The two party system has grown from the fallacy of conflation. Each party annexes wedge issues, then does nothing with them other than to form majorities within the herds of people. Neither is a true majority, but a majority of a majority and/or a majority of a minority. The former is rare, the latter is…
Category: Words Poorly Used
Words Poorly Used #70 — Market
The market is chaotic, therefore adaptive, responsive, communicative, evolving, instantaneously. The state is the attempt to freeze change, therefore inimical to markets. The claim is that markets can be stabilized by central planners. The market, however, is as a river flowing to the sea. The staying power of markets is the ability to survive change,…
Words Poorly Used #75 — Problem
” … there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” — H. L. Mencken Why is this true? Firstly, we have to recognize that this may not be true in all cases. After all, it is a simple solution for explaining human error — a persistent problem underlying…
Words Poorly Used #74 — Duty
When a person tells you it is your duty to [fill in the blank], that person is really trying to coerce you into relinquishing your future, for his or her own perceived benefit. Let’s say, for example, that someone says it is your duty to vote, that means you are being guilted into a collective…
Words Poorly Used #73 — Debate and Argument
Somebody wake me up when there is a true debate, not some tricked-up reality show imposter. Of course, presidential debates have never been — either presidential or debate. But I have listened to some more formal debates recently. Tom Woods debated Michael Malice on whether Alexander Hamilton was a hero of liberty. And Anthony Gregory…
Words Poorly Used #72 — Law Enforcement
How might a collective arrive at a perfectly regulated law? Well, it would by whatever decision making process it had devised (let’s say it is a perfect process, discovered somewhat as a blind hog occasionally finds an acorn) to decide on one law. Then assuming that a perfect law requires perfect enforcement, the collective would…
Words Poorly Used #71 — Compromise
Compromise always fails because self-perpetuating institutions always demand a place at the table where compromise is made, squeezing out unaffiliated individual people. Compromise thus is about the status quo and its preservation. Pretending that these institutional tablegrabbers have interests consonant with real people is a deadly form of collective self-deception. — Kilgore Forelle
Words Poorly Used #70 — Communication
You know, it occurred to me today that if we (all of us humans) weren’t so poor at communication we would never learn anything new, we would be stuck on the same page all the time. kilgore
Words Poorly Used #69a — Fear, II
You will often hear various people say, “fear is a great motivator.” And that is eminently true. Granted. Let’s look at a great motivator (however misguided), Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR famously spoke, “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed…
Words Poorly Used #69 — Fear
Now I learn today, through Jason Stapleton, that some European politico is playing the Fear Card. I paraphrase, “If this refugee crisis continues it will mean the collapse of the European Union!” My first reaction? Please don’t throw us in that briar patch. There are two basic human tendencies, buried in our genetics, fear leading…