Ether Mind

Can it be called Dialogue?

2011-03-15T20:20:00.001-07:00

Socrates: that's how I got my job
Socrates: I had to charm them for a couple hours
Socrates: they said I was a great presenter
Marie Antoinette: Oh. You mean.. like when I smile too much, act polite and sweet?
Socrates: sort of
Marie Antoinette: What do you do?
Socrates: well, first of all I have to carry on a normal conversation
Socrates: which I don't usually do
Socrates: make eye contact, smile, mirror the other person's body language and react approvingly to what they say
Socrates: pretend to be interested
Socrates: figure out what they want to hear and say it
Marie Antoinette: Like a dating sim.
Socrates: pretend to be whatever they think I should be
Socrates: yeah
Socrates: I mean, I'm a genius and they should let me run the company
Socrates: but the fact is humans perceive things through the filter of their own preconceptions
Marie Antoinette: mm.
Socrates: so I can't be honest or they will take reality and twist it around
Socrates: I have to give them something they can comprehend, and make it positive

The Belly of the Beast

2011-03-12T07:33:00.000-08:00

As government bureaucracy expands, more drones are hired. They inevitably vote for increased government bureaucracy.

Can you blame the peasants for blindly following their own self interest? It's apparent that most people are simply too stupid to know right from wrong in abstract contexts. The slight nagging they may feel is overwhelmed by the high pay, benefits, job security, and propaganda.

Those who knowingly feed the beast are the root of the problem.

Thought for the Day

2011-01-26T11:20:00.001-08:00

The purpose of Public Education is to create a populace that is incapable of reading the Constitution.

Facebook reports to the FBI

2010-10-09T18:44:00.000-07:00

I have it on good authority that if someone makes a terrorist threat on Facebook, even if it's not publicly available, the FBI will literally show up at their door within 24 hours with a bomb squad.

Other crimes might set the system off as well. You've been warned!

There's also this case where a blog post possibly led to someone have a GPS tracking device mounted on their car without a warrant. The 9th circuit denies that the 5-0 need a warrant for such things, but that should be overturned.

If Pot was legal, Heath Ledger would be alive

2010-10-06T15:59:00.000-07:00

Not much to say about this. I support the legalization of crack and highly purified opium products as well, but it's really inexcusable that marijuana is illegal. There are lots of sick people and dumbass stoners who could benefit from legalization; the legal system would shrivel a bit and be a bit less corrupt; secondary crime would decrease; border control would be slightly improved; an important industry would come back to our dying economy. Pobresita.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the Southern Baptists were responsible for the ban on narcotics, which makes me wonder if I should switch over to Deism. The whole pro-slavery thing was embarrassing too. Maybe back East the churches are more about prudery and laws and such.

Inflexibility of Government Spending as a Recession Enhancer

2010-10-03T14:30:00.000-07:00

Well, we all know that recessions are caused by imperfect information in the market (though not all GDP decline is necessarily a recession as we usually use the term. For example, WWII France).

The economy misallocates its resources, often as the result of a speculative bubble, wherein resources are invested with the knowledge that the investment's fundamentals may be sound. When the bubble ends and some group of investors is standing around confusedly like the loser in a game of musical chairs, the economy must correct itself and liquidate a good chunk of the unsound industry. Layoffs and bankruptcies ensue, which ripple through the economy and other industries lose jobs temporarily as a secondary effect.

Better information and credit would eliminate these side effects, but they don't exist. Credit is actually worse during a recession.

The exception is government spending like teachers, Medicare, and military. While the rest of the economy is shrinking and wriggling to readjust, government programs continue blithely along. This may seem helpful at first glance, since they don't suffer the unnecessary adjustments that some other industries do.

However, the result is that the percentage of spending on government services actually increases. While businesses are cutting employees, inventory, hours, profits, and investment, their taxes + monetary inflation stay the same. Reducing (taxes + inflation) proportionately over the course of the recession would help. That's actually similar to what the Keynesians recommend.

The problem is that any decrease in taxes without an equal decrease in spending increases the deficit. Bonds are issued, the monetary supply inflates, and the result is that inflation costs the public as much as the taxes did.

Unfortunately, it will be decades before economists bother to prove this idea one way or another: that government spending and taxation should be cut proportionate to GDP declines in recessions.

Right Wing Critique of the Week - Taylor Swift

2010-09-29T06:44:00.000-07:00

A young singer/songwriter/guitar player

Though I doubt she plays guitar any more.

Genre: Pop vocals, pop rock rythms, superficial Nashville country style

Lyrics: Coherent within each song, as deep as American pop culture gets, nice rhymes and clever wordplay. Though not all lyrics are written by Swift.

Music: Produced by a professional band that was probably assembled by coldblooded studio machinery. Tracks have the clean, empty sound that make Good Charlotte and AC/DC great. Though AC/DC was before the digital era and you can practically hear the needle scratching on your CD. I'd like to see someone autotune Bon Scott. However, the tunes are good, catchy, and contain a moderate amount of creativity in their execution.

Taylor Swift (album): debut, produced before she sold out to major labels, possibly one of the best albums of the decade, which is pretty sad. The album was initially released in 2006 but didn't become a mainstream success immediately. It eventually went quadruple platinum and has extra bonus tracks on the Walmart edition.

Fearless (album): Attempt to quickly cash in on the mainstream popularity of 2008. Not that bad, but it doesn't transcend its idiot pop singer roots.

Mine (single, 2010): Better than anything on Fearless.

I'm not quite sure why I'm reviewing something this popular, but I always think that Taylor Swift's genuine talents will be overlooked when she's compared to similar music that is, in fact, total garbage. I hope she will actually improve and attain some musical greatness, on the level of Bob Dylan or Paul McCartney. Of course, where would Axl Rose be without Slash? He'd be making Chinese Democracy, that's where. And maybe Paul McCartney is just lucky to have been friends with John Lennon. I don't know.

The whole environment is... nonconducive to developing musical talent in pop stars. Metal guitarists, sure, but not pop stars. Oh well.

Right Wing Critique of the Week - My Little Bride

2010-09-18T00:36:00.000-07:00

My Little Bride is a highly rated Korean movie which is available to pirate with English subtitles.

It's a romantic comedy about a 24ish guy who marries a 16 year old because of their grandparents' wishes. The key thing to remember is that Korean romantic comedies, unlike American romantic comedies, are funny and romantic. They don't make you want to kill Julia Roberts and then yourself.

Obviously the first theme is the dissonance between modern society and the older culture, which included arranged marriages for adolescents. But that's really just used to set up the situation. There's less comedy and more romanticism than I would have expected based on the premise, but it's all good. I enjoyed the whole thing. Actually, it had better characterization than most movies I've seen, and the plot was good. It wasn't particularly complex. Episodic, almost. But the running time was 115 minutes and none of it was wasted.

Toward the end there are more school scenes and after the Assembly scene at the end, I wondered: This movie has elements of wish fulfillment, but are they directed at 16 year old girls who want to marry 20-something guys as well as the more-obvious vice-versa? What does it say about our culture that those desires are both acknowledged but not accepted?

I'm not sure how a Korean sees it. The age difference is frowned upon somewhat, but there were no angry posses of villagers like I've had to face in the US.

I recommend the movie. 8/10 stars. The main drawback is it's not very exciting.

Net Neutrality is a Stupid Idea

2010-09-01T21:42:00.000-07:00

We are faced with the specter of all sorts of slightly annoying hijinks on the part of broadband providers. "Oh noes! Comcast might slow down my access to Hughesnet.com!" Despite the Web being 17 years old, no one has violated the de facto net neutrality we have today. There are disincentives to do so. Even if someone did give preferred access to Google and the MPAA, it wouldn't matter at all. Even in China, which is a COMMUNIST DICTATORSHIP, people can access prohibited materials; they simply run the risk of disappearing into a gulag should they do so.

(I'm sure this post puts me on the list of prohibited sites, not that anyone reads it to begin with.)

So, in the face of theoretical inconvenience, all the liberal geeks on the internets want to institute a byzantine regulatory regime. Because, you know, regulations make you free. Black is white. The chocolate ration has been increased.

Or is it simply an effort to begin the inevitable destruction of the frontier of free thought and untaxable, anonymous trade?

Right Wing Critique of the Week - Jack Ketchum

2010-08-17T20:31:00.000-07:00

Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door is the most horrifying movie ever made. At least, outside of Japan, and yet legal to watch in America. I mean, I like little girls in movies, like Hitgirl and... hmmm, Dakota Fanning is uncute and annoying... The one with Elle Fanning where she had OCD was pretty good. And my bff is into BDSM.

But combining little girls and BDSM, while it sounds good in principle, is cringe-inducing. Ever seen Tetsuo the Iron Man? That was popcorn material. Ever read The Hate Factory, a based on true events account of a prison riot? Yawn. At least the prison snitch died within a few hours. That's nothing.

Maybe I'm stretching here, because I've never seen Hostel, but usually when adults are gruesomely mutilated in a film, you think, "He probably voted for Obama so he deserves whatever he gets."

We almost turned the movie off before the climax, but it was in Blu-ray.

Now, there is a certain artistic argument for creating works that stimulate unpleasant emotion, and generally the more extreme the emotion generated, the more successful the art is. I prefer Monet and sword-fighting strippers myself, but those are sadly lacking in Hollywood. Note to studio execs- I have a scifi series to replace whatever Fox aborts this season. Hint- pressurized bubbles on the moon don't allow guns and don't require much clothing. If Summer Glau knows how to act yet, we can hire her.

Anyway, The Girl Next Door had plenty of "OOHHH!" but not enough enjoyment. I also felt that the last half was too heavy on the dungeon scenes and the plot wasn't as tightly woven as in the beginning. The foreshadowing was less stupid than in most movies, but the bluffs- where you expect something scary to happen but it doesn't- were pretty well done.

Other reviewers said that watching the movie made you a sex offender, but that it wasn't that graphic. Well, you don't see certain things, but I hardly think that horrified bystanders, flailing limbs and screaming are "not graphic."

So I don't really recommend the movie on the basis of its low entertainment value. At least the ending is ok.

Right Wing Critique of the Week

2010-07-31T09:20:00.000-07:00

Honor Harrington series, by David Weber

The saga of a space warship officer in the year 4000.

Pros: Exciting, page turners, good escapism, better than action pulps like Clive Cussler, orbital mechanics are somewhat realistic and integral to combat tactics

Cons? Well, first of all, the situations have all the ethical gray areas of a yin yang. The characters are pure good or pure evil. The good guys, of course, are not only brave, courteous, and thrifty, but they can fight, sail, fly, shoot, and navigate delicate interstellar political intrigues with ease. The Bad Guys are incompetent commies and/or religious nuts who rape, murder, betray each other and do everything in their power to hand victory to the Good Guys. There is a satisfying amount of injury and death from all the action, though. The Good Guys don't escape totally unscathed.

The books verge on fantasy-fulfillment of fanfic levels. Money, fame, glory, medals, knighthoods, titles, promotions and prestigious jobs are showered on Honor after every major event. It's a little excessive, even considering the theme is supposed to be the rise of a legendary admiral and her absurdly awesome exploits. In the third book she just does her job, nothing particularly spectacular, and once again hosannas fall from the sky and a single shaft of sunlight illumines her. In the fourth book, she learns to shoot in about two weeks and becomes apparently the greatest duelist in known space. Oh, and everybody is young and beautiful and lives for 200 years.

The technology makes sense, sort of, but it's all clearly designed to make large 17th century-esque naval engagements necessary. I sincerely hope that 2000 years from now, battleships sailing at 3000 times the speed of light through hyperspace will not need thousands of midshipmen to trim the sails. Yes, sails.

And why are the majority of the officers women? I haven't kept count, but it seems to me that the numbers should be equal, or male-skewed, particularly since astrogators are required to do math by hand.

Elizabeth Moon is better. Just flat-out better.

After writing that, I read books 4 through 8. I have to say, #1, 2, 7 and 8 are the best, but as the series goes on the books become needlessly drawn out and sometimes redundant. Chapter 19 of In Enemy Hands is nothing but introspection, and it recapitulates introspection that was carried out in chapter 5 or so. Is Weber padding his page counts and turning out the series for the money? Well, of course, and so would I. The padding is generally high quality material, but it's not space battle action. Over the course of the series Honor Harrington doesn't actually fight that many battles. She spends a year on medical leave, 2 years on vacation, a year or two guarding convoys. I was a bit disappointed with the lack of exploding spaceships. Particularly Field of Dishonor, which was an interesting excursion but probably could have been done better.

Books 5 through 8 are great plot-wise, but they digress into unnecessary scenes and description quite a bit. Every time an enemy ship is introduced, Weber spends 2 to 3 pages introducing the officers and telling us what color hair they have. Then the ship explodes and they all die.

Politically, the series is written from the point of view of a neo-con. The author's opinion is that government-run education is great, as long as it's not too socialist. I should be unsubtle here and say I find that a contradiction. There's almost no moralizing, but his mainstream redstate outlook does make me roll my eyes from time to time.

Wry: an all-purpose adjective that Weber thinks makes a paragraph funny. The characters have yet to say anything funny, but they grin wryly, speak wryly, and supposedly have wicked/devilish senses of humor. There was an in joke between Harrington and McKeon that the other characters didn't get.. and I didn't either. I suspect that there was no hidden meaning and that it was meant to be witty as a statement in and of itself. I'm not really sure.

Verdict: The plot could be tightened up a lot, but it's good when you finally get there.

"13-year-old girl dominates Little League"

2010-07-24T11:47:00.000-07:00

That's a yahoo headline. Tautologies never cease.

Laid Off

2010-07-05T18:32:00.000-07:00

After being an unemployed engineer for nearly 2 years, it was somewhat of a relief to be an employed manual laborer for 8 dollars an hour. But all good things must end, particularly when Democrats control the senate, and so I was laid off. Over half of the company's monthly expenses are taxes, or so I guesstimate.

So I got 3.5 months of work in, and, by wearing Goodwill jeans and eating peanut butter sandwiches every day, I was able to save up some money. Unfortunately this money doesn't really exist; my roommate owes it to me and he hasn't been paid since April. He's in the military; he just hasn't been paid. They may never pay him. In fact they're trying to find an excuse to kick him out so they don't have to pay the medical bills for the health problems he's developed in the military.

I wouldn't mind, although if I'm eligible for unemployment I still won't be able to pay the rent; it's just that I haven't seen my fiancee in 15 months and I'd rather marry her than not.

The sub-moral of the story is that the world is evil. If not for specific malicious actions on the parts of others, I would be in my 3-bedroom home with my wife right now, not slowly starving to death so I can use an absent relative's computer to apply for job # 400.

The moral is to avoid lashing out at other people, even if it seems like a good idea for a moment. At some point violent revolution, vendetta or war becomes necessary, but how to be sure that your personal desire for revenge isn't clouding your judgment?

Right Wing Critique of the Week - Cory Doctorow

2010-06-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present

I picked it up because Cory Doctorow is a cool name.

Doctorow is a Canadian and an idiot liberal, but it's not glaringly obvious in the stories. In this collected work there are prefaces where he says that GM workers are being screwed by the greedy corporation, which is trying to redirect their ire toward illegal immigrant scapegoats.

What? Maybe other greedy corporations are doing that, but the UAWs are overpaid and the union has destroyed the US car industry with the slight help of regulators. I don't think it's possible for the car makers to have agreed to the current pay and benefits without the implicit threat of government-imposed arbitration, violence against picket breakers, etc. It's possible, and in Iacocca's autobiography he has nothing bad to say about the unions, but... the UAWs are not being screwed.

Anyway, I found Overclocked to be mediocre. The writing was fine but the ideas (central to any sci fi short story) were eehhhhhhh. A row-boat with AI. Non-three-laws robots from China competing with three laws robots in the North American police state. I can't even remember the other ones.

Contrast to Robert Sawyer, whose writing is poorly executed but the ideas are original and somewhat genre-bending. I prefer his work.

Too much wasted space as well. It didn't drag, but it was not as concise as short stories should be.

Government as bacterial cultures

2010-06-14T18:09:00.000-07:00

A model for historical progression of government... kinda like the historical dialectic tautology... came to me recently.

Picture a grey field of nutrients, or people. Entropy is high and a state of chaos, a Hobbesian state of nature, rules.

But since germs are everywhere, little black patterns of lines form and spread. Bacterial cultures don't really look like that, but we're talking about governments. These are radial patterns with very little organization, but they have an obvious center. Eventually the networks cover 99.9% of the dish. They fight wars and sometimes split, reform, die and are replaced.

There are two opposing trends:
Over time, each network/government grows older, more complex, and centralizes its power until it dies from bureaucratic inertia.
But the next generation is less centralized- there are more networks, in less space, and within the networks are subgraphs with their identifiable centers of gravity.

Information technology, as well as other factors, determine the level of decentralization/self-organization of a government at birth. It ossifies and dies. But over time, the total organization of the petri dish increases.

A dictatorship based on one warrior and his loyal henchmen, no matter how absolute, has fewer rules and less complexity of regulation than an aristocracy.

Ideally I'd like to see this progression lead to a highly regulated anarchy where the individual has sovereignty but relative peace prevails... sort of like the New World Order we have today.

Will it? ehhhhhh the trend toward decentralization will end before people take responsibility for their actions.

Nonetheless, our descendants may live in a free country one day.

Substituting your own judgement for God's

2010-05-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

It's not smart in principle, but the reality is that we don't have access to God's wisdom. The Bible was targeted toward the illiterate peasants that have always composed 95% of humanity. Even the intelligent and/or educated are not so far beyond them that the message is irrelevant. Even a supergenius eats, sleeps, and reproduces- shares the same environment as all other humans.

Incidentally, I think that the "asthetic sense" is the only "higher pleasure," the only human drive that is not straightforwardly derived from evolutionary psychology or some equivalent biological theory; this sense, combined with high intelligence, produces the individuals that L. von Mises calls "creative geniuses." I do think it can be described mechanistically, so I share the view of Neal Stephenson's fictionalized Dr. Leibniz on that. In fact, that sort of dualism- simultaneous naturalistic and spiritual explanations that are completely self-reliant but coincide in all observable results- is the underpinning of my philosophical investigations. But I digress.

Are there layers and layers of meaning in the Bible that can be peeled away by successive human civilizations and ever-greater intellects to yield new insights that are irrelevant to the peasants who cannot even conceive of their existence? Maybe. In fact, I guarantee that there are, but those avenues I've explored aren't that helpful.

Extramarital sex- is it immoral? Puritans say yes. Reading Noadic law and the Torah and even, questionable though they seem, the writings of John, seem to indicate that it's all good so long as the social structures provide for the offspring's health and development. That leaves us three or more categories of readers.
1) The peasants- marry, mate, and raise the offspring in accordance with their understanding. History says this model works. Adultery and unwed mothers are frowned upon, but the "real" reason for this is that the children are either uncared for or charged to the wrong man's accounts.
2) Heretics- Like peasants, but they live like animals. If not for the welfare state, they would be repeatedly wiped out by plagues and wars like in all previous epochs.
3) Cosmopolitans- the 5%. They have the capacity for abstract thought and as a result they do what they want. Their lives illustrate the aphorism "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
4) Creative geniuses - generally focused on their work, so they behave like peasants, ie, socially conventional with occasional drastic departures from the norm.

Plenty more, and anyway, I don't like arbitrary categorization because it's only the first step toward developing an axiomatic theory.

But the point is we all draw different things from the same immutable Word of God.

So is there more room for discretion for a supergenius? A judge is allowed to sentence someone to death due to his experience and the ideological might of the government. An individual is not. Yet both are equally constrained not to murder.

I'm out of time for today.

Lebanese Chicks are Still Hot

2010-05-17T16:31:00.000-07:00

Sure, I brought it up when they were protesting something 5 years ago.. but now we have a Lebanese Miss America. According to the AP article I skimmed over, she's Arab.. but why are Lebanese Arabs hotter than non-Lebanese Arabs? Is it just the burkas?

Shame on you, Mafia!

2010-04-21T15:30:00.000-07:00

- CNN

I guess I can't paste into Blogger right now. I'd manually type in the quote, but I'll do this instead as a testament to the horde of gremlins that have ruined my life.

Dead Babies

2010-02-27T12:58:00.000-08:00

I can't stand people whining about healthcare for the poor and sick and young and helpless.

If there were a moral duty to save lives, then dollar-for-dollar we could save more lives by investing our billions in Africa. It costs $200,000 for a bone marrow transplant to save one American- say 40 years of life. For that much, you could save hundreds of Malaria victims who are currently dying in.. Kenya is it?

Clean water. Condoms. Whatever.

The fact is that for the most part, universal health care advocates don't care if there are children being tied to trees and raped to death in Darfur. They're just terrified of getting sick and dying. Or watching their children waste away and not being able to afford morphine. It's self-interest so intense that they don't mind robbing the small percent of the country that can afford to live forever.

Clean living and exercise are out of the question. Though honestly I don't think most people live egregiously unhealthily. Except for smoking. Occasional binge drinking and daily intake of grease and artificial sugar and preservatives is reasonable. But if you expect me to pay for a 50 year old man's liver transplant when he could pay cash, if he'd just saved decades of beer money...

When I get diabetes from all the ice cream and Dr. Pepper(TM), I still won't support the public option.

Negative Interest Rates

2010-02-26T09:53:00.000-08:00

make perfect sense when the currency deflates.

Everyone who pays attention to our Virtual Economy(TM) already knew this. "Real" interest rates would still be positive though, which is why I've never thought about it before. Knew it could happen, just didn't think it made much sense.

It's like saying shortages can persist indefinitely.

Incentives Produce Results

2010-02-24T17:18:00.000-08:00

As much as I would love nonviolent political action to succeed in reducing the size of government and increasing human liberty, I fully expect to watch the US spiral into authoritarian stagnation- if I live long enough. All of my grandparents are around 80 and still kicking, so that's a possibility.

Cutting taxes is occasionally possible. Cutting regulation for more than a few hours? I doubt it.

Cutting spending as a share of GDP, which is the most realistic measure of government size, is equally implausible. All the gallantly named TEA Parties and Campaigns for Liberty in the world won't change that by trying to pass bills or elect libertarians, unless

the structure of government is changed. The filibuster, for example, is not legislation, but it slows down the rate of lawmaking, moderates it, and possibly prolongs the life of the Empire.

The direct election of senators, on the other hand, changed the incentive of the senate from representing the interests of state level power (a federalist influence) to representing the interests of mobs of voters (an Imperial influence). And, since the elections are statewide rather than local, Senators are relatively more influenced by larger, more-organized special interest groups than are Representatives. Maybe. Representatives build bridges. Senators hand out industrial tax breaks. That's the idea, but you can probably tell I'm making the facts up as I go along.

Logically, then, the focus for libertarian groups should be changing the incentive structure applied to our public officials.

In a similar vein, overthrowing the public education system should be our #1 legislative priority. It doesn't necessarily ahve to be done via law. If anyone has a hundred billion dollars to spend, it can be done solely on private initiative. The danger is that any mass movement to homeschooling, private schools, virtual classrooms etc. would be met by new laws restricting those things "for the children." Ironically, "socialization" would be one of the main arguments against them. Socialization is one of the avowed goals of public education and no one has a problem with that. Back to the main story...

I'd say that repeal of the direct election of senators (17th amendment) is the single most important structural change we could make. Decentralization would follow logically. I'm not the only one to think of this; there are plenty of fringe groups out there that agree.

I just hate seeing all the wasted effort directed at unattainable policy goals.

Another Patriot Dies For His Country

2010-02-18T13:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2010/0218102stack1.html

The Stack Manifesto.

Ever read the UNA Bomber's manifesto? Quite intelligent and lucid, though I don't see how he makes the logical leap to mailbombing random scientists. I didn't read the last half because Teddy was some sort of eco-anarchist and I don't see how that could be achieved or sustained.

Too bad no one knows what a logarithmic curve is.

2010-02-17T11:33:00.000-08:00

http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/2/17/837726/-So-What-Would-Success-Look-Like

The curve is symmetrical. Conclusion? Changing presidents had no impact on the economy.

I met Ron Paul today.

2010-02-17T11:11:00.001-08:00

He's kind of weird. Weirder than on youtube.

Ethics vs. Morality

2010-02-17T10:20:00.000-08:00

I'm always working on this dichotomy, which is meaningless in most philosophical systems but very important in mine. I was told recently (see previous posts) that Christianity and naturalistic ethics cannot coexist peacefully.

The logical conclusion is that Christians will be persecuted or persecutors until the end of time. The pacifists would stay in the first category, which is preferable according to Seneca.

My opinion is

1) A peaceful society needs an agreed-upon standard of ethics.

2) Personal morality must be stricter than public ethics.

The reason for this second is that a looser morality means that you are being persecuted. Logically, then, public ethics should be as loose and inclusive as possible to avoid rebellion. Even if some Christian sect overthrows the Libertarian regime in the name of morality, and imposes their strict behavioral codes on the rest of the population, there will be unrest until the other factions are dead or converted.

Having a legal system where almost anything goes won't result in a perfect world, but it still allows the individual to conform to a stricter code and to proselytize that code. The greater the acceptance of a strict standard of behavior, the less necessary laws become.

Logically, then, Christians (or any other group that wants everyone to obey certain moral principles) should seek spiritual power by conversion, not temporal power by conquest. This is the old principle of ideological might; when a regime loses ideological power, it falls. Democracy is a way to ensure that the government always follows ideological power, thus reducing the chance of revolution.

A regime, whether democratic or not, gains ideological power by being more lenient and allowing all groups to enjoy the status quo. If we use the U.S. as an example, it worked fairly well in preventing the religious warfare that plagued Europe. Over time, the structure of goverment was an unstable system for whatever reason and has become encrusted with more and more laws. Generally, the relaxation of standards has increased support of the government and the tightening of standards has reduced support.

Example 1: Gay people enjoy getting married more than it irritates everyone else. Legalizing it reduces protests, stupid parades, and the tendency of the queer community to dress and act like freaks. It also recognizes homosexuality as ethically acceptable, which is bad according to many moralists.

The solution is not to ban gay marriage. That would just create unrest without diminishing the amount of sodomy that takes place. The solution is to strengthen the Church, guilt Gays into being celibate or marrying Lesbians, and then reduce the dysfunction of the next generation by providing appropriate gender role models. Alternatively, you can pretend homosexuals don't exist by cancelling your cable TV subscription.

Example 2: Everything else. Smokers are mad, people that hate seatbelts are mad, parents with unruly children are at risk of going to prison for hitting them. The level of discontent in this country is pretty high, and it would be higher if we weren't rich, fat and happy in the material realm.

Anyway, you may prefer a more regulated country, but no matter how authoritarian it is, you'll still be in trouble if it is stricter than your own personal morality. You'll inevitably break the law. Of course, being arrested is a result of making enemies or acting strangely in the presence of the police, not breaking the law, but habitual law-breaking will still put you at risk.

Pragmatic Ethical Systems

2010-02-17T09:56:00.000-08:00

continued from previous post..

My foe believes that self-interest is either bad or not good, and thus any ethical system based on self interest is bad.

1) Self-interest is good from the solipsist-materialist perspective

2) Game theory is a mathematical aspect of the natural universe

3) Self-interest can be used as the basis of a pragmatic, naturalistic ethical system

Now, if you oppose self-interest on religious grounds, you will obviously not agree with the pragmatic, naturalistic ethical system.. call it Hobbes' Social Contract, though Von Mises would be more accurate a representative.

However, you can't deny that in the absence of a religion to contradict it, self-interest tells you how to behave in a community, which is the definition of an ethical system.

Since self-interest is relative, the same ethical system applies to everyone, but it has to be stated very precisely. Negative rights such as life, liberty and property could be the basis of such a system, but it would not be a statement that "Murder is wrong and should be punished." It would be the statement, "Anyone who commits murder should be killed to protect me. I'll carry out the execution and take the shoes off his corpse." Or "I should not murder because I'll be executed." Or "I should not kill anyone because it's a waste of time."

"I enjoy killing people, so I'll do it until I get caught." This is rational, to a certain point, though it would be more rational to seek psychiatric help, and rationality ~= good. But practically, the society that results from such reasoning is the same as one in which murder is intrinsically bad. At what point can we draw a line between calling something a sin and merely illegal?

I think it's a fallacy to deny naturalistic ethics because they don't contain good and evil in the same way as Christian morality.

Hume's Guillotine from a Theological Perspective

2010-02-17T09:44:00.000-08:00

I've been debating someone on the validity of "natural rights"- that is, intrinsic, inalienable human rights derived from natural principles.

Although the other party hasn't really addressed my reasoning, he (or possibly she) does make a pretty good conservation-of-energy-style argument. This type of argument is one where you don't need to know the details of a perpetual motion machine to know it doesn't work.

Essentially, it's something called Hume's Guillotine: There is no valid way to go from a description of what is to what ought to be.

I disagree. If God created a good universe, which it seems he must have by definition, then what is and what ought to be are the same. The only exception is free will, which lets us depart from what ought to be... but the universe is good and we can therefore determine what is good by studying it. I suppose that not everyone believes in free will. Have fun with that.

If you don't believe in God, then your ethical system has to be based on natural principles anyway.

The Economy is Suffering... Let it Die

2010-02-14T14:43:00.000-08:00

Dear Applicant,

2010-02-10T07:14:00.000-08:00

You recently completed an application for a store job with Best Buy Co., Inc. and that application has now expired. If you are in an interview process for a different position, please continue with that process.

We would like to thank you for your interest in working with us, and let you know that while we may not have a job for you right now, we do work with other great companies that we can introduce you to.

As great as Best Buy? Because my tech support days could be better applied at Kinko's? If I'm not qualified to work at Best Buy then I'm not qualified to work anywhere. Which I'm not.. the decline in oil prices means there are 5000 O&G engineers with years of XP looking for jobs right now.

This is what's wrong with our economy.

2010-02-05T20:32:00.000-08:00

http://www.spinner.com/2010/02/03/mary-j-blige-stairway-to-heaven/

These poor musicians have nothing better to do.

Dear Applicant,

2010-02-03T13:09:00.001-08:00

Thank you for your interest in the Bulk Loader (23372). After careful review of your background, we have elected to pursue other candidates at this time whose qualifications more closely match our needs for this position.

Although we did not see an exact match with your background for this position, we encourage you to visit our website often to explore other opportunities, keep your internal resume up to date, and set up a "Search Agent" so that the system will notify you of future openings based on your criteria. In the meantime, thank you again for your interest - we wish you the best of luck with your search.

Sincerely,

Talent Team
Dr Pepper Snapple Group
Passionate People. Powerful Brands. The Perfect Mix.

I'm going to miss Western Civilisation

2010-02-03T08:57:00.000-08:00

http://defensetech.org/2010/01/29/bayonets-hit-the-mark/

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0bd_1249524865

The battle began when over 100 Mahdi army fighters ambushed two unarmored vehicles transporting around 20 Argylls on the isolated Route Six highway near the southern city of Amarah. Ensconced in trenches along the road, the militiamen fired mortars, rocket propelled grenades, and machine gun rounds. The vehicles stopped and British troops returned fire. The Mahdi barrage caused enough damage to force the troops to exit the vehicles.The soldiers quickly established a defensive perimeter and radioed for reinforcements from the main British base at Amarah – Camp Abu Naji. Reinforcements from the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment assisted the Argyles in an offensive operation against the Mahdi militiamen. When ammunition ran low among the British troops, the decision was made to fix bayonets for a direct assault.

The British soldiers charged across 600 feet of open ground toward enemy trenches. They engaged in intense hand-to-hand fighting with the militiamen. Despite being outnumbered and lacking ammunition, the Argylls and Princess of Wales troops routed the enemy. The British troops killed about 20 militiamen in the bayonet charge and between 28 and 35 overall. Only three British soldiers were injured.This incident marked the first time in 22 years that the British Army used bayonets in action. The previous incident occurred during the Falklands War in 1982.

Had an interview last week

2010-01-26T10:01:00.001-08:00

Actually 3 interviews at the same company. Had to make three separate trips of 40 minutes each way, two of them the same day. With any luck I'll be doing manual labor by next week.

Top Ten Benefits to Unemployment

2010-01-20T10:22:00.000-08:00

10) Sleep in every day

9) Plenty of time to read

8) No powerpoint clipart

7) Watching Heroes episodes back-to-back

6) Food stamps. You eat better than people that work for a living, with the exception of drug dealers, who have to spend cash discreetly

5) Sitting on a park bench, watching little girls with bad intent

4) Personal Hygiene is optional

3) Pants are optional

2) No bills to pay

1)No taxes

This is what's wrong with our schools.

2010-01-12T11:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/bizarre/6773519.html

Hairstyles "designed to attract attention to the individual or to disrupt the orderly conduct of the classroom or campus (are) not permitted,"
...
"students who dress and groom themselves neatly, and in an acceptable and appropriate manner, are more likely to become constructive members of the society in which we live."

Are these people getting creepier, or am I becoming more radicalized?

UPDATE: Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's me.

This is what's wrong with our culture.

2010-01-12T10:34:00.000-08:00

(12:28:02 PM) Will: This country lost its way, Michael, and after years of economic research and light historical reading, I've pinpointed the exact moment when all hope for America vanished.
(12:28:19 PM) Will: The year was 1939
(12:28:33 PM) Will: and Shirley Temple declined the role of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz
(12:28:51 PM) Will: Damn you, Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(12:28:55 PM) Will: Damn you to hell

This is what's wrong with our foreign policy.

2010-01-08T17:07:00.001-08:00

Ms. Davis-Packard studied in Yemen during the summer of 2008. She is a Ph.D. student in international affairs at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins.

-WSJ

Small Businesses Blame Economists for Recession

2010-01-08T17:00:00.000-08:00

I had an interview today. It went pretty well. The first person I spoke to told me that they had massive layoffs last year, when the stimulus package was announced and everyone stopped construction projects.

Same Course

2009-12-16T21:40:00.001-08:00

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/79288022.html?page=1&c=y

I may steal all my links from Vox, but I doubt anyone cares.

Par for the course

2009-12-12T14:05:00.001-08:00

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=932

Good Science

2009-12-11T22:37:00.000-08:00

“As a professional scientist, Wikipedia is my go-to source for ideas and concepts new to me. Donate for this? You bet!” - Wikipedia banner

I'm guessing he's a climatologist.

Screw it

2009-12-08T11:13:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking about ditching this blog and creating a new one that includes avante garde youtube videos, indie music reviews, technological prognostication and other geek-chic lifestyle BS., besides nihilistic social commentary. But as I'm unemployed, I don't really have the money for a domain name and server. I would also like to create a one-stop resource for agorism/cryptoanarchy/etc., near-useless though it would be, but the same problem applies. Did you know that 1 person can get 200$ a month in food stamps? That's more than I ever spent in my life. I didn't realize that welfare people lived better than I did. Wait...

Welfare Moms- waifish children, cable TV, and RC Cola

Me- long hours of studying and unfulfilled dreams

blast it. In other news, I am now offering my drafting/mopping/receptionist/mechanical engineering services for $10/hr in the Houston, TX region. For a better offer I will go literally anywhere on earth, except for southern Alaska.

The creation of the universe is not reproducible,

2009-11-28T12:53:00.000-08:00

therefore it's not good science.

Palin Protagonist Meets Alaskan Justice

2009-11-21T17:12:00.000-08:00

Palin's Daughter's Baby's Daddy's Mother got a plea deal.

She sold a small quantity of prescription painkillers to ~~entrapp~~ undercover agents, so they charged her with 6 felonies. They dropped 5 and gave her 3 years out of a minimum 5... she'll do 2 with good behavior and can probably do those on ankle monitor (at home, not actually in jail) since she's a woman.

Question: Why would they drop 5 felonies? Why not just convict her of all 6? Or if the state doesn't want to give her 6 felonies, why charge her with them? Well, first, trials are expensive. Less than 10% of cases go to trial. I just made that statistic up; I think it's much lower.

Second, it's game theory. Faced with 30 years in prison, anyone would take 2. Doesn't matter how innocent you are. Particularly if you can't afford 30,000$ for a private lawyer. If they only charged people with crimes that they might be guilty of, the plea deals would be much lower.

Of course, the 4 years of probation will ensure that whatsername spends the next decade in and out of jail for traffic tickets and recidivism.

Legalize Vice Now.

Still Unemployed

2009-11-12T11:23:00.000-08:00

Well, I found a job, but I went to Alaska for a week before my start date and spent 8 months in prison for a misdemeanor. There's a good chance I was guilty, but it doesn't really matter; they refused me bail and a speedy trial, so I would still be rotting there if I cared about my reputation.... I plead guilty after about 6 months. Every good anarchist should spend at least one stretch in prison for no legitimate reason.

That may not be a well-written explanation, but I shan't clarify.

So, obviously, I lost all my physical possessions and credit, except for my car and some clothes that my sister saved from my apartment after the police raid and before I was evicted. They seized all my computers in various states, but I should get most of them back.

Remember kids- if you're sitting in your home, using military grade encryption and erasure software to protect your tax records et cetera, the police can break in and call you a hacker any time they want. Sure, the "evidence" can't be used in trial- you haven't done anything that could justify a search. But it takes a year to go to trial. Some states allow you to post bail; others just laugh at you.

I've long had a set of rules for avoiding prison.

1) Don't break the law unnecessarily.
2) Don't leave physical evidence or witnesses that can make you look like anything less than a Sunday school teacher.
3) Don't talk to poor people.
4) Don't talk to repeat criminals or anyone who acts like trailer trash, even if they're not poor.
5) Never speak to anyone in a public place.
6) Don't have children.
7) Don't piss anyone off.
8) Never give the police probable cause for anything.
9) Never talk to the police.

You should also avoid living inside city limits and so forth, but really, the trick is to never attract the attention of anyone at all. I successfully did that by staying at home in front of a computer for 6 years, but I screwed up by being rude to some lady I've never met by not going out of my way to meet her. I'm not sure. Signing off.

Are You F***ing Kidding Me? Part II

2009-03-03T14:36:00.000-08:00

"Professionals are realizing the prescribed path of a college degree leading to a lucrative job may no longer exist, as the volatile economy takes a toll on some of the soundest professions, such as banking and law." - CNN

Wh- wh- what?

It kinda goes without saying,

2009-02-16T08:50:00.000-08:00

but I'll never buy another American vehicle. I've had 2 Fords, a Mercury (Ford), an Oldsmobile and a Chevy so far... but since they've decided to ask for tax money rather than go bankrupt, my next car will be a Toyota.

Taking welfare? Fine. Fraudulently receiving welfare? Robbing the Treasury at gunpoint? Fine.

Voting for welfare? No.

To be expected

2009-02-14T21:35:00.000-08:00

Although my tax return implied that I would be getting an extra $300- you know, for the stimulus check I didn't get last year- I just got the deposit and it didn't include that. Oh well. I guess they denied it because I was supposed to get it last year. Including the return, I have enough for my student loan payment for this month.

I think I'll go apply for food stamps Tuesday.

Still unemployed

2009-02-10T19:49:00.000-08:00

I just typed my situation into Google and it came up with sites telling me how to kill myself. Thanks, guys. Well, there's one thing that I would like to say to all the fifteen year olds talking about suicide on livejournal...

Life doesn't get better. Your misery is a subjective experience that comes from your beliefs about the world, not from the objective experience of the world itself. Frankly, I don't think life is worth living either, but somebody has to pay taxes to support wars and welfare queens and the restriction of our various liberties.

Not that I pay taxes. I figure if I ever find a job I can make up to 70K before I run out of ways to evade.

But yeah, I got a degree in engineering last May. Had some cash saved up from my National Guard days, so I came to Houston, where people won't stop to let you cross the road. I prefer the combination of indifference, recklessness, and genuine friendliness of Texas to the culture or lack thereof elsewhere. Plus there's no state income tax, although the state is ranked poorly in business taxation.

So I've been reading, applying to jobs, and planning for the future, but I never got depressed about it all until a day or two ago. I think I've applied to every engineering job in Houston at least once, as well as a couple of drafting/admin etc. jobs. I've made this sign that I'm going to sit outside with. Also my resume and portfolio such as it is. Trying to decide between Greenway Plaza 24 and Sugarland for my first day.

I guess I'm depressed because my current assets are less than my current liabilities now. I can slide by with my financing genius for another few months, but it's time to seriously consider selling my car. The only good car I've ever owned. With my custom stereo painstakingly wired together by me. The 12" subs and crunch amp that have followed me through thrown rods, stripped gears and TSA searches. This is the third car they've been installed in, you see. I haven't decided how to fasten them down yet... Velcro(TM) would be good, but taking them out of the tubes and putting them in the rear deck would save space.

I guess the moral of the story so far is that I have an 05 Impala for sale in Houston.

Now, I can only blame myself for not applying to more jobs. 145 in 7 months is less than one per day on average. And anyway, I could start my own business. I could program iPhone apps. I could use my vast entrepreneurial knowledge to contribute to the economic recovery, instead of passively waiting for a bite. But the fastest route to billions would have been HVAC designer.

I'll fry me some cheeseburgers. That should... do it.

The one bright spot in all this is that my fiancee lives in Alaska and my being a bum is irrelevant. Course it also means I can't marry her or see her until I find a job. Well, she says she won't leave me. If an asteroid hits DC, then we should have an economic recovery within a year and all will be well.

Is that really my plan? Hit DC with an asteroid? (bitterly) Imagine all the jobs created by the reconstruction projects.

No one's been interested in my abstract and acerbic rants on philosophy, but whining is really popular. Maybe I'll make Instapundit.

Crazy people

2009-02-08T22:00:00.000-08:00

"But if I want to be honest with myself, I can remember plenty of times when I felt uncomfortable. And many of the earlier ones involved eating alone in the dining hall. I didn't eat by myself often, and when I did, it was usually a simple matter of conflicting schedules with my friends. But my unease sprang from my inability to convey that to the strangers around me. Honest, I'm not a loner. I had to learn to deal with the discomfort." - Neil Swidey

Is this... normal? usual? It's possible most people do eat lunch with friends or coworkers on a regular basis, but ehhhh????

Time to bend over and receive a Stimulus

2009-02-05T08:23:00.000-08:00

The peer pressure will be too much. This monstrosity was doomed to pass from the beginning, but I was hoping it would bog down congress for a while.

I just don't see them resisting the peer pressure much longer. The GOP has already been reduced to making their own ironically bad suggestions to amend the bill. Increasing the tax credit for buying a home? Really? Because a surge in real estate prices has never caused us problems before, has it? *looks around at global financial apocalypse* Oh yeah, huh.

They live in their own perceptual bubbles.

2009-02-03T15:23:00.000-08:00

As always, Andrew Sullivan links to outrageous BS.

"But there is a strong possibility now that we have seen our way through the worst of this situation and that Iraq may have a more peaceful, less tyrannical future. It also should mean that we can bring home our troops more quickly--maybe even in the next 16 months." - Joe Klein

The worst of this situation passed a year and a half ago. The current plan is to bring our troops home within 16 months (though that actually means leaving most of them there, since Obama has no exit plan). Exactly what the**** is Klein smoking? He's caught in his own narrative, as are most humans.

"b) The Obama stimulus bill gives the most money to the growing parts of the economy—health care and education.

If you guessed (b), give yourself a pat on the back. Despite all the talk of big infrastructure projects, the majority of increased spending in the bill goes to health and education. And that's a good thing." - Michael Mandel

Leaving aside the complete and utter ignorance of economics, which seems to be prevalent among the media, politicians and Keynesians, the only reason those sectors are growing is because they are already the recipients of government subsidies - paid for with taxes on the construction and manufacturing sectors. The rest of his argument is equally specious; you can't outsource construction, though you can travel overseas for education and healthcare, or have them delivered via UPS, youtube or telerobotics as the case may be.

That's a good thing? All of the subsidies are misguided, but you just spit in the eyes of the manufacturing sector. Let's see the Web 2.0 companies take off without computers or offices. Let's see a renaissance of high-quality local clinics without affordable cat scanners. Let's see doctors perform chemotherapy without nuclear material processing plants out there in the flyover states. As a matter of fact, without Boeing they would be walk-through states. You realize that- nevermind.

My life could have meaning

2009-01-26T12:47:00.000-08:00

but only if the stimulus bills don't hurt the economy too bad.

Of course, the intent is to "help" the economy, that great abstract conception of the sum of trillions of individual transactions, but it can't.

The problem is that macroeconomics- and hence the retarded Keynesian approach that perpetually f***s us all- relies on a fallacy that I'll call "macro-demand."

Demand for any given product is finite. The macroeconomic view seems to be that aggregate demand is the sum of all these lesser demand curves, but that's incorrect.

Total demand is... more or less infinite. It equals production, at all times, so long as we count totally useless production of crappy goods to be consumption.

The individual demand curves represent the desired allocation of society's productive capacity.

Fiscal policies that attempt to "boost demand" (which is already infinite in the relevant respect, ie in the amount of useless junk consumers want to purchase) simply results in a reallocation of production away from investment and "targeted" consumption to whatever random and usually stupid pork projects the politicians want.

This reduces output from a subjective standpoint and reduces economic growth.

'Office Space' Sucked

2009-01-25T01:23:00.000-08:00

Haha a red stapler lol.
WTF? It's a red stapler. It's not funny.

I imagine this post will be even less popular than the last. No matter; here are a few thingsAmericans love that actually suck.

The Black Eyed Peas, especially Fergie
Family Guy
American Idol
Surreal Humor
Barack Obama
Fiat Currency
SUVs
War
The 90s Batman Movies
Frank Miller
American Comics in General, except for The Watchmen
Beer
Arguing
Car chase videos
Stupid criminal videos
Lawyer, Doctor, and Cop shows
TV on average
MySpace
Starbucks
Toby Keith
Jazz
Comediennes
Stephen Colbert
iPhones
Halo (the video game)

Racism Banzai

2009-01-24T04:00:00.000-08:00

Ever since the election, I've decided to take advantage of the new post-racial America by being racist. You see, I once had a communist bastard history professor (haven't we all) who said that racism by minorities didn't matter because they weren't in power. He was black himself, so you'd think he'd be more apologetic, but any way.

Now that "the man" keeping us down is a "black man," it seemed like I (as a pure-blooded Gaelic Nordo-Franco-Anglo-Saxon) could now express my latent inner racist. The Left always says that we're racist, after all. I proceeded to answer all of my quasi-liberal friend's complaints with "It's because we elected a nigger president." He laughed from pure shock, but he told me each time I was racist. Soon, he told me that I should seriously stop.

But "Jason," says I, "I can't help my racism. I was raised in a racist society."
"Your girlfriend is black!" he says, which is totally beside the point.
"She hates black people too." As a matter of fact, she's only 39% African and 10% European.

That settled the matter nicely. It reminds me of the time in college when I greeted a Persian co-worker with "wassup, my nigga?" He found it hysterical, though we both looked around in fear of thought-police.

So I was at a really ghetto Minit Mart last week (run by Pakistanis) with my homeboy Dave and I waited in the truck so terrorists wouldn't jack it. When he returned, I told him about the fly honey he'd missed. He disappeared for a moment in the direction I indicated and returned, disappointed that she was a Negro. I really don't see how colored girls can be excluded from the group "fly honies," considering the Urban Youth wink wink origin of the phrase.

I may rap about this experience later.

UPDATE: I realize this post sounds as if I've lost my touch for satire, but these are true stories.

QFTD2

2009-01-21T00:48:00.000-08:00

Myrna, you see, believed that all humans living south and west of the Hudson River were illiterate cowboys or -- even worse -- White Protestants, a class of humans who as a group specialized in ignorance, cruelty, and torture. (I don’t wish to especially defend White Protestants; I am not too fond of them myself.) - A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Toole

QFTD

2009-01-21T00:40:00.000-08:00

"In spite of all to which they have been subjected, Negroes are nonetheless a rather pleasant folk for the most part. I really have had little to do with them, for I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one." - ~~Vox Day~~ A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Toole

Tea Party

2009-01-20T16:03:00.001-08:00

This guy has the idea of protesting Congress's continuing disruption of the economy by mailing teabags to D.C. Eh. Do it if you're so inclined. The Republic will fall on schedule.

I would go for something more dramatic, in the vein of the original tea party.

Scientific Philosophy Rebuild

2009-01-08T11:20:00.001-08:00

All theories are just a curve fit to the available data; experiments are merely an educated guess at the best way to acquire new data.

According to this view, a theory that has been experimentally verified hundreds of times with new evidence, like the theory of relativity, is no better than one constructed after the fact.

Chronology- prediction, backtesting, whatever- is completely irrelevant.

This post is PG13

2009-01-07T10:23:00.000-08:00

"For example, many of the people who say they lost money in Madoff's alleged Ponzi scheme were celebrity actors, writers, wealthy people -- people with abundant smarts." - CNN

Are you f---ing kidding me?

Heh. Hehehe.

2009-01-06T10:28:00.000-08:00

Glad to see that the new Congress is off to a good start.
-Blagojevich
--Burris
-Franken
-Richardson
-Panetta

And the depression that Obama is planning. When the next wave hits immediately after the next stimulus, will that be enough to end the quackery? I doubt it.

Updates

2008-12-30T04:25:00.000-08:00

Now that I'm no longer a child prodigy, but a bum in a pink bathtowel, I no longer feel the need to guard my identity so closely. I estimate that 14% of all libertarian bloggers are engineers or programmers.

Anyway, I invented a new form of irony today. I've been using it for a while, but only this morning did full understanding dawn upon me.

Essentially, you make a statement whose intended veracity is ambiguous. Is it meant to be taken seriously, sarcastically, whimsically, or is it sarcastic but secretly true for PC purposes? No one knows what you really meant, but the point of the statement is, like a koan, to make the audience reflect on the contradictions inherent in society's consensus truth.

Quote for 2008

2008-12-10T12:40:00.000-08:00

"The results, I confess, were somewhat surprising, and not in a good way," - John Dugan, head of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

What? You mean a single individual can't comprehend the economic activity of 300,000,000 Americans, 6 billion foreigners, and countless legal entities in their awesome totality, in real time, and then by a few specific actions redirect the entire system like some sort of Butterfly God? My goodness!

Pride goeth before the fall.

Neh

2008-12-02T15:11:00.000-08:00

Presumably none of the lost googlers stumbling through here are political junkies and manga fans, but here.

http://rapidshare.com/files/169668694/229286-KnAGolden_Boy_v05_Study35_v2.rar.html

This is why Japanese comics are better. Those of you who have no interest whatsoever in manga should also d/l it. What was I going to say....

Crisis

2008-11-24T06:05:00.000-08:00

I thought that a crisis was the moment when a number of trends suddenly converged to create a SHTF moment.

Apparently, the consensus definition of a crisis includes pretending that the problem isn't one of our making and that it can actually be fixed with stopgap measures, and then running about like chickens with our heads cut off.

Somewhat relevant Von Mises quote

2008-11-22T09:19:00.000-08:00

"The amount of money to be expended in every branch of profit-seeking business is determined by the behavior of the consumers. If the automobile industry were to treble the capital employed, it would certainly improve the services it renders to the public. There would be more cars available. But this expansion of the industry would withhold capital from other branches of production in which it could fill more urgent wants of the consumers. This fact would render the expansion of the automobile industry unprofitable and increase profits in other branches of business." - Human Action p. 309

Corporate Taxes

2008-11-21T15:26:00.001-08:00

Let us define three all-encompassing categories of resource usage: consumption, investment, and government services. Draw the lines wherever you see fit.

Ideally, the purpose of taxes is to shift resources from consumption to government services.

Corporations do not consume anything.

Ergo, taxing corporations shifts resources away from investment rather than consumption.

In an ideal (from a progressive* standpoint?) economy, this would be flawed reasoning; the corporations would simply reduce profits and the shareholders would reduce consumption by a corresponding amount. Investment would be unchanged.

In an ideal (from the standpoint of someone who understands basic economics, ie not a progressive) but simplistic economy, taxes would reduce consumption and investment by X and Y amounts, and the values X and Y would be constant no matter where the taxes were applied.

As models get more advanced, but maintain the pretense of superrationality**, various things happen. Corporations are by definition owned by people who devote a higher proportion of resources to investment. Thus taxing them reduces the ratio of investment to consumption even more than taxing wealthy individuals, many of whom are playboys, heiresses and dilettantes of various stripes.

Without perfect rationality, does the same amount of taxation on the same individual have a different effect if it is taken from the corporation rather than from dividend income? What is the effect? Do the corporations reduce profits solely or do they also reduce their own investment?

Would investment increase because of lower required rates of return? Unlike most of the absurdly simple things that politicians can't seem to grasp, this isn't immediately obvious.

At any rate, it's simpler just to soak the rich rather than indirectly soaking the rich via corporate taxes. Plus think of all the effort that it takes to do corporate taxes in the first place! There's like a million accountants working on them around the clock!

*What I've settled on as a name for American socialism

**Perfect information and perfect decisionmaking

Stereotypes

2008-11-20T14:59:00.001-08:00

Sometimes stereotypes are a historical ideal, the safest assumption, or the most likely value of some quality.

Other times, they refer not to individuals but to the behavior of the group as a whole. It doesn't matter if only 20% of the Huns are bloodthirsty warriors; a horde of them is dangerous.

As Von Mises said, selling lottery tickets is not gambling.

Skynet

2008-11-20T13:48:00.000-08:00

1) If we define natural rights as those rights which man would enjoy if he were alone in the world,

Then you can guarantee that his rights are never violated by destroying all other men.

//------------------------------

2) If one's only goal is to stop injustice,

Then the only course of action is to punish all injustice by death until only one man remains.

//----------------------------

No one would enjoy the second result. Although not quite reductio ad absurdum, this is a strong counterargument to the idea that we have a duty to prevent evil.

End of the world 2

2008-11-20T03:09:00.000-08:00

"Police say a dad encouraged two toddlers to beat each other and caught the fight on tape." - CNN

Of course CNN is making a bigger deal out of it than it is, which is a feat. I mean, it's obviously child abuse, and they should probably throw the father in the Octagon for a few rounds and then force him to go to parenting classes. But one incident is not going to psychologically scar the children unless CPS takes them, which I can only assume has already happened. They're not physically hurt either.

EDIT: Oh, and after showing the video for our amusement and CNN's profit, they say that it should never have been on youtube and only immature people would watch it. Ok, I know journalists are idiots, hypocrites, and liars, but how can you say that with a straight face? It's ok for CNN to show a video but not youtube? Are you aware that you just insulted your audience and yourselves? I couldn't say that with a straight face. I just couldn't.

Did I mention the father put it on youtube? He's f***tarded too.

End of the world as we know it

2008-11-18T13:55:00.000-08:00

"This summer, Karen, a surveyor, agreed to have her face injected with millions of microscopic new skin cells, cultured from babies' foreskins, as part of a trial into a new cosmetic procedure."

"With just a few clicks of the remote, TiVo users can pause their program, order a pizza, and then sit back, relax, and return to their favorite show without missing a single second..."

"But then, when an SYM walks into a bar and sees an attractive woman, it turns out to be nothing like that. The woman may be hoping for a hookup, but she may also be looking for a husband, a co-parent, a sperm donor, a relationship, a threesome, or a temporary place to live."

Worst analogy ever

2008-11-13T21:04:00.000-08:00

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/11/that-old-house.html

This is quite possibly the worst analogy I've ever seen. It would be better as an analogy for statism. Cuz, ya know, you don't really own your house. You're just leasing it from the government, and it can be taken back for failure to pay rent or for the 'public' good. That's the meaning of the term "real estate."

I saw a sign in a picture that said "Gay marriage is a civil right." No, you see, it's not. A civil right is a right that is granted by the government. Gay marriage is not granted by the government; ergo it's not a civil right.

(The triumph of logic will take another millenium because of things like this. People accept unproven statements of fancy and it falls to the people with actual knowledge to disprove an infinite number of fallacies, which is itself a thankless task that never ends. Just... don't believe things without some sort of rationale.)

Anyway, one could reasonably argue that gay marriage is a natural right, depending on various things, but not a civil right.

What is civil marriage? It is a government license that comes with various restrictions and privileges. It has several purposes:
1) It serves the economic purpose of the marriage contract without requiring a tribal society, fickle common law, or actual written prenups. God Forbid you actually scan over a legal document and sign it. Common Law marriage prevents people from escaping government regulation by default.
2) It allows feminists or other interest groups to exert social pressure, since people's marriages are now controlled by the majority opinion, rather than an understanding between husband and wife.

Arguably the system now is better than the traditional system, but it's inferior to a system where couples sign prenups and have the priest sprinkle water on them.

So, essentially, gays want these positive privileges and benefits and restrictions. I don't have a problem specifically with gay marriage, since God can strike them down if He sees fit. In fact, legalizing gay marriage would let the GOP pick up a whole .5% of the voters who are gay, but not thieves or liars.

Those voters might become disillusioned and vote for Ron Paul or something, but it's a chance we have to take.

The better solution would be the end of civil marriage, which has evolved somewhat over time. Of course, no one can comprehend that. But how will we get married if the State of California doesn't allow it??? Well, the State of California didn't exist in 1000 BC, but people still got married. I'm sure you can figure out how to
1) Cohabitate
2) Ovulate, Copulate, and Overpopulate
3) Sign a contract that prevents one spouse from running off and leaving the children etc.

The last one's not a problem specifically for gay couples. (Adoption is an issue for heteros as well so STFU with your objection.)

Well, I've already belabored all the consequences and side effects of ending marriage licensing, so I'll stop here. The takeaway is: Don't make up nonsensical analogies.

Words to lie with, part something

2008-11-08T15:18:00.000-08:00

"Ensure"

I have never seen anyone use this word in a way that tried to convey accurate information. The denotation itself may be flawed.

So remember, if someone wants to ensure that a praiseworthy goal is met, they're lying to you.

Eloquence

2008-11-07T19:28:00.000-08:00

When a reporter asked Obama if he had spoken with any ex-presidents since his election on Tuesday, he responded that he had spoken to all former presidents "that are living."

"I didn't want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any seances," he said. - CNN

So it begins.

5th of November

2008-11-05T10:55:00.001-08:00

I find that I don't really care. Let's get to work undermining the Obama administration.

1) Split the Union democrats away from him.

2) Complain profusely when the Filibuster is repealed

3) Take the initiative by proposing various bills that the Democrats will scoff at and refuse to allow out of committee. They can only hold one thought in their feeble minds at one time, and they're used to blindly opposing Republican ideas, so they will forget that they have their own agenda.

4) Try to get the Governers' association to oppose Federal usurption for once. Is that a word? Usurption?

5) Encourage Obama's tendency to do absolutely nothing of substance by loudly applauding his "summits," "negotiations" and "panels."

In your face, Red State.

2008-11-05T10:54:00.000-08:00

I'm going to take this opportunity to make fun of Red State one last time.

"I'm also aware that a fair number of people are going to take this opportunity to attempt to savagely mock my side of the political spectrum in general and this site in particular (and a few may even spare a mock or two for myself),"

because you're the dumbest contributor to the site, and possibly the internet. I wouldn't even call the other posters there "dumb," usually.

"all of which is going to be an active annoyance for the next week or so, and a low-grade one for somewhat longer. We'll also have to listen to the inevitable you-should-do-it-my-way people,"

You mean the people who wanted to nominate someone decent? Like Romney, Giuliani, or even (pragmatically, though I can't stand him) Huckabee? Hell Ron Paul might've had a fighting chance given that he predicted the current economic crisis and had the solution to it a year ago.

"[A]ll the folks who told us McCain was the man, from Christopher Buckley to New Hampshire's primary voters, had no difficulty abandoning him for Obama." - Mark Steyn. (lifted from VP)

"although that's actually fairly typical in the internet anyway. All in all, this is why people avoid defeats; they're pains in the fundament."

No, people avoid defeat because, by definition, it's something you avoid. We want to enact certain government policies, and it doesn't matter who complains later.

"And that's pretty much it. Heck, I'm not even numb. Believe me, I'm surprised by this, too."

Surprised? Really? You thought McCain was going to win? Delusions. Red Staters told me they didn't want my vote, and ya know, I didn't vote. In your faces.

"Moe Lane"

As always. Here's a good time to reiterate a statistical theorem I developed:

Assumption 1) There are X% of voters who are, colloquially, morons.

Assumption 2) Those voters have no way of determining which candidate is better.

Conclusion 1) Those voters will be split evenly between the two candidates.

Conclusion 2) There are an equal number of morons in each party.

Applying that theorem to Moe Lane is an exercise left to the reader. If he notices this, which I doubt, he may wonder why I hate him so much, when people like Andrew Sullivan are less honest and more weak-minded and selfish.

The Price of Justice

2008-11-04T11:54:00.000-08:00

"A legal system that makes contracts to cheap to create will lead to too much taxpayer money being wasted on contract litigation." - TechLiberation.com

Huh. Obviously, all costs should be borne by the parties involved in the lawsuits. It may seem unfair to make innocent people pay for justice, but under the current system, innocent people (taxpayers) are paying for justice anyway.

There are a few side effects to consider, but they're not really my problem.

Note to self

2008-11-03T20:22:00.000-08:00

Public goods (including IP in the absence of protective law) will be produced on commission for trade groups etc. This will eliminate entrepreneurial risk for artists.

My prediction for November 4

2008-10-23T12:26:00.001-07:00

The votes are in! Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States!...

(Removes the mask, revealing Ashton Kutcher)

you got punk'd!

Introducing the Armed Revolt Clock

2008-10-22T13:15:00.001-07:00

No, not really.

92-year-old woman more relevant than Fed

2008-10-18T12:01:00.001-07:00

Here.

I voted in February.

2008-10-17T18:50:00.001-07:00

Ron Paul, the only candidate who could tell Supply from Demand.

Right Wing Critique of the Week

2008-10-15T13:15:00.000-07:00

Awesome:

Joss Whedon's super-villain musical extravaganza, produced for the internet outside of the Hollywood machine and thus devoid of focus-grouped cliches and systematic leftist propaganda.

I used a colon as a verb.

Firefly was okay.

Life of Brian

2008-10-14T15:04:00.001-07:00

I also watched Life of Brian today and wondered how many people watched the "Think for yourselves!" scene without realizing it was about them.

I never thought I'd say this, but I need a job.

Glib Idealising that is, in fact, empirically and theoretically sound, not that anyone will notice.

2008-10-14T14:51:00.000-07:00

My conclusion is that Krugman, like most people and most scientists, uses baseless assumptions to generate a flawed model using slipshod methods, and then projects his own biases onto the model to arrive at an obviously wrong conclusion.

But I'll give him credit for this:

"gut feelings are not a sound basis for policy." - Krugman, The Role of Geography in Development

I suppose I should make at least one counterpoint to what he suggests- and bear in mind that that's not a research paper.

There are no "winners" and "losers" in the geographical distribution of industry unless one subjectively labels industrial concentration as the winner. The individuals in the "backward" agricultural region would have equally high benefits (buying power + clean air etc.) as those in the industrial agglomeration, if there were a relatively easy way to move between the two. AKA a rational market.

There's not. Sheeple tend to stay where they are, which is why they're called sheeple and there are no rational markets.

1) I disagree that they are disadvantaged, though "losers" may be an appropriate term for someone who stays at an economic disadvantage for irrational reasons. That was redundant, but I don't want anyone complaining because they don't understand what I'm saying.

2) The correct solution is to lower mobility barriers for the people involved, not to try to decentralize industry.

2.5) Technological progress is about making the markets more efficient and removing said barriers.

2.6) The logical conclusion is to fire all the economists and socialists and bureaucrats.

Dune Messiah

2008-10-14T12:10:00.001-07:00

"We can't stop our kids from using these tools to create, or make them passive. We can only drive it underground, or make them "pirates." And the question we as a society must focus on is whether this is any good. Our kids live in an age of prohibition, where more and more of what seems to them to be ordinary behavior is against the law. They recognize it as against the law. They see themselves as "criminals." They begin to get used to the idea.

That recognition is corrosive. It is corrupting of the very idea of the rule of law." - Lawrence Lessig

Maybe I support IP laws after all....

I'm not voting

2008-10-14T11:35:00.000-07:00

but it astounds me how people can support Obama's ......... economic proposals. I just don't have an adjective concise enough for you.

On the other hand, if I ever run for president, I know how to get Andrew Sullivan's vote.

ManiaC on Krugman

2008-10-14T11:22:00.000-07:00

He won the nobel prize, apparently, so I was reading his column. First time ever, actually. I'm also reading one of his papers.

Well, he's obviously a partisan hack and if I could beat him with my crowbar, ending his indirect attempts to control the lives of others, I would.

That said, he's not a bad economist. I disagree with a lot of unapplied science, and his work especially. What's the use of modeling a mercantilist/socialist/whatever economic system that we know is inherently flawed? Shouldn't we be directing our effort to instituting a better one? I don't oppose scientific investigation, even if it seems utterly pointless, although I do oppose its public funding.

In some respects, though, his utterly amoral and consequentialist approach is the conservative and lean one.

As I suspected, they have no clue.

2008-10-14T08:31:00.001-07:00

For a while, I thought the Keynesians running the ~~fasci~~ ~~corporatis~~ ~~banks~~ printing presses might be able to stabilize their ridiculous system. Sure, it would be at the cost of the stolen livelihoods of millions of working poor and oil tycoons and children's birthday presents, and it would be longterm epic fail lol, but at least it would accomplish its avowed purpose of restabilizing the monetary sytem at its current level of suck.

Then Bernanke released this pathetic attempt to calm the rioting capitalists and populists.

"As in all past crises, at the root of the problem is a loss of confidence by investors and the public in the strength of key financial institutions and markets."

No, not quite. The root of the problem is an artificially created, unsustainable increase in demand, coupled with local land use restrictions that created a housing price bubble. It was inevitable, inevitable, that it would collapse back to previous levels. Increased leverage requires increased stability in order to accomodate its lower margin of error.

The government then proceeded to pile a minimum wage hike on top of inflationary government spending and a spike in oil prices. The result was a devaluation of the dollar, which increased interest rates, which caused a ballooning in monthly payments for the poor people with ARMs, which caused an increase in default rates, which reversed the profit margins on trillions of dollars' worth of derivative contracts, which necessitated the owners of those contracts to increase their capital cushion to assuage creditors, which sucked all the credit out of the market and caused a series of bank collapses which will surely continue.

First, they tried to treat the most blatantly obvious symptom by propping up the banks. For a year, that was their strategy.

Now, they're trying to treat the immediate cause of that symptom by reinjecting credit.

Now Bernanke has the gall to say,

"History teaches us that government engagement in times of severe financial crisis often arrives very late, usually at a point at which most financial institutions are insolvent or nearly so. In these conditions, the consequences and costs of inertia and inaction can be staggering. Fortunately, that is not the situation we face today."

More rants to follow, I'm sure.

It must be depressing

2008-10-11T13:45:00.000-07:00

to be a partisan commentator.

Sure, I hope McCain wins, but that's not enough to make me go vote. It's easy for me to sit this one out and laugh bitterly as the mobs tear down our little bastion of freedom. I know that in my lifetime, things will never get better than they are right now.

But Kristol has to actively cheer for McCain and try to ignore the fact that two ignorami are running for office. It must be painful.

On a side note, we have two pinkos running for office. Why is Obama winning on the economic issue? Do people think his destruction of human liberty will be more efficient than McCain's hastily adopted fascism?

Thinly veiled fantasies of violence aside,

2008-10-11T13:22:00.000-07:00

I know someone involved in this site:

http://blog.riseofreason.com/

Let's see if it can hold our interest.

Thought Experiment 1

2008-10-10T15:42:00.000-07:00

I'm sure this exercise will get me put back on the terrorist watch list, but such is the price that philosophers like Socrates and Ayers must always pay. The tree of liberty etc.

Anyway, anyone who adheres to a reductio ad absurdum Natural Rights philosophy must certainly believe that it's ethically justified to take the law into one's own hands, killing gang members, terrorists, child molesters and politicians. The first catch is that to be ethically justified, a significant amount of time and effort must be spent ensuring that the vigilante is indeed dispensing Justice.

The second catch is that such action, when done for political purposes, is usually counterproductive. Terrorist groups rarely achieve their stated political goals, and neither John Brown nor John Wilkes Booth, those great heroes of the Republic, stopped the birth of the American Empire.

Here's the thought experiment: What would be the practical results of engaging in an assassination campaign against politicians of whatever political stripe you happen to disagree with? It surely depends on the target group; some might be quashed, while others would build a new movement based on their martyrdom.

For our test case, we'll engage in domestic terrorism against "socialism." Hard to define precisely, and in fact, the absence of all socialism is anarchy. We'll target leading congressional Democrats as well as the extremists like Bernie Sanders. Poor guy. How can you do that to his hypothetical family just because he has the courage of his convictions and openly admits what so many other politicians hide? You sick bastards.

Anyway, let's say 5 to 10 national left-leaning politicians were murdered, and those responsible issue a well-written yet oddly rambling manifesto, much like the Unabomber's. What would be the impact?

First of all, it would not educate people about economics, and would only have a direct political effect in that the function of the congressional Democrats would be impaired for a little while.

The public reaction would be some sort of incoherent backlash. The media would spin it as hate groups or right-wing militants (accurately for once). Laws would be passed against the methods employed, banning Uzis or nitrogen or somesuch.

What would be the reaction of Leftist partisans? (Partisans in the literal sense.)

They're always erratic, but one can assume there would be protests full of smelly hippies and lots of foaming rage. Also shock- as often as they decry fascist right-wing tactics, very few surviving leftists have ever actually experienced them.

With luck, they would counterattack, unimaginatively, by attempting to retaliate against congressional Republicans. The net result would be lots of dead politicians, which would be sad. There would be little girls crying on national TV, which would upset all the child molesters who were spared by the wave of vigilantism.

More likely, they would attack local politicians and political activists, because that's easier. (We all know they're lazy, or they wouldn't be socialists.) After brief rioting in Detroit and Los Angeles, everyone involved would be dead or in jail.

Would a pile of dead national politicians have any benefits? It could slow the political process for a while and add a few years to the life of the USA. It could also prompt the formation of a police state, as politicians finally work together for the goal of self-preservation. Secession of any of the several States seems unlikely. The unwashed masses would be apalled, but apparently domestic terrorism is OK now, so it may not have any electoral effect.

Conclusion? Unknown. Thus this type of violence is not acceptable at this time.

Angry Rant at Lost Googlers who Comprise the Bulk of the Site's Traffic

2008-10-10T14:33:00.000-07:00

"Sen. Obama is a classic liberal with an outdated economic agenda. We should take that agenda on in a robust manner. As a party we should not and must not stand by as the small amount of haters in our society question whether he is as American as the rest of us." - John Weaver

Via Andrew Sullivan, who has sadly descended into madness again. But to the point:

This quote enlightened me. Often, what is important is not what is said, but what is assumed; up until now, I didn't really grasp the importance of the whole patriotism vs. don't-question-my-patriotism dynamic. Sure, I think Obama is an America-hating commie who will try to take away the guns and religion I cling to bitterly.

What I forgot was that most Americans think of themselves as "real Americans."

Most Americans support stealing from others to benefit themselves. Most Americans are in favor of invading other countries, as long as we only experience triumph. Most Americans prefer to control others arbitrarily rather than have freedom for themselves. Most Americans don't know what the Constitution is, much less what it says.

(The supreme law of the land.)

In short, I had no problem with people calling the Dems a bunch of cowardly socialist scum, because I think most of you are cowardly socialist scum.

Have a nice day.

Updated Constitution

2008-10-06T15:24:00.001-07:00

I was reading the US Constitution last week and noticed that it needed a few updates. Although the whole idea of a nation-state is quaint, imho, if the USA collapses in the next few decades people will probably want a new one similar to the old. I assume that right-wing gun nuts will be the principle organizers, so on that basis, I made a few minor changes to the constitution.

*No more women's sufferage. : (

*Half the number of amendments. Many were incorporated into Article 2, Section 1.

*Individual right to bear arms

*No direct election of senators

*Immigration tax based on gold, not dollars.

*Specific dates and deadlines removed since they are no longer needed. Also Article 7 has been replaced with the former 10th amendment.

*Slavery still illegal, all other references removed

*No income tax

*Runoff voting for presidential elections; electoral college still in effect

*Congress may coin money, but not "regulate the Value thereof."

*Congress can no longer regulate interstate commerce.

*Cruel and unusual punishments may be established by the legislature.

It begins thusly:

We the People of the [insert nation here], in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the [insert nation here].

Revised Constitution

Meta-Critique of the Week

2008-10-06T00:29:00.000-07:00

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/other/future-of-reputation.ars/1

There's the link. It's the review of a book about privacy, which is indeed a complex legal, social, and ethical topic-

-if you believe in a right to privacy. If you don't, the problem is solved and no legislation or effort need be expended preserving it.

The author and reviewer touch on the key to the counter-argument to the consequentialist argument for privacy: Privacy presupposes a right to carry out the action that is private. If we were assured that no one would try to infringe our free speech, then we could organize in public. In reality, thanks to McCain, it is now illegal for me to organize on behalf of McCain. Not that I'd want to, but now I must pretend that I have readers and that I'm anonymous to avoid the Election Police.

That example was... facetious, but if you're reading this you should be able to come up with your own examples. Really, do you need to be spoon fed?

There are also psychological needs for privacy that arise from our survival instincts, but instinct can be overcome if the basis for it is shown to be fallacious. At any rate, erecting a vast legal edifice in support of "privacy" causes more harm than completely ignoring the free flow of information.

Banking 1 - Utopia

2008-10-05T20:04:00.000-07:00

I've been writing a cyberpunk novel (still progressing on my harddrives) that includes a monetary system as follows:

The currency is backed by stock. It appreciates rather than depreciates over time, and instead of physical assets like gold serving as money, which is a waste of gold, the underlying commodity is engaged in productive work while also serving as a unit of exchange.

Further, the currency is not necessarily backed by stock. It IS stock, index funds, or any other tradeable commodity (including metal, product coupons, indentured servants etc.). Prices are quoted in terms of gold or whatever the shopkeeper desires, and the exchange is made on the basis of instantaneous exchange rates on the global market. The market is unregulated and as such runs perpetually.

Nothing physically changes hands; it's all done automatically and electronically. Companies can pay for things by issuing their own stock, though they'd have to be big enough to be listed, and doing so would devalue the stock at the same time. It would be nearly impossible for small companies.

Cash can be produced by simply printing certificates and checking their exchange rates when they change hands. However, anonymous accounts would make cash obsolete.

Individual bank accounts would be a list of serial numbers with constantly fluctuating values. A set of trading rules would govern autonomous electronic agents to trade serials in order to obtain the desired investment portfolio. Shopkeepers would want to continually rebalance their account upon receipt of random currencies. This means that billions of traders would be operating 24/7, potentially eliminating business cycles and market fluctuations.

That depends on the system characteristics- they could also lead to chaotic instability.

The system relies on constant electricity and net connectivity.

Banking 2 will be coming soon. It explains how we start improving the monetary system now.

Clean Energy 2030

2008-10-03T10:59:00.000-07:00

http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/15x31uzlqeo5n/1#

Basically, Google has released a plan for reducing CO2 output and providing energy over the next 22 years. It focuses on increasing X source Y%, increasing CAFE standards to Z, and things of that nature. It purports to offer a trillion dollars in net savings by 2030.

1) Net Savings
If there is money to be saved by doing this, people will do it spontaneously. No government action is required, and in fact there is no practical purpose to the production of this report. Now, many of you, like the author, have an incomplete understanding of capitalism, so let me give you some examples.

If wind power is cheaper than coal, utilities will build wind power.

If plug-in hybrids save money on gas, people will buy hybrids.

Note that power companies and individuals are already doing this. Why, then, do we need increased Wind Power mandates and CAFE standards? The answer is that many silicon valley investors and companies, including Google, are investing in Green Tech. They want government subsidies and regulatory monopolies and so forth at the expense of the taxpayer and true energy efficiency.

The cost estimates don't take into account the reactions in other sectors of the economy to the increased resources used on the 2030 plan.

2) Nuclear Power
Presumably, the 2030 plan predicts a slight growth in nuclear energy use because it's politically controversial and the people who are targeted by this propaganda piece oppose it. Leaving aside the unpleasant reality that nuclear is the only medium-term alternative to coal, let's create a logical dichotomy.

If nuclear power is bad, we should destroy the existing plants.

If nuclear power is good, we should build many more of them.

This type of argument isn't intrinsically valid, but the statements are true in this case. Instead of either of the logical courses of action, the 2030 plan suggests a slight increase in nuclear generation. I'd also like to point out that the graph seems awfully smooth, considering the amount of power produced by a single reactor.

Also, they assume, and I quote:

Plug-in [electric vehicle] electricity cost: 7 cents per kWh

There is no source of power that cheap other than nuclear. They also need to go into more detail on the variation in power generated by wind and solar over the course of a 24 hour period if they intend to use the assumption of flex-power, which they do quite often.

3)Oil consumption in 2030
We will probably use the same or lower percentage of global oil production that we use today. However, the amount of oil production is decreasing. The decrease can be estimated accurately by Hubbert's Peak; unfortunately, we can't accurately determine where on the curve we are until the peak has already passed. If it's already occurred, we'll know in a few years.

The economics of oil production are such that the total output will not deviate significantly, so, in order to predict our oil consumption, one must analyze the supply, not the demand. The result is that increasing the efficiency of oil consumption will not reduce the amount of oil consumed but will instead lower prices. This is true because many common economic assumptions do not hold. (The instantaneous supply curve is a flat line in the region of interest).

The paper predicts a 38% drop in consumption, which sounds a little high. It would mean a 38% drop in global oil production. Even if we hit Hubbert's peak in 2006, 24 years would only take us back to oil production levels of 1982, a reduction of 27%.

Conclusion

There are already many other well-written comments on the plan, none of which I have read yet. I'm sure I repeat some of them, but I couldn't stay silent.

Bailout Belayed

2008-09-29T14:20:00.000-07:00

The real economy is temporarily spared. The stock market is down.

Fortunately, I sold all of my stock and started spending it on candy a while ago. I don't make market predictions much, because I don't have the data for it, but I'm expecting very high inflation over the next ten years.

Still not time for armed revolt

2008-09-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

The Democrats whine about imaginary handouts to "corporations" and "Wall Street" for my entire adult life, and now that the government is actually going to give away US$700,000,000,000, they're complicit.

Bernanke seems to have drunk his own Kool-Aid(TM). I guess he does technically work for the banks who are getting the graft, but I couldn't support this atrocity with a straight face. And of course Paulson's job is to print scrip with no relation to any objective measure of value, so we shouldn't expect him to say anything.

The media are tripping over themselves to explain how wonderful corporatism is. It worked well under Hitler, and Bush=Hitler, so it'll work for us too.

Meanmhile, the dollar, stock market, oil prices and bond yields react the way I'd expect them to if Chicago was overrun by zombies, or perhaps the Russians invaded Alaska on a foggy day.

I feel zero pity, at this moment, for the millions of people who will lose their jobs and homes because of this. Most of them share the responsibility for what's going to happen next year. This is a republic, after all.

It's beautiful.

2008-09-18T08:11:00.002-07:00

"Rich Franklin used to spend his days teaching math to high school students. Today, he spends his evenings in an octagon-shaped cage grounding and pounding fighters into submission in front of thousands of screaming fans." - CNN

A real American success story.