Sumeet

My parents are from India. I was actually born in Mumbai, but my parents moved to the US when I was about 6 months old. I've been back to visit 4 times, and have also intermittently spoken with relatives who have visited the US. The times I visited when I was younger, there was a definite sense of "backwardness", so to speak. Cows and buffalo would still be seen in urban streets. Bicycles were extremely common. Almost all cars on the road were either Fiat 1100s or Hindustan Ambassadors (both massively outdated versions of 1950s European cars that were still being produced decades later in India). Computer technology, even among my fairly well-off relatives, was a couple generations behind the west. Cheap consumer goods were either not available or poorly-made by some local company, because foreign competition was forcibly excluded. The last time I visited, there were many changes. The automobile market had diversified massively. Cheap, outdated electronics were still readily available, but the latest devices were available too, if you could afford them. Streets still exhibited the disorganization typical of third-world streets, but were now filled mostly cars and motorcycles. Familiar brands like Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Chevrolet, and Levi's were all over the place. Back in the early 1990s, an uncle who has owned a construction business for many years, was pretty wealthy for an Indian guy. Following economic liberalization and the subsequent construction boom, he's now flat-out rich... like, it's no big deal for him to spend $150,000 on a new car even though already has 5. A few other relatives engaged in entrepreneurial pursuits have also had considerable success, though not necessarily to that level of wealth.Other impressions... there's still a lot of patriotism among older generations, and a decided reverence for figures like Gandhi and Nehru (and a corresponding distaste for Pakistan). But I get the sense this has waned a fair bit among younger people. There is a certain sense of discord, or at least lack of a common vision or identity, as India doesn't have the same type of cultural history of say, China or Korea, which perhaps allowed centralized totalitarianism to take hold more easily in those places. If you examine the history of the subcontinent, it's largely one of fractured kingdoms and city-states over thousands of years. The idea of a single, unified India was in many ways brought about by the British, with their maps and railroads and centralized administration. The Indian "freedom" movement of the 1920s onward took this notion to heart and ran with it. Today, India is widely recognized as one of the most corrupt countries. For example, in many cases, bribery isn't even disguised by a cover of politics... it's just flat out handing some bureaucrat a stack of cash. But a lot of people are still locked into the idea that they're "free" because their oppressors are in New Delhi instead of London. I imagine lots of people in the US had similar notions in the early 1800s about no longer being ruled from London, but perhaps cynicism grows as those early generations die? I don't know, maybe. There's also a lot of religious uniformity and conformity. Though international news sometimes carries stories of violence between hindus and muslims, there are many areas where hinduism is almost ubiquitous, to the point where people will just assume you're hindu unless there's some clear indication that you aren't. The last time I was there, the topic came up a few times, and older relatives seemed surprised that I wasn't hindu, whereas younger relatives didn't seem surprised or shocked, although they still defined themselves as hindu. Thinking back on it, I think chances are very high that if my parents had remained in India instead of moving to the US, I would be among those people who just accepted the popular propaganda and considered myself hindu by default, without really even thinking about it. Whereas growing up in New York and New Jersey, I was never exactly exposed to an explanation of rational atheism, but observing the variety of religions in a mixed society, I was able to come to the conclusion when I was 11 that none of them were for me. I can't imagine having been in a position to do that if I had grown up in India. Also, lots of middle and upper class younger people are as technologically savvy as anyone anywhere in the world. But socially, I agree with Tony... acceptance of violence towards children seems to be decidedly greater. I know this varies among different social groups anywhere in the world, but even my upper-class relatives seem to be OK with it. I mean, I don't know most of them very well, as I've only met most of them a few times in my life, but I've seen threats of slaps or hits leveled against "misbehaving" children as if it were a matter of course (I don't recall seeing them carried out though, at least not while I present to witness it). From that perspective, it's actually surprising that I was not hit as a child. But overall, the mentality around hitting children still seems to be a bit backwards. Also, I don't have any personal experience of lower-class villages where hundreds of millions still reside, but I imagine it's even more prevalent there. I suppose, like much of the former "third world", there's really a mix of old and new. Islands of spectacular wealth juxtaposed with scenes of crushing poverty. But there are perhaps some encouraging signs of a dynamic middle class emerging between those extremes... a group of people who in the west seem to be increasingly strangled by debt, regulation, and theft.

Based on what I've seen, I'd tend to agree. A lot of people seem to agree (or at least have no argument) with the notion that government is dishonest and politicians are liars and thieves. But given how widespread cognitive dissonance is in society, people accept that notion, but then turn around and go right back to voting, binge-watching CNN/FoxNews/MSNBC, and saying "there oughta be a law...".

I don't see why parents would need to buffer the discussion of a dead pet with "better place" platitudes, unless they have already been indoctrinating the child into some sort of religion. Absent that indoctrination, the child was already an atheist by default to begin with... after all, it's not as if the child was born with a pre-existing notion of a magical afterlife.

Sure it's satirical, but it's still mildly surprising coming from a mainstream fake news source. http://www.theonion.com/articles/humanity-surprised-it-still-hasnt-figured-out-bett,36361/

This is a fascinating statement. So... you aren't certain a god exists, but when you were 28, you freely chose to start believing this because of the fact that it can't be rationally proven?

I can't say I have any personal stories on this topic, but I had a few thoughts upon reading your post. When you say "I see a lot of cases where people pour their heart and soul into a product and any money they receive is not nearly enough to justify the amount of work they do", I agree, and I think this is very logical. The amount of money you make from a product or service is not going to be relative to the amount of work you put into it, it's going to be based on how much value it has to your prospective customers. There have been products which took very little effort or money to create that have made huge profits, and others which took huge investments in research and development, and went on to make no profit, and lost huge amounts of money for everyone involved. This is the paradigm no matter what your distribution model is... retail, donations, paid subscriptions, or anything else. If your project is something you hope to make money on, then I suppose you have to weigh how much time / effort / money you're going to spend on the project vs what you can realistically expect to gain in donations (over a timeframe that works for you). Also, when deciding on a distribution model, it may be worthwhile to fully examine your own intentions... is this a project that you are going to do no matter what, even if you don't expect to profit, or is it something you only intend to move forward with if you have a reasonable expectation of profit? One other issue this brings up... Stefan, for example, has clearly used the donation model successfully with his shows, videos, and podcasts. But in his case, there are certain other motives as well... for example, he likely wants to get his message out even to people who can't afford to pay anything. If those people change their lives based on information he provides, or expose others to it, then something will have been gained even if no monetary donation results. If your project involves a service or a physical product, as opposed to digitally-distributed content, you may have to do a somewhat different analysis of whether the donation model is the correct model for your project. For example, maybe something like crowdfunding may be the way to go, because if you don't have a good estimate from the start as to how much of a return you can expect on your investment, the crowdfunding model gives you at least some idea right up front about what you may stand to make in the short-term, before you even start working on your project and investing your resources into it. Anyway, just some thoughts... I hope a few were useful. I wish you the best with your project no matter how you decide to finance it!

I'm not entirely clear on your larger point... are you saying that the UK government is actually in good financial shape, or only that they are in somewhat less poor shape than the video suggests? Also, I admittedly don't have time at the moment to thoroughly re-view video, so perhaps there are other points made there to which you object? Also, I'd like to know more about why debt vs GDP is the statistic you find to be of primary importance. GDP itself is a measurement fraught with potential inaccuracies and potentially misleading data. For example, GDP includes most types of government spending. If government spending were to skyrocket over a given time period, then debt relative to GDP could appear to remain low as a result (at least for a while), while in fact the state's financial situation was going from bad to worse as a result of both debt and overspending (which itself will likely lead to accrual of future debt, since it's unlikely they'll be immediately paying for that increased spending). Also, we must consider how the state also plays an inflationary role here by printing ever larger amounts of fiat currency. Because of this, even if you attempt to mitigate this by using real GDP instead of just GDP, looking at nominal debt over a given period of time can still be an informative statistic.

I think it is fair to say that an increasing number attacks on ideas of liberty may be a sign of increasing recognition, which is a positive. I was also sorta wondering to what extent the writer of the article wrote it because he wanted to specifically write it, or whether he simply had to write an article for a "liberal" publication, and this is what he came up with. It's patently ludicrous, but of course in the same way that the vast majority of people on the planet believe patently ludicrous things, so not surprising at all. Thus dies Tchaikovsky's dream of a truly definitive rendition of Swan Lake!

This article popped up in my Facebook feed a few times, and I wondered if others interested in liberty had seen it... http://www.alternet.org/why-i-fled-libertarianism-and-became-liberal?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark I suppose whatever group he had been a part of may have claimed they were libertarians, but it sounds to me like he was (if anything) involved in the most extreme end of political libertarianism, filled with racists, corporatists, and fundamentalist theists. The people he described don't sound anything like the advocates of liberty I've come to know over the years. My response to the Facebook post was: "This guy suggests he fled "libertarianism" and became a "liberal", because the people he associated with in the past were "assholes", and he (presumably) didn't want to be. Unfortunately for him, all he achieved in this transition was going from an outright, in-your-face asshole, to an asshole who makes himself feel better by covering up his assholery with platitudes and feel-good bullshit... yet he's still every bit the asshole (by his own definition of the word)." The author states "During Obama’s first term, I also went to graduate school for creative writing at progressive college, and I settled into my marriage with my wife, a Canadian and “goddamn liberal.” I can’t point to just one thing that pushed me left, but in Obama’s first term I had a change of heart, moving from a lifelong extreme into the bosom of conventional liberalism.". Yet he never makes an actual argument for "conventional liberalism". The whole thing simply comes off as the author being tremendously relieved that he is now part of the political mainstream, and that he can now fit in much more easily with other statists, like his "progressive college" friends and his "goddamn liberal" wife. The article seems to be an attempt to justify this... possibly more to himself than anyone else. Unfortunately, he never actually provides any logical justification.

www.libertarianism.org/blog/six-reasons-libertarians-should-reject-non-aggression-principle Hello all. I am a long-time listener and lurker, but I have not posted here much. I came across this article a short while ago though, and felt it might be interesting to possibly get some thoughts from other philosophically-minded people. While the author is a philosophy professor and is apparently a noted figure in some libertarian circles, I felt the article thoroughly missed the mark right from the start, where he attemps to define the non-aggression principle. Then he went on to present 6 examples which were either flawed (due to his initial misconceptions) or not even relevant to the topic. On the other hand, even after reading it twice, I have the odd sense that I may still be missing something. Perhaps this is just because the article is fairly well written, I don't know. Still, I'd certainly be interested in other perspectives.