If I have one ethical ideal for how human beings should relate to each other (“politics”), it’s this – non-violence. There’s a lot more to say about ethical societies and ethical human behavior, but when it comes to politics, I’m really not much more complicated than that. My views are actually pretty mundane.
Tag: action
Maintaining Victim Fluidity
The difference between crimes and non-crimes is that with the former, you have a real, identifiable victim, but with the latter, you don’t. Therefore, the government stands in place and assigns itself victimhood in order to bring charges. The more charges it brings as a victim (eg. The State vs…), the more revenue it generates. The more dynamically ambiguous it identifies itself as a victim, the richer and more entrenched in the fabric of society it gets.
Stock Exchange
Congress blamed insider market abuses and inadequate disclosure of financial data for the Great Depression, and reacted by creating the SEC. In truth, the Great Depression had more to do with tariffs and poor Federal Reserve policies. I feel like I’ve heard this story before: the government causes a problem, and uses the problem as a reason to take more power.
Preferences
Preferences are frequently discounted as selfish impulses, but they are probably the second most important class of property that one owns. The first, in my opinion, is your time and space, the outward manifestation of your self.
A Matter of Scale
At what scale do you suddenly think that human interaction and peaceful coexistence requires, or is even helped by, giving some people permission to forcibly rule everyone else?
Only the Rich
The government gives an excludable good away for free: roads, parks, education, medicine, whatever. Then some economist advocates privatization of one of these freebies. Technocrats may offer some technical objections to privatization. Normal people, however, will respond with a disgusted rhetorical question: “So only the rich should have roads / parks / education / medicine / whatever?”
Pelatarchy: When the Customer Reigns Supreme
Ultimately, customers decide what and when contents get exchanged in the context of voluntary human relations. This means that customers are the decision-makers of last resort, and supreme ruler over their engagements.
Town and Country
What is the great attraction of the city? We have gone from a world in which most of us were living on the land to a world where it is nearly impossible to experience the unartificial. Why have we accumulated in these urban enclaves?
Discussion with a Cop Supporter
Here is a discussion I had with a supporter of cops a while back. It may be educational to see the lengths people will go to when they are desperate to excuse the inexcusable and justify that which can’t be justified.
A Brief Economic Defense of Regifting
All gifts, like all capitalistic ventures, require some risk and leap of faith that you have found the solution to a problem for your recipient, despite all the unknown variables. It’s also true that most gifts, like most capitalistic ventures, fail to do that.