If you have government, you have a ruling class, by definition. No, I’m not talking about governance, the sort we see in managing property, a business, a charity, or any other private organization. A ruling class are those who calls themselves “government” or “the state”, or in some times and places “the church”, the organization(s) in society whose sole purpose of existing is to make and enforce rules, the first of which involve the generation of “revenue”. While that’s what the ruling class does, that’s not what the ruling class is. Here is the essence of what the ruling class is.
Tag: natural
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Voluntaryists
I was taught the seven habits of highly effective people by my youngest granddaughter, when she was in elementary school. I thought of them as being positive for 3 reasons: 1) my granddaughter was no average public school student, 2) her school was no ordinary public school, and 3) I had some new and useful principles around which to organize my voluntaryism.
Chicago
Now that I’ve been home a few days, back from Chicago, I ask myself, “How does it all work?” And I keep coming back to self-ordering and the institutionalizing of individuality. Chicago works one human encounter at a time, one negotiated transaction at a time. Mises would be happy to know that the molecules of this economy behaved according to the natural laws of human action.
Where Worker Productivity Really Comes From
In the pre-modern world, workers got little education and had low productivity. In the modern world, workers get much education and have high productivity. Productivity (and education!) keep going up. If formal academic training isn’t the main reason, what is?
The Philosophical Toolbox
I’m not saying that philosophy as a whole is without contradiction, however through years of weeding through different philosophies and theories I was able to find what works best for me. A collection of tools with which anyone can use to truly test whether an idea, concept, law, or edict is just, fair, and equitable. In no particular order I’d like to present a few of the tools I use use when trying to make a consistent, rational, and logical judgement or claim.
Education vs Schooling
I was writing a memoir yesterday of our trip to Chicago with our two youngest granddaughters, who are 13 and 11 respectively. In part of the memoir I began to consider, why the trip itself was educational as opposed to the daily regimentation of schooling (which the girls would be getting if not for Spring Break).
The Values and Traits Behind My Best Relationships
What are the values you most look for when forming relationships? Great question! Any answer I give here will be incomplete, but I have come to notice some patterns in my most valuable relationships. Certain values and traits also help me quickly pick out people I want in my “tribe.”
Statism’s First Casualty Is the Truthful Use of Language
States engage not only in conquest, plunder, and oppression, but also—in order to create conditions in which the populace is rendered less likely to resist a state’s abuses or rebel against it—in pervasive bamboozlement. Those who support the state ideologically tend to engage in chronic misrepresentation of what the state does and how it does it. So, not only war—the characteristic state action—but statism in general makes truth the first casualty of its claims, proposals, programs, and projects.
The Sexualization of Children
If we saw a picture or video of a child in a bath the natural thoughts of the vast majority of people 100 years ago, or from someone not influenced by our culture would be incredibly indifferent. Now, our modern culture has trained people to immediately think of sex. The video turns into a test of pedophilia and how we ought to regard this video in response to pedophilia. Think about that for a second … our society has trained you to view child nudity, child interests, and child activities first through the prism of sex. Holy shit.
Equal and Independent
As regards the matter of independence, no human is naturally dependent on another human from similar or different origins. Person A lives her own life, maintains her own health, enjoys her own liberty, and lays claim to her own possessions. These are separate and distinct from those of person B. Since no law of nature gives A advantage over B, there is no enabling of A to exercise dominion over B.