for exclusivity of monogamic relations in a world where there is mens value of labor in massive deflation and women’s reproductive labor on inflation. And that premium is payed with power because, women don’t need any more comfort.”–Matej Lovrić
Source date (UTC): 2017-04-18 14:27:00 UTC
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Every movement first attracts risk takers seeking leverage to compensate for the
Every movement first attracts risk takers seeking leverage to compensate for their outsider-ness. As the movement evolves you try to attract people who ‘get it’ and advocate it. As the movement evolves you try to attract talent that provides competitive advantage against other movements. If the movement has legs it will attract thinkers, advocates, organizers, actors. And the need for the outsiders will decline – they fill their purpose. And they are often angry about it.
This is how it works.
Source date (UTC): 2017-04-18 13:43:00 UTC
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BECKER’S USE OF MARGINALISM IN VIOLENCE AND REVOLUTION (predatory gains are line
BECKER’S USE OF MARGINALISM IN VIOLENCE AND REVOLUTION
(predatory gains are linear, losses to prey are exponential)
—“…a simple calculation that predatory interest groups and their taxpaying victims make: what return on my investment can I get by lobbying government? Becker’s insight is that the gains to predators are linear, but the losses to prey are exponential, thereby stiffening the resistance of victims as the aggression of predators plods on without similarly increased vigor. Think of a gang of robbers taking half the crop from peasants. They then return for the second half. The gain to the gang of the second half cut is the same as in their first extortion. Yet for peasants to lose the last half of their crops means possible starvation and the certain loss of seed corn. They can be expected to resist violently…”—
Violence is always extant.
This of course, is why the government’s search for pareto optimums, and biology and the market’s search for nash equilibriums are so different, and why Pareto optimums are so dangerous: the state produces ‘trigger events’ by some linear increase that produces a revolution: the exponential cost is too high and war or revolution is preferable to on more incremental predation.
Source date (UTC): 2017-04-17 22:49:00 UTC
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Complaint is the Language of Imbeciles
COMPLAINT IS THE LANGUAGE OF IMBECILES Anyone can complain. Anyone can criticize. How many people can explain the incentives that cause people to act in a way that they do, that you disagree with? Complaints about people. Complaints about events. complaints about society, complaints about civilization. complaints about man. Complaints are merely statements of incompetence. Competence is demonstrated by an explanation of the incentives that produce behaviors, and the institutional methods by which counter-incentives can be created that will produce preferred behaviors. And high competence is demonstrated by explanation of a possible method of doing so.