People are not all the same, and they make different choices because they have different values, circumstances, and levels of understanding. Sometimes those choices are peaceful and wise; sometimes they are not. So what are the best ways to promote good choices and cooperation while preventing and providing resolution for conflict?
Tag: civilization
Cash in Ancapistan
Money provides such an advantage over barter, that it is indispensable for a functioning economy today. Modern civilization has been accustomed to a government or pseudo-government entity creating and maintaining a money supply. Indeed, these currencies have dominated the economy across the globe throughout living memory. Recently, cryptocurrencies have been on the rise, but they are far from replacing dollars, pounds, and yuan. In a truly free society, how would money be provided for the economy?
Governments Need and Breed Wars
If you want the thrill of war, and want to go help someone else defend themselves from invaders coming down their street, go right ahead. At your own expense, and without dragging me into it. But are you willing to die for a lie?
Compulsory Schooling Is Incompatible with Freedom
If we care about freedom, we should reject compulsory schooling. A relic of 19th-century industrial America, compulsory schooling statutes reduced the broad and noble goal of an educated citizenry into a one-size-fits-all system of state-controlled mass schooling that persists today.
Words Poorly Used #102 — AI
Putin and Musk are holding forth on the future of AI. They, and most the rest of us, act like AI is a stage play that is evolving toward a tightly plotted ending. Observations: AI is in the Stone Age. We’ve been wrestling with the mouse for over 3 decades. That is glacial change.
Tribalism and Economic Nationalism – Cut from the Same Cloth
Why would anyone underestimate the benefits of interacting with foreigners? It might be because they are, well, foreign. Combine this bias with an ignorance of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” (spontaneous order) and a suspicion that exchange is zero-sum rather than positive-sum, and you have the making of an economic nationalist.
Words Poorly Used #98 — Culture
Throughout the life sciences, “culture” is a flowering, while degradation is a rotting. Why are we using the one word where the other should be?
Law vs. “Laws”
Through experience, over long periods of time, humans discovered Natural Law, which illustrated how to live among others. Society grew as these rules were discovered, and eventually, this led to civilization growing from society. Then some “genius” came along and decided it would be a good idea to write down the Law somewhere so it could be read and referred to.
Is “Screen Time” Dangerous for Children?
Innovative technologies always seem distracting and disturbing to the adults attempting to master them, and transparent and obvious—not really technology at all—to those, like Augie, who encounter them as children.
Influences II
With every week that passes, I think of new names to add to my list of influences. But the thinkers shown in today’s effort are those with the names that I carry around in my head — writing them down as a reminder is not needed. Today, I will write about Dr. Robert Higgs, Henry Louis Mencken, and Mark Twain, whom I have mentioned, probably, in reverse order of each’s world renown.