Episode 029 looks at two Stoic topics: the first from Marcus Aurelius who wrote, “People aren’t in awe of your sharp mind? So be it. But you have many other qualities you can’t claim to have been deprived of at birth. Display then those qualities in your own power: honesty, dignity, endurance, chastity, contentment, frugality, kindness, freedom, persistence, avoiding gossip, and magnanimity.”; and the second from r/Stoicism, a post by mussel_bouy who started off with, “There is a dimension. A dimension not of sight or sound but of mind. It is both in the future and past but never the present. It has no physical location but for many of us, we live there. It is ‘the dimension of should’.”
Tag: class
Chris J. Returns, Cloud Gaming, Losing Family & Scientism (58m) – Episode 389
Episode 389 welcomes back Chris Jenkins to chat with Skyler on the following topics: their wives’ 19th century lives before emigrating to the United States; machismo in Latin America; cloud gaming; science as religion; Mormonism, truth, and Joseph Smith; losing family members; euthanasia and the elderly; scientism and critical race theory; listening to podcasts all day long; and more.
Liberty Quotes: Robert Higgs, Ron Paul, Jeremy Locke (32m) – Episode 388
Episode 388 has Skyler giving his commentary on a quote by Robert Higgs on the fakery, fraud, and force of politics; by Ron Paul on freedom and responsibility, and another on the intolerance of authoritarians; and by Jeremy Locke on the difference between principle and law.
Mish O. Returns, Infinite Banking, Need for Speed, & Damned Lies (1h17m) – Episode 387
Episode 387 welcomes back Mish Ochu to chat with Skyler on the following topics: Nelson Nash’s Infinite Banking concept; Lara/Murphy Report; Biden’s body language; police interrogation; Mish’s need for speed during his more reckless years; why kids need to take risks; the causes of political extremism; when individualism goes to far; Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead; lies in modern life about people; the left verse the right on how they protest; distributed gun manufacturing and Cody Wilson; Ross Ulbritch and online drug markets; political blunders and adverse incentives; and more.
Michael Munger: When is Voluntary Choice Really Voluntary? (48m)
This episode features an interview of economist Mike Munger from 2015 by Trevor Burrus and Aaron Powell, hosts of the Free Thoughts podcast. They talk about voluntary transactions and questions of justice in market pricing. What would everyone agree is truly voluntary? Are disparities in bargaining power coercive? What’s wrong with using the state to address these disparities? What about price gouging situations? What about sweatshops?
Argumentum ad Populum (Appeal to Popularity) & Neglect of Probability (25m) – Episode 028
Episode 028 looks at the logical fallacy Argumentum ad Populum (Appeal to Popularity, and it’s many children) and the cognitive bias Neglect of Probability.
Bad Policies Fuel Fires
California burns due to its unwillingness to thin out forests.
Breonna Taylor’s Killers, Anarchist Jurisdictions, & Turkey’s Speech Prisons (39m) – Episode 386
Episode 386 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following news stories: from USA Today, “‘Vigorous’ self-defense laws likely prevented homicide charges in Breonna Taylor’s death, experts say” (Wikipedia entry on Breonna Taylor’s death, Reason’s coverage); from Wave3 News, “Jon Mattingly: Officer involved in Breonna Taylor shooting sends candid email to LMPD colleagues”; from NBC New York, “DOJ Designates New York City as an ‘Anarchist Jurisdiction'”; from Alarabiya, “Turkey sentences female politician to prison for calling Erdogan ‘enemy of women’”; and from Next City, “Atlanta’s Trying to Support, Not Punish, Its Teenage Water Vendors” (Full council report).
Is Home Ownership Really the “American Dream?”
Is home ownership the embodiment of the “American Dream?” Are Trump and Biden trying, in their own ways, to deliver the goods for you? Or are they just beholden to special interests whose members make larger campaign contributions than you do — for example, realtors, developers, and mortgage lenders?
Aphorisms in Honor of Liberty, Part Six (25m) – Episode 385
Episode 385 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following aphorisms written by Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski: “A fool believes that the market makes profits corrupting. A person of reason knows that it makes corruption unprofitable.”; “A democratic state is a device for feeding off society by pitting it against itself.”; “A fool finds intolerable the inequality of wealth between the capitalist and the laborer. A person of reason finds intolerable the inequality of rights between the state and the individual.”; “Happiness is the ability to stay intrinsically motivated to exist.”; “Aesthetic maturity is the ability to deliberately ignore the fashionable without turning it into a fashion statement.”; “A successful prediction is a mental journey to the least impossible of the future worlds.”