Magnus

I don't know much about compression and codecs, but I read somewhere recently that it can be optimized for speech, making the storage of telephony very efficient. Considering that the size of the Utah Data Center greatly exceeds the requirements for recording all phone calls, the data the government keeps must also include everyone's Internet activity, too.

Snowden dropped a few hints about having had access to anything he wanted -- every intel officer's personal record, even a President's personal email ... I hope he really has these records, with triple-redundant backups and friends around the world who'll release it if/when Snowden gets in trouble. Right now, his only chance of survival is to stay out in the open. The only thing that surprises me about PRISM is that it took so long for the mainstream press to run a story about it. The bit about the NSA only taking metadata is laughable. Metadata is also known as "search criteria." They can use the metadata to index and find the actual phone call audio, when they have a reason to retrieve it. Literally everything is being captured. That data center in Utah isn't for recording TV shows.

It's a stupid question -- why aren't States more pro-freedom? Answer: States are designed to be anti-freedom. They exist to enslave people. That's their purpose and function. It's like asking why more slave-owners weren't advocating for the abolition of slavery. If they were anti-slavery, they'd just free their slaves, and thus cease to be slave-owners. Why aren't the Chinese Triads, Russian mobs, or La Cosa Nostra founding more schools, hospitals and No Smoking campaigns? Uh ... that's not what people join those organizations to do. Every once in a while, some imposter or deluded soul will sneak into the ranks of the Government Class, in the hopes of dismantling it from within. But you'd have a better chance of working your way up to the top of the Sex Slave Trade with the Secret Master Plan of ending child slavery.

You need to hire a lawyer to answer this question. In the most general terms, your mom may have the right to enforce the contract if she has complied with certain requirements. First, it depends on exactly what the contract says. Second, you should understand that the property passed first to your father's estate upon his death. Thats's a fictional, abstract owner of everything he owned, which opens when an estate case is filed, and closes when it has done all its business of disposing of the property. Her claim to the property may properly directed against the estate, not just you. In some jurisdictions, the creditors of an estate are required to file a claim in the estate case in order to retain their claimed rights in its property, before it is distributed to the heirs. That requirement may depend on whether the estate was filed properly and whether she was notified properly. You should check to see what the estate filings say. Third, she may have recorded her claim on the property as a lien, in the county property records. Since the contract was made pursuant to a divorce, my guess is that the usual, correct thing to do would have been to record her rights via a deed, mortgage, or something, as part of the divorce settlement. You'd have to check both the property recording office and the divorce court file. So, short answer: maybe.

I might have to agree with him about yoga.

No matter how long a felled tree stays in the water, it does not become a crocodile. [/font]

Yes, but the grain of wheat knows not which way the wind blows. On the other hand, he who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

Yes, an early chapter indicated that your question would be answered in a later chapter -- how do high-achieving givers avoid being taken advantage of, thereby dissipating their time and energies, and ending up as low-achieving givers. I just haven't gotten that far yet. That fear is one of the main reasons I never gave much credence to Giving as a viable life strategy.

I would like to recommend a book I've been reading called Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, by Adam Grant. Dr. Grant is a relatively young business professor at Wharton, and focuses his research on organizational psychology. (I have found that "organizational psychology" has a great deal of overlap with -- if not being virtually indistinguishable from -- what they used to call "microeconomics.") The book concerns an aspect of interpersonal dynamics that he calls "reciprocity style." In the simplest terms, he says that people can be rated on a spectrum of reciprocity goals that fall into three broad categories -- Takers, Matchers and Givers. Matchers try to come as close to exactly equal as possible, getting and giving in equal measure. Takers are (in the extreme) the users in our society, the people who look out for No. 1. Givers are the people who put others' needs ahead of their own. This is obviously a major hot-button social issue. The entire body of Western fiction, both popular and artsy, boils down to heroes being (or becoming) Givers and villains being unreconstructed Takers. (Secondary characters can be Matchers.) The entire body of free-market economics is built on a Matcher style of social organization. I was excited to read a study of the topic that approached the issue of reciprocity more scientifically, and I have been blown away by what I have been reading. I'm not sure that anything in the book is exactly explosive or revolutionary, but at the same time, I feel that the broader implications of this line of thinking are enormous. The author examines people in the workplace (or professional school, or the military, or in sports, or other areas where something concrete is at stake), and sorts them (by self-reported questionnaires and with surveys) into these three categories. As to people with Giver styles, he found something very interesting -- they are vastly overrepresented as some of the least successful people in any given group. They are the chumps. They are the underperformers. But who is at the top? Givers again! Takers can do well in organizations, but they seem to have an upper limit on their success. Also, their success (not surprisingly) leaves a lot of broken, bitter people in their wake. Takers do not impart anything to the group to help it succeed long term, and groups tend to fail rapidly after a Taker-style leader leaves. Givers, on the other hand, have the ability to make everyone around them succeed, and their success continues to reverberate in the group with continued successes after they are gone. The case studies of some Givers in the book have illuminated a whole new area of social behavior for me. For example, the book examines George Meyer, a long-time writer for The Simpsons. It goes into a lot of detail about how he came to the show, how little credit he received for essentially creating the entire genre and brand of humor, and how he made all of the writers and producers around him more successful. Two more examples are C.J. Skender and Stu Inman -- the former an accounting professor at Duke, and the latter the general manager of the Portland Trailblazers in the 1970s and 80s. Both men spent their careers teaching or coaching other people to be successful. Skender has managed to teach more students who have been the highest scorers on the CPA exam than anyone else. Inman was a talent spotter for an NBA team, and managed to pick two young players in the draft that have been universally rated the two worst draft picks in NBA history (famously passing up Michael Jordan for Sam Bowie). But Inman also went on to pick some of the very best players, at amazing bargains, and the team went on to the NBA championships within a couple of years of joining the NBA. He revolutionized the practice of sports talent-spotting. I have clearly lived my life mostly as a Matcher. I am highly sensitive to being taken advantage of. I am also highly sensitive to the limits of my obligations toward others, and the careful calculation of how to remedy problems I either cause or experience. I have lived my life with a detailed ledger of credits and debits in my mind, without even paying much attention to it. I had always equated giving (without getting) with being a chump, and while I have mildly appreciated the ethos of giving as a personal choice, I've usually been irritated by the intense social pressure that is placed on giving, and concluded that it is a subtle form of selfish manipulation. After all, the government heavily exploits this "giving" mantra, and has used it to become the Ultimate Taker. I've also always resented being disparaged for being a Matcher, since matching one's costs and benefits with others means that they (by definition) have nothing to complain about. It never occurred to me that there was another way to live, certainly not one that made economic sense. I think the book would be of great interest to the anarchists of FDR, and the libertarian movement in general. There is also a website where you can take a little quiz on your reciprocity style. I am a little more than halfway through the book, and am going to read it with an immense interest. I'd love to hear people's thoughts, either on the book, or on your experiences with the giving-matching-taking spectrum in general.

I'm sorry you're having a rough time. I'm sure Stef's videos and other resources are far more likely to help you sort out your ideas than I can, but if there is one aspect of improving your mental well-being that I could help with, it would be fitness -- don't fall into the trap of assuming that you need to change your thoughts first, and that doing so is what will allow you to pursue better nutrition and exercise. The mind can't live without the body. Your brain is made of meat. It is not an abstraction. It is physical, and is therefore directly affected in its operation by the millions of proteins floating through your bloodstream, which are in turn affected by the demands of your trillions of cells. You can't alter that system merely by changing your thinking. If you also start your road to self improvement by beginning with the physical stuff -- nutrition and exercise -- then your thoughts will follow. Your mood will improve, your thinking will be clearer, your confidence and optimism will improve, etc. Don't get me wrong -- philosophy is timately where it's at. But consider the idea that some of your ideas (especially negative ideas about yourself) might be (in part) the product of your physical state -- hormones and metabolism and micronutrients -- and therefore those ideas won't be easily changed until you first change your physical health. This is especially true for men, since our mental health depends directly on our bodies' use and production of testosterone. But it's inhibited by excessive weight, inactivity and sugar intake. I've been there. Going from being sedentary to even a little regular exercise would probably make a huge difference for you. Walking briskly for 15 minutes. Take a look at your diet -- what is the worst part of it? Sugar? Large meals or grazing all day? Processed foods and lack of vitamins? Don't try to change it all overnight. Just pick the one thing you can improve, and start there. What about sleep? Any bad habits there? What about substance abuse -- alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, or other drugs? If you can pick only one thing in each of these 4 areas (nutrition, exercise, sleep and toxins), and improve those 4 small things, I guarantee that your mental and emotional state will start to improve, too.

It's where a small group of rulers tell you how to live your life, such as who you're going to pay for medical care and how much, and what the prices of milk and sugar and corn are going to be, and if you submit to all of this control like a good little citizen, then the whole operation is called "we," but if you resist them in any way, then you're the problem because you're gumming up the works.

This article by Glenn Greenwald (no right-winger, he) asks the question -- how is it that, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, was the FBI able to learn the contents of telephone communications between the elder bomber Tamerlan and his wife? It's simple: Well, that's that.

"The government is not a separate entity. But we are in charge. And we're doing good work, so don't oppose us. By opposing us, you are opposing yourself, because we rule ourselves. Democracy is ours. Submit, citizen." I need a drink.

You have my deepest sympathy, and sincere admiration.

From the Palm Beach Post: Yeah, people who hate the government LOVE IT when armed government agents knock on your door because an informant named names. This will end well, I'm sure of it.

What do you love to do? What fulfills you? Does it have something to do with your handle, Super Adventurer?

Do it! Safe is the new risky -- there is no economic safety (and nothing good generally) to be found in conventional employment anymore. Self-employment (if you can call it that) is the only truly viable alternative, especially for someone who is astute and ethical enough to find his/her way to FDR. The Internet is the new economy. We lived through it, and it seemed like it integrated seemlessly, but it was as transformative as the development of steam power, or electricity. Two pieces of advice: 1. Buy low, sell high. 2. It's all in the marketing. Study it day and night.

You're welcome. The law of nuisance can go a step further than requiring payment in restitution for trespassing. If a property owner's use his property repeatedly interfered with the property rights of others, then the offender could be shut down. It was an act of self defense -- force could be used if the interference could not be remedied by money damages and the polluter kept doing it. That happened with some of the early industrial polluters, like coal burning factories or tanneries. They'd initially be located out of town, so as to avoid harming others, but the town would grow. The law of nuisance doesn't care who got there first. If you bought a house next door to a pre-existing tannery that stank so much it interfered with the homeowner's use of his property, then the tannery still had to either shut down or move. It is very short-sighted to allow a tannery to keep polluting, even though it is economically important to a community, and had been there first. If it can't operate without harming property that it does not own, then it should not operate. But eventually, the courts caved, and let them do it anyway. Anglo-American property law hasn't been the same since.

Without having skimmed Walter Block's book yet. Is there a quick and easy-to-explain process for the transfer of things like atmosphere and oceans to private ownership? Every tangible thing that we humans have the ability to use starts out as unowned. The first user of it becomes the owner -- he has the superior property claim to it, compared to all other subsequent would-be users of it. Most of the earth is unowned. It's not economically viable to use most of it. One person's use of his property cannot legitimately infringe on anyone else's use of his property. If you are polluting air or water, which have a tendency to drift around onto other people's property, then you are trespassing. Polluters trespass when they fail to contain their pollutants, and they end up in my lungs, for example.

I have never understood why people flock to statism to solve the problem of pollution. Pollution is a property-rights problem. It arises from a lack of clear definition of property. Starting in the mid-19th century, government courts began changing the age-old common law rules that prohibited any "nuisance" -- any form of trespass, by person, animal or object. They simply decided to stop enforcing those property rights, in order to give large, locally-powerful polluters a free pass. It was a raw exercise of corruption and corporatism, as far as I can tell.

Conclusion: Slaves were valuable in a slave-based economy. I'd call that a tautology. That's ridiculous. The West was populated without slavery. Aaaaaand there's the punchline. I owe no debt for slavery. No one alive does. The question of how important slavery was to the US economy is not particularly insightful, either in terms of ethics or economics. The real question is what the US economy could have done if it had been freer. The answer is: even more successful than it actually was.

I would calmly point out that there are two transactions here -- (1) the sale and (2) the tax. There can be no doubt that there are two transactions involved, because there are two entirely different sets of parties to the two transactions -- the sale transaction occurs between a seller and a buyer, but the tax transaction occurs between the buyer and the government. Don't be confused by the fact that the two transactions are typically coupled, or that they occur at close to the same time, or that the tax is collected by the seller (who, at that moment, is acting as a tax-collection agent for the government). The sale and the tax are definitely two separate transactions, because the seller does not get to keep the tax he collects. That portion is not his money. As to the voluntary/involuntary issue, the sale transaction is voluntary. Then, that voluntary transaction is used as a basis for calculating a tax (which is compulsory). Payment of the tax is not voluntary. "Voluntary" means that the other party to a transaction will not retaliate against you if you decline to make the bargain. If someone offers to sell you something, and you refuse, and you can walk away without threat of retaliation, then it's a voluntary trade. In contrast, try walking away from the payment of the tax, and see if the recipient (i.e., the government) decides to retaliate. They do. They (mistakenly) consider refusing to pay them to be stealing, and they respond accordingly.

Don't call it bank robbery ... it's a one-time tax on bank deposits!

Come on! I mean, if you're going to cheat the system, you have to at least make a little effort! I'm reminded of the story a few months ago of German bureaucrat who, on his last day of work before retiring, sent out an email or other message describing how he had not done anything at his job for about a decade. Not one instance of actual productivity.

There have been numerous news articles describing Francis I, the new Supreme Pontiff, as a "champion of the poor" and an exemplar of simplicity and economic humility. For example, the new Vicar of Christ was reported to have immediately followed his ascension to the office of Governor of the World by stopping by his hotel to pay his bill and collect his luggage. His Holiness is also said to have vacated the splendid palace provided for him as the Cardinal of Buenos Aires to live instead in an ordinary apartment. The Servant of the Servants of God is also said to routinely travel by taking the bus instead of a chauffeured car. The Holy Father's rejection of consumption is conspicuous, indeed. However, despite the fact that the Father of Kings has made poverty the center of his work as Cardinal, the Shepherd of the Universal Church has also, we are told, rejected the doctrine known as "Liberation Theology," which is essentially churchified Marxism. So, the question on the minds of religious people (a.k.a. 99% of the people of the world, including secularists like Obama, whose religion is economic vengeance) is -- What does the new Bishop of Rome propose as the best way of eradicating poverty? The first thing that the Supreme Pastor suggested, apparently, in his new role as Successor of St. Peter, is to take the money that his fellow South Americans would have spent on traveling to Rome, and instead give that money to the poor. I've been experiencing all sorts of feelings in light of these news stories. On the one hand, I'm a stone cold atheist, so the theater of it all is in equal parts annoying and amusing. But the discussions of alleviating poverty has really gotten under my skin. I spent many years of my young life in a kind of voluntary poverty. (OK, well, it was partially involuntary, too.) I see the same revolting displays of wealth that everyone else sees -- assholes with all kinds of trinkets, toys meant for overgrown children, and all the usual crap that socialists, from Veblen on down, have decried as consumerism. I get it. I don't live that way anymore, because I realize now that having a fetishistic attitude toward poverty was an expression of my own problems, but I understand where the anti-rich sentiment is coming from. I grew up with a lot of those people -- about half of my grade school classmates were third- and fourth-generation inheritors of passive wealth, primarily oil revenue, which (through no effort or skill of their own) happened to be located underneath otherwise near-worthless land that their great-grandparents owned and had been trying to farm to scrape out a living off of, when a smart guy in Germany named "Benz" happened to invent a machine that happened to need oil in order to run. So, about a hundred years ago, a lot of multimillionaires were created, virtually overnight, and their descendents are still living in the same part of the world, living off the proceeds. (Without exception, by the way, by the time this oil money had trickled its way down to my age group, everyone who had inherited vast sums of money grew up to be absolutely miserable, divorced, on anti-depressants, with multiple experiences with substance abuse treatments. These are not happy, stable people.) But on the other hand, I am also a 100% market anarchist. I would never in a million years use force, governmental or otherwise, to encumber, inhibit, or appropriate a single penny of someone else's money or property. I have no doubt that such tactics have been amply proven to cause nothing but economic decline, and yield (if at all) only a VERY minute, and temporary boost of cash to the recipient of ill-gotten gains. I also completely reject the church's system of anonymous donations as a means of alleviating systemic poverty. It does virtually nothing, and can make problems worse. If anything, welfare payments forestall the implementation of real changes in people's lives that could actually help them. Poverty exists for specific reasons -- usually a lack of property rights (government), or an extremely high rate of violence (slums), or both (when government creates ultra-violent slums). Poverty is systemic, not the result of a lack of cash at the moment. Consumerism does not cause poverty. Aggressive violence causes poverty. Also, it's all too easy to ignore or overlook real wealth, and pretend that it's not there. For example, the bus that the new Rock of the Church used to take to get around town? It's actually an extraordinary piece of machinery. It's made from 10,000 moving parts, all made in hundreds of places by thousands of people. I'm sure the original St. Francis of Assisi, if he could have been transported to modern times, would have thought that the "humble" bus was the most amazing object he could ever have conceived of. It's a marvel of markets that such a thing could even exist. Riding a bus is hardly an example of poverty, as I'm sure the shoeless children in East Africa who walk several miles back and forth to their un-air-conditioned schools would attest. To them, a bus would be considered pretty nice, I suspect. So, the theater of church and state continues, pretending to care about poverty, much as it has for a couple of thousand years.