Magnus

I don't know what you mean by "morality is not a factor." Do you mean that the action in question is not immoral?If so, then I would say yes -- an act is ethical (or unethical) depending, inter alia, on whether the actor can foresee a harmful effect of his act. If you flip a light switch in your house, normally that act causes no harm. But what if the house is filled with flammable gas, due to a gas leak? You don't know it, but flipping the light switch will ignite the house, killing all its occupants (including yourself). The awareness of the effects of our behavior is what makes our decisions either unethical or not-unethical. One of the effects of having sexual intercourse is conceiving offspring. It's a strict prerequisite, actually. Apart from using very expensive laboratories, offspring are not created but for the act of intercourse. I'd say that it would take an unusual degree of ignorance of basic biology not to know that creating offspring is a natural and predictable effect of sex.

I'm a lawyer. I've only ever worked as a litigator, so I can't speak to the other types of lawyer work. I detest the field. I'm working to get out. I would never recommend anyone I know go into it. I've distilled my reasons down to the following: 1. Law is completely dominated by a government monopoly. As a result, it is grossly inefficient. The judiciary has no sense of economics, being insulated from all economic information. You spend all your time essentially as a government liaison. A lobbyist. You negotiate with people who do not care. It's like spending all day in line at the DMV, for a living. 2. It's corrupt. The only thing the judges care about is themselves, just like all other government enterprises -- prisons, schools, tax authorities, regulators, etc. To the extent they do care, they care about their politics. 3. The absurd government-made rules encourage pointless, counter-productive antagonism, by requiring the parties and the lawyers to engage in every point of conflict possible, strictly out of self-defense and self-preservation, which multiples the volume of busy-work. It's a Kafkaesque nightmare, most of the time. 4. Clients hate you. They resent spending their money on such waste and inefficiency, and resent you even when you work appropriately. 5. Most of the people in it are horrible. It rewards three kinds of people -- pedants, bullies and outright frauds. The good ones get out, or are drummed out. I've pretty much ended up as a criminal defense attorney, as the least-objectionable area, since I spend all day fighting the State. Cops and prosecutors are almost completely horrid people -- liars, cowards and bullies who spend their lives congratulating themselves. I've also developed a small side practice in the civil rights area, because apparently I'm the only lawyer in the area who is willing to sue the government. The problem, however, is that I have to sue the government in the government's courts, so that is really more of a hobby then a serious career prospect.

"Freedom" doesn't mean "able to so anything you feel like unimpeded." It doesn't mean "superabundant resources so everyone gets everything they want without cost." "Freedom" means "freedom from aggression." With that in mind, let's look at your friend's platitude about how the world supposedly works: "Absolute freedom always fails, because complete freedom permits the strong to deprive others of their freedom." When he says "the strong deprive others," he's talking about aggression. So, if we translate his tortured, equivocating statement into honest, clear language, here's what he's saying: "Absolute freedom from aggression always fails, because complete freedom from aggression permits the strong to commit aggression." This is patent nonsense. Therefore, he's wrong.

That's like saying that firing a gun randomly into a crowd of people has an unwanted side effect of killing someone, because the shooter did not desire that particular person's death. People can be deemed to have chosen the natural and predictable consequences of their actions, even if they claim they didn't want those consequences.

Are the 500 species of bacteria that live inside our intestines parasites? No, they are characterized as commensal, even though they are occasionally harmful or fatal. To call one's offspring parasitical is patently false, and so can only be motivated by malice.

The proliferation of varied business models functions on similar lines as biological evolution -- in the most vibrant environments, there is the greatest degree of speciation. Look at warm water aquatic environments, for example, where there is more biodiversity than scientists can even measure. Biological monoculture is extremely rare. Large corporations are not generally efficient. Rockefeller was a great reformer, and introduced huge leaps in efficiency to the oil business. But later on, as they grew larger, the success of the businesses he created were sustained not by efficiency, but by scale -- subsidized entry into new territories (often with military assistance), government-built roads (i.e., car subsidies), and fat government contracts. Even today, the largest buyer of fuel in the world is the Pentagon.

Let's do this! We don't have to shoot original video. We can just use stills, or short video clips borrowed from the internet. IN FIVE SECONDS, YOU WILL EXPERIENCE ANARCHY ...

That's funny, because I'm experiencing anarchy right now. But it doesn't look anything like that!

Statism thrives on two things -- symbolism and force. Shooting police helps liberty in neither respect. In fact, the propaganda value of shooting police would greatly increase the incentive and pressure on the state to grow more powerful. A frontal violent assault on statism is just about the worst approach I can think of, both in terms of the tactical and the symbolic benefits.

I meant to say that statists are MISTAKENLY convinced they're rational. That intellectual vanity gives them an extra layer of cognitive bias -- a persistent error that conceals itself. It makes them even more impervious to reason and evidence than admitted mystics, in my experience.

First, determine if your sources "seem" reliable "enough." Of course, you'll then have to check the sources' sources, and then check their reliability through other sources, but only if those other sources seem reliable enough. Repeat until you die. Wikipedia is the dullest drinking club I could possibly imagine. They give drinking clubs a bad name.

I would say statists, because they are convinced that they're rational, whereas the religious will tell you up-front that their whole belief system defies reason.

It was a joke. I have Spandex. I didn't mean to offend. But I guess I was more reacting to the fact that they're invariably wearing the gear with all the sponsorship logos, literally head to toe. And the disparity in the level of social acceptance when so equipped and riding recreationally, as opposed to riding to run an errand. My theory is that dressing like you're currently on Leg 8 of the Tour de France dispels the whiff of suspicion that your car has been repossessed.

Some real tight-asses, apparently! I can definitely see the cell phone/smartphone thing being a major focus of forced conformity. And sports! I'd forgotten about that one. There's a great t-shirt that you could get from The Onion that said "The sports team from my area is better than the sports team from your area." Where I live, the obsession is with college football. A few of the items on my list come from the office where I used to work. It wasn't exactly a buttoned-down environment. But still, the pressure was intense to over-drink, over-eat, follow college ball religiously, and pursue something from a very short list of approved hobbies. The others are from my social circle here in suburbia. Cycling for exercise is deemed acceptable, which is why (I now realize) they only do so while fully decked out in astro-bright full-body Spandex as though they are, at that moment, competing in the Olympics. But cycling for transportation? Heavens forfend!! Where's your washed-and-waxed late-model SUV?? I just think it's funny how, even among a group of people who are self-professed as easy-going, laid-back, get-along and open-minded, there are these subtle but strong flash points where any aberration causes a strong negative reaction, like poking a bear with a stick.

I used to be a pretty conventional person. My blue jeans were Levi's. My shorts were khaki. My hair was combed. I went to law school. I paid taxes. Zzzzzzzz ....... Over the last few years that as I have become more mentally free, more independent in my outlook and general habits, I have encountered resistance from the people in my circle. I expected some of this. In the context of politics, resistance is understandable. Politics exists to force people to do what they don't want to do. Meeting resistance is normal. If there weren't social pressures and disagreements, there'd be no politics. But in the non-political world of my daily life, the less conventional I become, the more I encounter hostility in the strangest places! Here's a list off the top of my head of some aspects of my lifestyle that cause an unexpected degree of anger among the normals in my midst. Maybe some of the free spirits of FDR can add a few of their own examples. 1. Anarchist. Self-explanatory. Causes insane rage among lefties, Progs, conservatives, and even libertarians. 2. Atheist. I expect this reaction from religious people, but the most vitriolic responses come when I say that I don't mind organized religion as much as I do that vague muddle called "spirituality." Almost everyone hates that. A lot. 3. Minimalist. People really hate it that I don't like having a lot of furniture, or carpets. Especially in my personal residence, for some reason, people seen to resent my dislike of owning much stuff. 4. Anti-television. This was a bigger deal before the Internet. When they found out I didn't have or want a TV, they'd look at me like I had 2 heads. 5. Under-Eater. This one was very surprising. Try eating a small meal when you're at a table with other guys. Maybe this is less common among women, but among men, if I don't cram my face with less than 1,000 calories in one sitting, I'm some kind of threat to world peace, apparently. 6. Anti-feminist. Most of my social and sexual views are subsumed in anarchism (i.e., I really don't give a shit who other people sleep with), but apparently believing that men and women are legally equal makes me a crazy person. 7. Stoic. I don't get upset about much. I pretty much accept reality. I work to improve it, but I don't ever feel like joining in the typical festival of hand-wringing when tragedy strikes. This makes me a monster, supposedly. 8. Fencer. Here's a weird one. Yes, it's archaic. No, I don't expect to use a sword in self-defense any time soon. I wouldn't think that my involvement in an obsolete martial art would be something others care about, but they do. 9. Anti-car. A hundred people die every day in the US in a car. I really just don't want to own one. I like them as design objects, but not as an integral part of my life. This makes me a wild-eyed lunatic. 10. Irregular work hours and no office. I practice law from my cell phone and desktop computer. This makes people furious. If I put any of the above items together -- ride my bicycle to Starbucks in the middle of a workday while carrying a bag of fencing gear -- I'm apparently a clear and present danger to civilization itself. Does anyone else encounter social disapproval in unexpected ways?

Both of my grandfathers (and at least one great-grandfather) died by suicide. My mother was bipolar (and I believe was also a suicide, but no one in my family believes me). I've been conscious of my heightened risk of depression, and out of necessity, have had to learn how to avoid emotional downturns. Here's my checklist of remedies for preserving my mental well-being. When I start to have a problem, I start with No. 1 and work my way down the list until it goes away: 1. Lots of good exercise -- not the dull, plodding, boring stuff (like jogging or whatever), but short, intense movements, like tennis, basketball (not my thing, but some people like it), etc. I like fencing, but it's very hard to find people who do it. There's also Cross Fit (or its many variants). The important thing is to include an element of randomness, or reaction to external stimuli. If that's not available, I'll just do a few sprints and pushups and/or dumbbell exercises. This is unbelievably important. Our brains are made of meat. They need more than just good thoughts to stay healthy. 2. Check on nutrition -- start with eliminating any bad habits, like too much alcohol (a depressant), or too much starch/sugar (not a problem for me any more, but was a major bad habit when I was younger), and a decent multivitamin with breakfast (plus a Vitamin E and a raw-C supplement at bedtime). There's an outrageous amount of vitriol, especially online, about vitamins and nutrition generally, but I think the basics are fairly easy to understand and implement. 3. Social interaction -- humans need daily positive social contact. Even if it's just chatting up a Starbucks barista or grocery clerk. It's not a natural thing for me to do, but I've learned to do it, and it helps. 4. Stay off the computer. Get into the analog, non-electric world. There's always plenty of yard work for me to do. It's not the work that helps, I think. It's the physicality. Anything that involves manipulating physical matter, and doing it carefully. 5. Something actively creative. I have about 3 unfinished novels that I can be working on at any given moment, plus a digital piano stored under the bed, an easel and a set of paint supplies in another box under the bed. If fiction, music or art aren't your thing, there's probably something. Photography, sculpture, woodworking, boat-building, satirical taxidermy, driftwood carvings of ex-presidents ... As long as it matters to you. My life and mental well-being are FAR from ideal, but so far, these five practices have kept the wolf away from the door.

Every man I know has experienced violent aggression against his person. Every single one. Some rather severe. Many from police. I'm defending a woman at the moment who attacked her husband with a kitchen knife for reading her diary, and thereby exposing her affair. I've known a few women with some shallow and mercenary attitudes toward men in general. They often have no reservations or social inhibitions about discussing these ruthless ideas in public, in mixed company, or around children. These vices, dysfunctions and vestigial value systems are clearly not limited to men. I have to believe that the promoters of these memes know this, but have a broader social and political agenda in mind.

It's both, clearly. Elliot Rodger was a rampage murderer. That's ethically indefensible. He was also the victim of a lifetime of abuse at the hands of his parents and step-mother, if his life history is to be believed (and it's highly credible on those points, and at least partially corroborated). The fact that his abuse caused an emotional and psychological pathology that motivated his murders doesn't alter the fact that he apparently chose to murder people. Understanding what motivated him could help society prevent similar patterns, but not make his murders non-criminal. As long as people blame guns and BMWs, we won't.

There's something very odd about this particular rampage killer episode. It seems very contrived, almost like it's out of a Movie of the Week. Actually, that's not even fair to TV movies, because even they aren't as filled to the brim with clichés as this event is -- a socially isolated frustrated young man with deep anxiety over his virginity, height and small penis decides to murder a predominantly blonde sorority and random handsome couples, while proclaiming himself in his 150-page manifesto to be superior to the point of being god-like. It doesn't even rate as a B-movie. It's like one of those soft-porn cable movies from the 1980s. It's like a bad parody of a mass murder rampage. Even Rodger's ordinary manner of speech sounds like one of the villains from a Scooby Doo episode. It's heavily mannered. Young male spree killers usually have major cognitive processing problems -- Lanza, Cho, Loughner, Holmes. But Rodger seemed to have a grasp on reality. He appears to have had a deeply unrealistic set of expectations and beliefs about making friends and sexual attraction, but he doesn't strike me as psychotic like the others. Elliot Rodger sounds like someone who mediated reality through fiction -- like someone who learned to speak English by watching TV. His "manifesto" isn't a set of ideas, like Ted Kaczynski. It's an autobiography. A story.

I'd like to ask the OP if he'll address my question -- how can this situation be considered "good" when, even according to your summary of economic consequences, inflation only benefits some employers? As I said in my response, constant moderate inflation is desired by a certain kind of employer -- one who wants to employ large numbers of low to moderately skilled workers who don't advance much. It's the prototypical factory model. As Hazlitt explained in his famous book, the one lesson of economics is to consider effects as to all people who are involved, and over a sufficiently long time frame. Here, the "good" you've identified accrues to large factory-type employers, but harms everyone else. Also, over time, the effect of constant moderate inflation is to distort the economy in favor of large factory-type employers. They effectively foist some of the cost of their operation (having to give employees more real raises, or lose more experienced employees by attrition) onto the rest of society. Those kinds of crypto-subsidized industries tend to wither and rot -- a kind of Rust Belt phenomenon. I think we can take it as a general principle of politics that every statist intervention in the economy occurs because some small faction wants it to happen.

Universities are investment clubs. They call their board of directors "regents" and their portfolio an "endowment," but the model is the same -- they raise a huge pool of cash, and invest it in securities. The classrooms and the teachers and the rah-rah stuff is just the Front of House operation. Their real line of work is finance. Top finance execs make a lot of money.

The root of problem you've presented sounds more like one of employers wanting to hire lots of employees whose productivity never increase over time. Or, more accurately, the problem is a mass-employment-based business model in which workers are hired to be machine-like functionaries that never vary. That model is facilitated by constant, moderate inflation. Which is another way of saying that in the absence of constant, moderate inflation, that model is less viable. In a non-inflationary environment, raises would generally only occur when they reflected an increase in real value -- work-experience that translates into an improvement in skill or speed or lack of errors or some other aspect of productivity. A raise is given to keep from having to replace the experienced employee with a noob. Inflation allows (i.e., encourages) workers to stagnate, without even knowing it. But that mass-employment based business model is not the only way to have a thriving and healthy economy. Why should the State promote that model above all others (which it does through inflation that facilitates nominal wage increases despite unimproved productivity)? No one knows what a freer economy would look like, but I've always presumed that it would undermine or destroy the drone-like factory worker-employee system that prompted the rise of Communism. The "Satanic mills." It would put constant pressure on the drive to innovate, to work for yourself, and against the mass-employer. I expect a freer society would be more of a society of entrepreneurs and freelancers, The great mass of people would finally own the means of production!

News flash: amputating people's hands dramatically reduces the rate of hand diseases

Yes, of course there were Nazi prison camps. A very large number of people were murdered there. I say "murder" because imprisoning people in a filthy, rat infested facility, where they are dying by the thousands of starvation and typhus, is murder.Soviet and Allied propagandists were tasked with the responsibility of making the defeated Nazi regime appear to be worse than the Soviets and Allies ever were. They therefore had a huge incentive to invent attention-getting details about exceptional and extraordinary systematic cruelty. The problem they faced was that operating prison camps filled with political prisoners was not, in itself, exceptional or extraordinary at the time. The USA had internment camps for the Japanese and Americans with Japanese ancestry. The Soviets had gulags all over Russia.I've never argued that the Nazis weren't a mass-murdering criminal enterprise. They were. It's just that I have never seen any reliable evidence that they were substantially different from the other cruel, murderous regimes that have existed just about everywhere else on earth.Saying these things usually gets me labeled as anti-Semitic and/or an anti-American traitor. I'm glad to have a forum where these things can be discussed rationally, without being shouted down by Leftists and/or White Nationalists.

But but ... the Founding Fathers! If only we returned to their vision! Gee, I wonder if there are any systemic, economic pressures that tend to increase the power of States, over time ... It's a mystery!