Empowerment, Economic Growth, Gun Policy Costs, & Antinatalism (32m) – Episode 359

Episode 359 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics: why empowerment is not telling people that they are helpless to do anything for themselves and must wait for others to act first; the importance of secure property rights to economic growth; why it’s muddy metaphorical thinking to claim that homicides, suicides, et cetera, are “costs” of loose gun policy; a couple of point against antinatalist philosophy; and more.

Individual Lives Matter

Individual lives matter. All individual lives. (I’m not convinced collective “lives” have any reality.) But some people choose to throw their life away by making self-defense against them necessary– resulting in the loss of their life. If you force someone to kill you in defense you seem to be saying your life doesn’t matter to you.

Let’s Adapt to Something Positive

Humans are adaptable. More so than any creature other than, possibly, cockroaches. It’s our greatest strength. We have adapted to living almost everywhere on the planet and, soon, with the right technology — an adaptation we’ve created — off-planet, too. We’ve adapted to a different diet than our ancestors ate. In some cases, we probably…

Starlink and “Pollution”

I have gone out at night and watched Starlink satellites pass overhead. Most of the time they were too dim for me to see. A few times I was able to see the “train”– a string of satellites following one another across the sky– with some success. It’s rather interesting to see and even beautiful in a way. But, even though I really like antique stuff made of brass, bone, wood, leather, and glass, I’m not a Luddite.