The idea that a monolithic monopoly needs to provide all kinds of services whether we want them or not is stupid. It’s always been stupid. But it’s easier to see the stupid now that our lives are comprised of a growing web of voluntary subscription services and Amazon delivers everything for free.
Tag: world
You Can Fight City Hall, but You’ll Almost Certainly Lose
One of the chief reasons why almost every regime in the world has converged to a system of participatory fascism is that this system creates or retains a great variety of institutionalized opportunities for the state’s victims—who compose the great majority of the people—to challenge the state’s exactions and to “make their voices heard,” thereby gaining the impression that the rulers are not simply oppressing and exploiting them unilaterally but involving them in an essential way in the making and enforcement of rules.
Assange, Trump, and Obama
Yes, president Trump is doing the wrong thing by not dropping all charges against Julian Assange immediately. Very wrong. Yet, had Obama done the right thing– and he had plenty of time and opportunity to do so– this wouldn’t even be up to Trump. He could have ended this years ago. He is every bit as much…
The Delicate Art of Listening but not Listening
“If I asked people what they wanted, the would’ve said a faster horse.” — Maybe Henry Ford. Changing the world means showing people something they couldn’t tell you that they needed.Nevermind. They can and do tell you what they need. Just in the wrong language.
Governing Least: A Litany of Insight
“The reason France does not require aid is not because some external group took pity on the French, but that they were able to generate exponential economic growth themselves. This makes it puzzling that philosophers write long books about aid without mentioning economic growth, and generally seem to imply that the path to escaping poverty lies through individual altruism. Why ignore the only mechanism that has ever succeeded in lifting millions of people out of poverty when thinking about poverty?”
What Intelligence and Insanity Have in Common
Mechanical intelligence sees the connections between parts of a machine. Social intelligence sees connections between people. Physical intelligence makes connections between actions and re-actions. Creative intelligence sees connections between disparate ideas. Entrepreneurial intelligence sees connections between different goods or services, or a new nexus between supply and demand.
“Intellectual”
These people may be clever. They may be smart in some ways. But their ignorance and emotionalism overwhelm their intellect. They betray their own intellectualism with their belief system. They’ve decided which is more important to them, personally. And it’s a shame.
The Most Controversial Belief
The most controversial belief of libertarians (and partisan Libertarians) is the belief that you’re generally both more entitled and more qualified to run your life than someone else is. Who considers that belief controversial? “Mainstream” politicians and their supporters.
My Provisional Support For “Borders”
The only legitimate justification for something like a “national border” would be to separate a free territory from any unfree territories around it. In order to protect the people in the free territory from the statists surrounding them.
The History of History
It would be interesting, though very difficult, to study how history changes. I don’t mean how the sequence of human events changes from the present into the future, I mean how the past changes. Since it exists only in memory from our present perspective, the stories we believe about the past are the past. But those stories aren’t fixed. They change all the time.