Curt Doolittle

Theme: Responsibility

  • Is The “right To Die” A Human Right?

    The question, as stated is irrational.  One has the right to die, because one cannot have it taken away.  If you want to die, and can act to kill yourself, there are a legion of ways to accomplish it. 

    So, it’s not that suicide is difficult to accomplish nor that people fail to.  Instead, it is difficult to understand how those that say that they wish to, can somehow fail to.  And therefore we argue that if you wanted to you could and would. So that like many human utterances, a desire for suicide may be a situational expression of emotional frustration, pain and exhaustion, rather than a desire to end one’s life. It is impossible for others to know.  And like many thoughts of human beings, it may be impossible for the individual himself to know.

    That said, the moral and legal prohibition in the west, is against assisting others with suicide, not against suicide itself.  The moral counsel against suicide exists only to encourage those who consider suicide to seek assistance in removing the source of their suffering rather than resorting to suicide. 

    So instead of asking why one may or may not have the right to die, the question must be “Why can others not kill me if I desire it?”    And the reason is that it is an irreversible decision, and we cannot ever really know whether it is a true desire unless one performs the act one’s self. It may be simply that the individual is venting exhaustion or frustration at that moment but at somepoint would change his mind.  And it is unjust to ask others to bear the risk of participating in a decision that we cannot know. Because the only demonstration of a human beings preferences is not his verbal statements but his actions.

    Secondly, as someone says above: “an elderly terminally ill patient may feel an obligation to commit suicide to relieve their family and the society of them as a perceived burden.” Which obscures the more common and problematic circumstance: that the elderly patient who is terminally ill, or even, or who is a substantial burden on family and society, will be pressured to commit suicide and comply despite their desire not to, and to hold onto life a little longer.

    Therefore the moral and legal prohibitions against assisting with suicide are rational in philosophical and practical terms.

    ——-
    Afterward: It is somewhat interesting to see among these answers, the prevalence of  the misapplication of scientific principles to a problem of moral exchange.  The inability to tell the difference between a problem that has can be objectively resolved by relying on an analysis of outcomes, rather than one consisting of an exchange between individuals that can be intersubjectively tested. That our citizens no longer rely on scriptural analogy may be beneficial. But that they do not see morality as a system of exchanges, rather than a means of achieving a utilitarian end, is somewhat more frightening than the misapplication of those moral principles to questions about the physical world.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-the-right-to-die-a-human-right

  • PERILS OF PROLETARIAN OVERBREEDING Are you sure that women have a natural right

    http://scienceblog.com/56182/sea-life-facing-major-extinction-shock/THE PERILS OF PROLETARIAN OVERBREEDING

    Are you sure that women have a natural right to reproduce? Why?

    And why should we subsidize proletarian inbreeding and overbreeding?

    There is no environmental problem. There is an overbreeding problem.

    Not only is overbreeding dysgenic, but it’s environmentally catastrophic.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-21 09:49:00 UTC

  • A Critique Of Jason Brennan’s Thought Experiment: Just War Is A Utilitarian And Contractual, Not Absolute Moral Concept

    Some Thought Experiments Involving Assassination by JASON BRENNAN 1. Suppose an evil demon appears before you and says, “I plan to kill hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians and destroy their country’s architecture unless you kill this one innocent person.” Under these extreme circumstances, might it be permissible for you to kill that innocent person? 2. Suppose an evil demon appears before you and says, “I plan to kill hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians and destroy their country’s architecture unless you kill this Mafia don, a criminal who has himself killed many people and who plans to kill many more.” Under these extreme circumstances, might it be permissible for you to kill that Mafia don? 3. Suppose an evil demon appears before you and says, “I plan to kill hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians and destroy their country’s architecture unless you kill the president.” Under these extreme circumstances, might it be permissible for you to kill the president? 4. Suppose the evil demon possesses the president. The evil demon, in the guise of the president, plans to invade a foreign country. Suppose you know that the invasion is unjust–it clearly violates the correct theory of just war. Suppose you also know that the war will kill hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians and destroy their country’s infrastructure. Suppose killing the demon-possessed president will stop, or at least has a good chance of stopping, the invasion. Under these extreme circumstances, might it be permissible for you to kill the president? 5. Suppose there is no evil demon. However, suppose the president, though not possessed by an evil demon, acts just like the possessed president in 4. The president appears before you and says, “I plan to invade a foreign country.” Suppose you know that the invasion is unjust–it clearly violates the correct theory of just war. Suppose you also know that the war will kill hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians and destroy their country’s infrastructure. Suppose killing the president will stop, or at least has a good chance of stopping, the invasion. Under these extreme circumstances, might it be permissible for you to kill the president?

    Jason, 1) Humans war. They always have and always will. It is impossible to resolve all conflicts by peaceful means. 2) The demon and the president are participants in a war. 3) As participants in the war they are outside daily civil legal and moral prohibitions we have constructed for peaceful interactions: our prohibition on violence does not apply. War revokes the prohibition on non violence. That is the purpose and point of demarcation of ‘war’. 4) Moral rules are general rules. They are a shortcut that allows us to propagate contractual terms which help us reduce our error in calculating property transfers when they are beyond our perception and knowledge. Moral rules are not abstract truths. The confusion is created by the priority one gives to the genetic structural categories of family, tribe, and nation, versus the egalitarian structure limited to the categories of the individual and humanity. Much religious content seeks to extend the familial category to the universal as a means of creating an opposition to the state. And approaching questions of property as questions of morality is an artifact of applying religious techniques that seek to simplify complexity into emotionally accessible social rules, to what are practical contractual constructs the articulation of which is too complicated for general use. 5) There is is no longer a genetic composition to war – the need to fight other tribes for genes to persist – which necessitates one’s participation in tribal war. Wars are now, and have been for a long time, conducted for economic interests, even if those economic interests apply only to the costly norms, status signals, property rights portfolios, and political systems that vary between groups. Therefore the individual is free to choose sides. 6) As free to choose sides, one may calculate his interests and those interests of those with whom he shares interests, and determine if he is benefitting or harming those with whom he shares interests. And if it is in his interest and the interest of those with whom he shares interest, then he may act to kill the demon/president/minister/general or not at his will. Propertarianism is correct: all human ethical and political statements can be reduced to property rights, and done so without contrivance. That is because all morals and all human moral feelings, are expressons of property rights when property rights are articulated such that they fully encompass the entirety of those things which humans treat as property. It is hard to do this topic justice in short form. But hopefully this is enough of a sketch to illustrate the problems of both moral parlor games, and treating war as other than a utilitarian construct. So the thought experiment misleads the reader with false premises. a) Argued on abstract and loaded absolute moral grounds, not articulated contractual grounds, in order to mislead the reader. b) Moral statements are general contractual rules for peaceful mutual exchange. c) And war by definition is outside of that contractual environment. d) ‘Just War’ is not an abstract moral truth but a contratual proposition between parties who seek to limit their own costs (See Kagan). So, the thought device is dependent upon the error of the common parlor game, in which one which poses false dichotomies in order to confuse the participants into thinking (like the train-lever parable) that morals are absolute rules foiled by specific extremes, rather than that morals are general statements of property rights loaded with emotional content so that they propagate more easily. The error here is confusing a statement of abstract and absolute truth, with one of utilitarian contract. The first is the meme. The second is a fact. Sometimes we must take risks. Otherwise, we risk also confusing convenience with conviction.

  • Question: From the GSH perspective, does a woman have the right to bear a child

    Question: From the GSH perspective, does a woman have the right to bear a child that she cannot support, thus mandating transfers, and sacrifices, from others to her? The reason I ask is that while protestant christianity certainly contains content that is absurd, the effect of its “chinese room” (see Searle) is a prohibition on involuntary transfers, and a requirement for responsible independence. Democratic Secular Humanism appears rational, but encourages involuntary transfers. Christianity implies inequality is natural. DSH advocates (at least statistically) believe that humans are equal. So, there is madness on both sides. Or, would you suggest DSH as a political movement is separate from GSH as a personal philosophical movement?

    Source date (UTC): 2012-07-04 09:01:00 UTC

  • Geopolitical Conflicts: From An Ethical Standpoint, How Long Back Should One Look To Decide Who Is The Rightful Owner Of Land?

    This only appears to be a complicated question. It really isn’t.  If a judgement will be made, how will one make such a thing?

    1) Property Rights. Property rights of any kind are derived from the portfolio of those rights within any given jurisdiction (country/state). Property rights exist in order to prevent disputes, and to permit cooperation.  Military conquest is not a subject of property rights. The very purpose of military conquest is to abrogate and redefine property rights.  There is no other reason to conduct military conquest.  In that sense, both the israeli and amerindian conquests are settled matters, because they were settled by conquest.  So to some degree to make a legalistic argument over property rights on a military matter is simply irrational. 

    2) Arbitrary Time Frames.  We have all been conquered people.  None of us can return to our homelands and our traditions. Even Northern europeans cannot go home any longer. The problem is infinitely recursive. These matters are not possible to solve by other than military means. That is why we solve them so.  It is an arbitrary and illogical statement to prefer one time and state of affairs to another time and state of affairs, because each state of affairs is predicated on the prior state of affairs and those conflicts. SO why, should we not take over Istanbul and rename it Byzantium, because the muslims conquered and stole if from Christians?  Where does this end?  Must we try to return Rome to the Etruscans?  Or are you just arbitrarily biased in favor of amerindians at the expense of everyone else?

    3) Practical Matters: it is not practical to displace a people, and they would simply go to war to stop it.  So it is an absurd parlor game of a question.  Israel is doing two things: building walls, and building settlements in order to expand it’s defensible boundaries. There is nothing new about what they’re doing.  The germans put them in concentration camps and killed them. There is a difference. The displaced peoples have a choice, the executed people’s do not.

    The English conquered (mostly) the amerindians in north america and the spanish and Portuguese in south america.  But, for example, if we quote George Washington, it’s because  (roughly quoting) they will be conquered by someone who we will have to defend ourselves against if we do not conquer them ourselves.(end roughly quoting). It is not that the English (Americans) were any different from anyone else.  Should the Kurds get their own territory? Should we go to war with china to give Tibetans their land back?  Should the russians drive out the chinese that have invaded eastern russia like the mexicans that have invaded the southern united states?  Land and the property rights imposed on that land are in constant flux everywhere in the world.


    SUMMARY
    So, these are not moral questions.  They are not philosophical questions. They are not legal questions. They are practical questions because in the end, the action necessary to alter the existing property definitions could only be resolved by military conquest.  THat’s what military conquests do: reassign property rights.

    Property assignments in any state are dependent upon a set of definitions established within that state using a monopoly on violence by that organization we call ‘government’.  Those assignments may be capricious (Asia), they may be nearly non-existant (muslim world and south america), they may be collective and corrupt (Romania) they may be collective and uncorrupt (sweden) they may be individual and utilitarian (the USA).   But they are meaningful ONLY within those jurisdictions during the life of the entity that enabled them. 

    This is a complex topic so if some other libertarian wants to challenge me, please understand that I’m erring on the side of brevity no on the side of incomprehension.  Liquid Personal property may be immutable. But land and fixed structures are not. That is not a moral statement. It is an historical one.

    https://www.quora.com/Geopolitical-Conflicts-From-an-ethical-standpoint-how-long-back-should-one-look-to-decide-who-is-the-rightful-owner-of-land

  • Geopolitical Conflicts: From An Ethical Standpoint, How Long Back Should One Look To Decide Who Is The Rightful Owner Of Land?

    This only appears to be a complicated question. It really isn’t.  If a judgement will be made, how will one make such a thing?

    1) Property Rights. Property rights of any kind are derived from the portfolio of those rights within any given jurisdiction (country/state). Property rights exist in order to prevent disputes, and to permit cooperation.  Military conquest is not a subject of property rights. The very purpose of military conquest is to abrogate and redefine property rights.  There is no other reason to conduct military conquest.  In that sense, both the israeli and amerindian conquests are settled matters, because they were settled by conquest.  So to some degree to make a legalistic argument over property rights on a military matter is simply irrational. 

    2) Arbitrary Time Frames.  We have all been conquered people.  None of us can return to our homelands and our traditions. Even Northern europeans cannot go home any longer. The problem is infinitely recursive. These matters are not possible to solve by other than military means. That is why we solve them so.  It is an arbitrary and illogical statement to prefer one time and state of affairs to another time and state of affairs, because each state of affairs is predicated on the prior state of affairs and those conflicts. SO why, should we not take over Istanbul and rename it Byzantium, because the muslims conquered and stole if from Christians?  Where does this end?  Must we try to return Rome to the Etruscans?  Or are you just arbitrarily biased in favor of amerindians at the expense of everyone else?

    3) Practical Matters: it is not practical to displace a people, and they would simply go to war to stop it.  So it is an absurd parlor game of a question.  Israel is doing two things: building walls, and building settlements in order to expand it’s defensible boundaries. There is nothing new about what they’re doing.  The germans put them in concentration camps and killed them. There is a difference. The displaced peoples have a choice, the executed people’s do not.

    The English conquered (mostly) the amerindians in north america and the spanish and Portuguese in south america.  But, for example, if we quote George Washington, it’s because  (roughly quoting) they will be conquered by someone who we will have to defend ourselves against if we do not conquer them ourselves.(end roughly quoting). It is not that the English (Americans) were any different from anyone else.  Should the Kurds get their own territory? Should we go to war with china to give Tibetans their land back?  Should the russians drive out the chinese that have invaded eastern russia like the mexicans that have invaded the southern united states?  Land and the property rights imposed on that land are in constant flux everywhere in the world.


    SUMMARY
    So, these are not moral questions.  They are not philosophical questions. They are not legal questions. They are practical questions because in the end, the action necessary to alter the existing property definitions could only be resolved by military conquest.  THat’s what military conquests do: reassign property rights.

    Property assignments in any state are dependent upon a set of definitions established within that state using a monopoly on violence by that organization we call ‘government’.  Those assignments may be capricious (Asia), they may be nearly non-existant (muslim world and south america), they may be collective and corrupt (Romania) they may be collective and uncorrupt (sweden) they may be individual and utilitarian (the USA).   But they are meaningful ONLY within those jurisdictions during the life of the entity that enabled them. 

    This is a complex topic so if some other libertarian wants to challenge me, please understand that I’m erring on the side of brevity no on the side of incomprehension.  Liquid Personal property may be immutable. But land and fixed structures are not. That is not a moral statement. It is an historical one.

    https://www.quora.com/Geopolitical-Conflicts-From-an-ethical-standpoint-how-long-back-should-one-look-to-decide-who-is-the-rightful-owner-of-land

  • Do We Have Occasion To Verbally Criticize The Feckless?

    Murray states:

    we must change the language that we use whenever the topic of feckless men comes up. Don’t call them “demoralized.” Call them whatever derogatory word you prefer. Equally important: Start treating the men who aren’t feckless with respect. Recognize that the guy who works on your lawn every week is morally superior in this regard to your neighbor’s college-educated son who won’t take a “demeaning” job. Be willing to say so.

    This shouldn’t be such a hard thing to do. Most of us already believe that one of life’s central moral obligations is to be a productive adult. The cultural shift that I advocate doesn’t demand that we change our minds about anything; we just need to drop our nonjudgmentalism.

    It is condescending to treat people who have less education or money as less morally accountable than we are. We should stop making excuses for them that we wouldn’t make for ourselves. Respect those who deserve respect, and look down on those who deserve looking down on.

    via Why economics can’t explain our cultural divide – Society and Culture – AEI.

    I understand that we can use this approach in the various media. But as a people who have also become spatially independent and therefore socially isolationist, and who converse with little more than our televisions while watching shows that reinforce our sentiments, in an society where politics rewards polarity, in an economy that must desperately seek the favor of consumers and can brook no negative feedback, where the few people with whom we share no sentimental differences, then there remains an interesting question: In what circumstance may we provide this feedback? Really.

  • 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.

  • Found out that I got a lawyer disbarred. It can actually happen. I’m surprised.

    Found out that I got a lawyer disbarred. It can actually happen. I’m surprised. It was years ago. I hadn’t followed the process. But at least in egregious circumstances the system works. (Think creative billing as in ‘the Firm’.) I took out the whole company, one person in jail. Lawyer disbarred. CEO had to forfeit all his assets. FWIW: deca-millionares are generally from the middle class, made their money in business and have a reputation for being honest.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-12-09 08:42:00 UTC

  • Just listening to a Dunkin Donuts franchisee complain about the company’s ethics

    Just listening to a Dunkin Donuts franchisee complain about the company’s ethics. Aside from the fact that he’s obviously a lousy business man, maybe he should have read franchise law (I did, every word of it, in the early 80’s when I was selling franchises at another company). Dunkin Donuts is the REASON we have franchise law. If it’s a scam, they’ve done it.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-08-23 13:09:00 UTC