ribuck

He became a part of the establishment, so he was protected by the establishment.

I had a vasectomy, but only after fathering two children. The vasectomy has been trouble-free, and I have no regrets. It's a much more serious decision for someone who is childless. I have heard of people who freeze their sperm before having a vasectomy, which gives them a good chance of fathering a child if they change their mind later (but success is not guaranteed). A vasectomy can sometimes be reversed by another operation, but again you can't count on success. The bloodline/legacy thing is interesting. I simply cannot see the point of those who are concerned about whether or not they pass on the family surname, yet lots of people do seem to care strongly about that. But one thing I did notice: after having children, I lost my fear of death. It makes no logical sense, because what "lives on" is some copies of my DNA rather than any part of myself, but my calm acceptance of death did arise from having children. Incidentally, "ejaculating after pulling out" (referred to in your post) doesn't guarantee against pregnancy. There are still some sperm floating around in the pre-ejaculate fluid.

That one's pretty clear: Zero prior partners -> 20% risk of divorce One prior partner -> 46% risk of divorce Two to four prior partners -> approx. 60% risk of divorce 5 to 15 partners -> approx. 70% risk of divorce 16 or more partners -> approx 80% risk of divorce (source) (By the way, don't click the "divorce probability calculator" link on that page, because it harvests email addresses for selling "divorce insurance".)

Futurama, I'm not sure whether you deliberately wrote "Anarchist" instead of "Atheist" in the last line. There are plenty of festivals which I would consider to be "Anarchist" days. Spain's Tomatina is the most fun you can have with tomatoes. Summer Solstice at Stonehenge is when the gates are opened and you can party amongst the stones (as opposed to regular tourist visits where you can't touch the stones but must gaze respectfully from a distance before you visit the overpriced shop). In the United States, there's Amtrak Mooning Day and of course Burning Man.

Oh, I suppose I would meet some interesting people, get some exercise and have a few laughs. I tend not to cultivate specific expectations when I do something for the first time. If something sounds interesting, I just do it. If it turns out to be worthwhile, I do similar things again in the future. Having said that, I see it's a Sunday, and no early trains run from stations near me. The first Sunday train gets in to Euston at 1.22pm so I'll probably give it a miss.

Yes, I do agree. Back when I used to sometimes feel sad, I would turn up the stereo very loud, play something like Moody Blues "Isn't Life Strange", and wallow totally in my sadness. By the time the song (or perhaps a whole album) had finished playing, all the sadness had dissipated and I felt refreshed and positive.

I think very few people have their whole future life already secured when they have children. The human race would have died out long ago if that was a prerequisite!

I might be able to make it to this meetup. I, too, like activity-based meetups. (I hope you aren't restricting it to people who were at the online hangout.)

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" doesn't work. Gilligan might love for Mary-Anne to tie him to the bedpost, but that doesn't mean he gets to tie Mary-Anne to the bedpost. "Do unto others as they do unto you" isn't universalizable. It requires that the other person doesn't wait to see what others do to them.

Regulations harm small businesses more than they harm big corporations, which suggests a continuing trend towards larger and larger corporations. However, individuals and small businesses are much more nimble, so they have the advantage in a fast-changing world. Ultimately, the balance depends on the type and degree of regulations, so I don't think it's predictable.

Sure they would like to enforce negative interest, but it won't ever happen. Even without technologies such as Bitcoin, people would simply resort to using precious metals or scarce commodities instead of fiat. The banks, on the other hand, are obliged to play the government's games and there are already some countries where they are required to put their excess funds on deposit with the central bank for negative interest.

Thank you for saying what needs to be said, Sal9000. Smallpox has only been eradicated in the wild. It is still deliberately cultivated in the US and Russia. This is supposedly in case it is needed for vaccine research, but many think it's being retained for military purposes.

Kevin, I invite you to retract your post, which is factually wrong on several counts. After the server was seized, the feds transferred the bitcoins to their own wallet. Therefore, your hypothetical "spiteful bitcoiner" could do nothing, nor could the people who previously had possession of the private keys for that stash. More interesting is the idea that the seized coins are "stolen money", and the community could blacklist those coins. I don't see that happening, however, as most bitcoiners strongly oppose to blacklisting (because they value the fungibility of bitcoins). It's certainly not fair. Selling such large tranches keeps out all but the largest players, therefore the price received is likely to be well below market value. I wouldn't be surprised if the government does intend to keep much of it. Perhaps some of the bidders are front companies for the CIA or other three-letter agencies.

Obviously we shouldn't force people to be vaccinated. In cases where the benefit is not necessarily to the individual, but to everyone else ("the herd"), then everyone else can offer to pay the holdouts for the benefit that would arise from their vaccination. But if the holdouts still don't want to get vaccinated, that's absolutely fine. The herd can find other ways to protect themselves from transmission of the disease.

Oh, it's certainly possible to be unhurt by criticism. If you recognize the criticism as honest and valid, you can do something about it (and therefore can be grateful that you received the criticism). If the criticism is dishonest or invalid then it's a reflection of the person doing the criticizing and not a reflection of you, so why should you care? Tyler is by no means the only person to suggest extreme criticism as a coping mechanism. Harry Browne takes a similar approach in his book "How I found freedom in an unfree world". However, he's not talking about criticism as a form of self-attack. He's talking about practicing coping with extreme criticism, so that you will be unaffected by milder criticism when you encounter it.

There's a much simpler way of looking at this situation. Desperation brings the hungry man to the point where he's prepared to steal the food, regardless of any moral issues. The consequences of stealing (future reparation, imprisonment, shunning, etc) are a price he's prepared to pay for a full stomach.

I still can't make sense of what you're saying. Your topic header mentions Bitcoin, but your link is not about Bitcoin. You say you're skeptical, but about what? "The lack of skepticism" is suspicious, apparently, but whose lack of skepticism are you suspicious about? Surely you are not suggesting a general lack of skepticism about Bitcoin? Bitcoin has been subject to a huge amount of skepticism, even from many of the Mises guys whom one would think would understand it better. Anyway, skepticism shouldn't last long. Rational enquiry will soon determine the truth about that which caused the skepticism.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. The NSA paper advocates centralized cryptocurrencies (such as the Canadian Government's "MintChip" system). Are you saying that, as a result of reading this paper, you now advocate decentralized cryptocurrencies? That would be the red pill, surely.

By the time the mining of new bitcoins ends, the world's population will probably be in decline (based on current predictions). So deflation won't be an issue at all. The system would still work with just one Bitcoin. At the moment a bitcoin is subdivisible to 10^8 satoshis. If necessary, it could be subdivided further, although this would need near-universal support since it implies a hard fork of the block chain. There are already some spare bits in the protocol's data structures, so from a programming point of view it's not a big deal.

A haiku from learnliberty.tumblr.com: Liberty calls me Follow as my conscience leads Throw off chains that bind.

Oh no, it's not unavoidable! But you need to do things a little differently. Instead of doing everything in a middle class way, you rearrange your life so that you do half of the things like a poor person (where that provides a tax advantage), and do the other half of the things like a rich person (where that provides a tax advantage). I'm in the middle of writing a piece for liberty.me exploring just that approach. In the UK at least, it's possible to (legally) pay almost no tax that way.

Poor people can't be exploited by the government because they don't have enough money. Rich people don't get exploited by the government because they run the system. That leaves the middle as sitting ducks.

That may be the source of your misunderstanding. You are not being offered those choices. Here are the choices you are actually being offered: 1) Withdrawing your consent for violent rule by the majority over the minority, 2) Endorsing violent rule by the majority over the minority, with ruler A, 3) Endorsing violent rule by the majority over the minority, with ruler B. If you are endorsing violent rule by the majority over the minority, there's no realistic prospect of gradual improvement. It's always in the self-interest of those who wield the power to increase their use of it, because that increases their chances of re-election.

If you were to say to the person "I'm irritated because I don't think I'm being listened to", wouldn't you expect the other person to respond "I'm listening to you now"? In which case, maybe there's a cause of your irritation other than the actions of the other person.

Here's a post by Skyler Collins where he discusses this:http://www.everything-voluntary.com/2014/03/when-children-reach-adulthood.htmlHis take is that the multi-generational household was normal throughout most of human history, until the last couple of generations. He hopes that his children will stay with him when they start their families, and he regrets that his in-laws moved out after his second child was born. Thomas, you mention that this situation has come up in a lot of podcasts - but isn't that in the context of a disfunctional family? If the family is stable, secure and loving, what's the problem?