People don’t pass you information because it is true, they pass you information because it benefits them to do so. People don’t study information because it is true, people study what information benefits them. This isn’t a slight at scientists. Few people would suggest that scientists ought to spend time studying information that has no benefit. Many scientists study information based off of flawed premises built within the culture. Few scientists get grants from disinterested parties. The force that links “knowledge” to accuracy or truth is incentives.
Tag: order
Who Will Build the Roads?
When people ask, “who will build the roads?” my usual response is, “the same people that currently build them, it’ll just be financed differently.” Then I go on to give a few quick ideas.
Trading Places
“What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.” –Henry George When Donald Trump can propose tariffs on imported steel, aluminum, washing machines, and solar-panels without being roundly booed off the stage, one has to wonder if reason has any…
How the State Has Usurped the Administration of Justice
In every “The State vs.” suit, the defendant is being accused of violating an applicable law. Everything else is secondary, and in every case the injured party is “The State”, not the actual victim(s) of a violent crime. The grievance being redressed is not that which is being held by the true victim(s) of a violent crime, but that of “The State” having its rules disobeyed. And what is the result of a conviction in such a criminal suit brought by “The State”? The defendant is charged, must pay some fine to which “the State” will profit, and/or lose his freedom by being forcefully kidnapped and thrown in prison, of which his life expenses are paid not by “the State”, but by everybody else, including the original victim(s).
Can You Explain Why Slavery is Wrong?
We’ve encountered some reasonable refutations of this premise, with the biggest critique being around the claim that it’s “self-evident”. In that way, it looks like the other weak arguments. When I’m asked to prove that I own myself, I don’t have a quick and easy answer, I can’t produce a receipt. But I am responsible for my actions, and I chose how and when to use my body. These are qualities of ownership. And even with a gun pointed at my head, the decision to cooperate is still ultimately mine. I couldn’t forfeit control if I wanted to.
A Catch-22 in Organizing for the Pursuit of Liberty
There’s a Catch-22 in regard to efforts aimed at diminishing state domination and enlarging genuine liberty. A substantial number of people may support these goals, but in order to achieve real gains, they must organize to raise money, build public support, and obstruct the state’s attempts to plunder and bully them. The catch is that the organizations they create are run by organizers or managers who have incentives to turn their organizations into vehicles for their own power-quest or for workaday jobbery.
Knowledge Judgment and Action Judgment
Knowing how to read and react to a situation, when to say/not say things, and other “soft”, social, and emotional intelligences. I’m not sure if judgement can be taught to someone who lacks it. Judgement can certainly get refined through experience, and someone who has it can gain highly specific forms based on contextual feedback. I’ve been using the broad catch-all word “judgement” to describe this trait for a long time. Yesterday it occurred to me that judgment manifests in two very different ways. Or maybe it has two levels.
Prime Archators
A Prime Archator is a person who is at the top of a government, especially a national government. This includes presidents, prime ministers, kings and queens, tsars, or any other such positions which rely on the belief in political “authority”.
Welfare & Open Borders, Jurisdiction and Violent Crimes, & #MeToo Backlash (35m) – Editor’s Break 063
Editor’s Break 063 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics: immigration, open borders, and the welfare state, and why increasing immigration control is not a libertarian solution to the supposed problem of immigrants exploiting the welfare state, why jurisdiction matters on claims of statutes violations, even for violent crimes, his fear of backlash against women due to the #MeToo movement, and more.
More Korean War is “Worth it?” To Whom?
The last period of open war on the Korean peninsula cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 3.5 million lives, including nearly a million soldiers on both sides (36,516 of them American) and 2.5 million civilians in the North and South. What did the American taxpayer get in return for three years of fighting, tens of thousands of Americans dead, and nearly $700 billion (in 2008 dollars)?