Xtort

The thing that's making this unique is that this housing is supposedly intended as short term housing and one of the requirements to qualify is that you have to find a job. However the guidelines also stipulate that you don't have to prove that you actually have a job to keep living there.

Well, the way it was presented to me was like this - the cost of locking up homeless people for drug abuse, etc, and the cost of paying for their health care is greater than the cost of building a home. So it makes sense from an economic stand point to build houses for the homeless. That's the basis for this program. I disagree, of course - these are all problems created by the state, so that is where the real solution lies.

Slaves still exhibit self ownership. They do not become will-less robots.

http://www.nationswell.com/one-state-track-become-first-end-homelessness-2015/ Utah Is on Track to End Homelessness by 2015 With This One Simple Idea Give them an apartment first, ask questions later.Utah has reduced its rate of chronic homelessness by 78 percent over the past eight years, moving 2000 people off the street and putting the state on track to eradicate homelessness altogether by 2015. How'd they do it? The state is giving away apartments, no strings attached. In 2005, Utah calculated the annual cost of E.R. visits and jail stays for an average homeless person was $16,670, while the cost of providing an apartment and social worker would be $11,000. Each participant works with a caseworker to become self-sufficient, but if they fail, they still get to keep their apartment. Other states are eager to emulate Utah's results. Wyoming has seen its homeless population more than double in the past three years, and it only provides shelter for 26 percent of them, the lowest rate in the country. City officials in Casper, Wyoming, now plan to launch a pilot program using the methods of Utah's Housing First program. There's no telling how far the idea might go.

If the precinct thought this would make it through a trial they would have done it that way. Internal investigations are for when they know the cop would get hanged in court. As for the reference to his size and age, it's only to point out this kid was scrawny and he already had two trained thugs stepping on him. My son is not even 10 years old and he weighs more than this kid did. The idea that two officers trained in restraint techniques cannot control this boy and thus had to shoot him is completely asinine. If Hulk Hogan told you he had to shoot Skreech because the kid was just too difficult to control you'd be howling bloody murder.

I think a compassionate society would have hospitals where these kinds of people can be treated and helped. As for the use of ostracism, well that all depends. Can we currently stop criminals from using roads? Sidewalks? Can we stop them from getting on a bus and going to a victim's house? Can we even stop them from having their home paid for by section 8 and their living paid for by social security? I think ostracism has more utility than you think.

I think horses own themselves, we just don't care. Acknowledging ownership and respecting it are two different things. As for the source, who knows? We don't know where gravity comes from either, we just look at it's effects. Matter attracts matter, we don't know why or how, we just know that it does. If you're still fuzzy on how this applies to self ownership, just ask yourself why you can't claim credit for the applause after Obama gives a speech.

Consider it this way, Hayek published papers predicting the great depression in the 20's, so from what little I know of the history of Austrian economics, there's nearly a full hundred year track record of being right. If being right were sufficient to sway public opinion, then there wouldn't be any 'voodoo' economics left. People respond to emotional arguments, and when Austrians respond to 'what about the poor' with hard truths it doesn't go over well.

This is an update to a story that came out last week. This boy had schizophrenia and during one of his episodes, his parents needed help in controlling him and made the mistake of calling the police to help them. It's a logical consideration, police obviously have training in how to physically restrain people and that was all they needed until he could calm down. So two police show up and try to talk to the boy and calm him down. A third then arrives and once they have sufficient numbers (I guess 2 vs 1 isn't stacked enough in their favor) they tackle him. The boy had a small screw driver and was using it to try to injure them, so once the boy was pinned down the third officer shot him and killed him. As usual, rather than being tried by a jury the police carried out an internal investigation. http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/08/justice/north-carolina-teen-killed/ This child's parents, who just wanted some help dealing with his condition, had to pay for the uniforms of these officers, had to pay for their training, had to pay for their equipment and had to pay for the bullets that killed him. And for the rest of their lives they will have to pay for these cops' wages and when those cops decide they've had enough of oppressing and killing, these victims will have to pay for their retirement. Honestly, it amazes me that people still do not understand why I am an anarchist.

Notice there are no kickstarter programs for war or oppression.

A) Doesn't make sense unless you feel that the federal government owns at the very least all land within the united states. At that point you get into a discussion about property rights and the 'might makes right' argument that the state requires is self defeating. If my property is mine then the state's claim that I have to take their rule or leave doesn't make any more sense than me telling my neighbor if he doesn't move out then he agrees to let me take his car (or whatever else I want).

That's an interesting observation, but I don't think it's accurate. The idea of good cop bad cop parenting involves setting rules. One parent sets strict rules, the other parent negates those rules. This wasn't about setting rules, this was about teaching methods. I told him flat out if he wanted to leave, we could. He genuinely enjoys archery, though to be honest his motivation has tapered off - resulting in us not doing it as often. But at the time he was all for it. He generates his own frustration when he misses, and that's what this was all about. My wife would get frustrated too, and vent that frustration on the child. This is typical of her culture, they are very collectivist and public displays of ability are taken very seriously. If you're going to do something, it's important that you do it better than everyone else. I did not set the goal of shooting accurately. I only created a comfortable and safe atmosphere for him to do whatever he wanted to do. Finding ways to make him laugh about shots that just go all wrong, making sure he remembers that the point is to enjoy himself. I'm simply pointing out that the end result of this was that his performance improved very, very quickly. This was a rare occurrence for us because we've had similar situations like this in the past. My wife usually understands that it's best if I coach him, for exactly this reason. It's just this time for some reason I decided to let her run with it and see what happened. That was wrong on my part but it was informative. Oh, I don't push him for accuracy at all. He has his own motivation for that. As you said, archery is all about nailing that circle in the middle, and it feels good when you do that. It's just human nature. But if his shots are all over the place, when it's time to collect his arrows I'll walk with him to the target and take a moment to find something positive about his shooting, especially if he's clearly upset with himself. For example if his hots form a pattern, I'll point that out to him, and he always gets a kick out of that. I guess it kind of goes back to something Stefan points out, about how you do not have to force people to do the things they want to do. He already wants to hit the target, so I don't have to shout at him or try to bully him into doing it. I mean to him it's like a real life video game, trying to get the arrow to go where you want it to go. It's also prompted some interesting discussions about physics . Kind of another topic, but getting kids to enjoy things is a good way to open them up to subjects they might otherwise find boring.

This is just some more anecdotal validation of the peaceful parenting concept. This year when summer began, my wife and I decided to find an activity for our son to get involved in. After going through a range of ideas, he was interested in either dance or martial arts. I don't personally have a problem with martial arts but that seemed rather dull, and so we were considering dance. Then the idea struck me to consider archery. It has some utility assuming he finds himself stranded in the woods and his only means of finding food is a bow and arrow (a stretch I know), and it's an interesting sport that's not very typical. He loved the idea, so did the wife, and luckily enough there are people here who offer affordable instruction on archery. Maybe because on the east coast we get lots of implants from England where the tradition is still alive and strong? Anyway, there is one experience in particular I wanted to share. My son got very into the sport and we were taking him to an archery range every day. Despite being somewhat militant, the sport itself is very interesting to me. The amount of physics involved surprised me. Very tiny variations in where you place your hands, your finger, even your face or the angle you stand at will completely change where the arrow goes. (I signed up for lessons along with him). Shooting effectively requires concentration, stamina, and confidence - because if you stand there too long worrying about whether or not your aim is correct, your muscles will begin to shake and you will definitely miss. Now, my son has a natural talent for this sort that he's picked up and developed very quickly. As such my wife and I have high expectations for him when he shoots. That said, being a child, sometimes he is very off. Maybe he's distracted by something else, maybe he's just not feeling it that day. But sometimes we go to the range and even with the closer targets he just can't hit anything. This is the experience I wanted to share with you. My wife is Asian, and in her country they are very strict about this sort of thing (think the tiger mother article written a few years ago). Her response, when he kept missing, would be to shout at him. When that didn't work, she would loom over him and assume a threatening posture. When he would get frustrated and start wanting to quit, she would demand that he stand there and keep doing it until he got it right. And the immediate effect was obvious - his performance only got worse. Not only did it get worse, but he started to hate doing it, and at that point, what's the point in continuing? Against my better judgment I allowed her tirade to continue until he was in tears with frustration. The result of that method - entirely negative. That was when I calmly but firmly suggested that she go sit down and let me work with him. The first thing I did was take a break with him, talk to him about why he's upset and what he hoped to accomplish there. I asked him if he felt it was okay to miss sometimes and he agreed that it is. He agreed that there's nothing wrong with having a bad day and that the most important thing is to enjoy yourself. Once his spirits were lifted and he was ready, we returned. He immediately began missing, again, just like before. He'd glance back at my wife in fear and I would remind him that it's okay, I'm here with him and he has nothing to worry about. Once he was confident that he could make mistakes without being chastised, he calmed down. He continued to miss for a while, and rather than shout at him all I did was ask him what he thought he did wrong and how he should correct it. Regardless of how it turned out, I found positive and enthusiastic criticisms to offer, even for negatives. Such as 'you missed this one but it was very close, I'll bet you can get it next time'. After about half an hour of this, he was nailing bullseyes just like usual. All it took was a little encouragement and a sense of security. I just wanted to post this, because the parallel struck me immediately. The two methods - peaceful vs authoritarian - can sometimes have immediate and obvious effects. And the real bonus - you don't have to make someone you love cry to accomplish it.

You can have both capitalism and socialism with or without a state. The question is, why would you want to?

Maybe the Venus Project can move to this town and really get their experiment going? Think of any of them speak Spanish?

It's funny that they call Spain capitalist. I have a co-worker from Spain and it is shockingly anti-capitalist. For example it is nearly impossible to fire people in the private sector (if you can call it that) and if you manage to get a government job, you can not be fired at all. Politicians go around getting votes by offering people government jobs. It's just hilarious that they blame their unemployment on capitalism.

It seems to me that if consciousnessand memory weren't a process developed by your physical brain then head trauma wouldn't lead to memory loss, comas, etc. Sometimes when people suffer brain trauma and survive, their personalities are completely changed. I remember reading about a man who had a rail spike go through his head and survive. Doctors were able to put their fingers through one side of his head and out the other, it went clean through. He lived out a full life but after the injury, he was literally a different person. Not disabled, just different.

Eh, that works, but all you have to remember is that calling someone's argument simplistic doesn't refute it. A simplistic argument shouldn't be difficult to refute if it's wrong. The thing is, Stefan's position is not simplistic, he just starts with simple and obvious premises and works from there. Peter starts with the conclusion (a guy that owned a company was a jerk to me once so capitalism sucks) and tries to reverse engeineer reality to make it fit.

He debates prominent atheists, like Sam Harris, on topics like morality and they concede to him immediately that for objective morality to be real, there has to be a god. He then does a decent job of proving objective morality to be valid (though he does use a lot of philosophical jargon that they're obviously not familiar with as well to confuse them). It's pretty painful to watch. He really is no different, but he's very consistent, and he's very influential amongst Christians. In my experience when you start poking holes in his syllogisms they get very upset.

This is the way I would use it - Statist makes a typical claim, something like "Without the police, who will protect you?" Then link that article and ask "Who was there to protect this man from being raped and surgically violated by these police?" It's worth pointing out that these cops are not under any kind of disciplinary action and their precinct is confident that it will win in court against this man's complaints against them.

http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S3209305.shtml?cat=500#.UnkLE5TwLHt This man is pulled over for going through a stop sign or some such. They bring out the drug dog and decide it gave a positive indication of drugs. So they search him and find nothing. Then they take him to a hospital, force him to get x-rayed, and nothing. Then they probe him using their hands 3 times, and find nothing. They force him to take 4 enemas (in front of an audience), and find nothing. Then they sedate him and take him to surgery so they can really get the job done, and still find nothing. Then when all was said and done, they gave him the bill and told him to pay it. Posting this here because for statists, even minarchists, tax-funded police are something people almost unanimously agree is absolutely necessary. They forced this guy to have surgery and when it turned out they were wrong all along, not even an apology.

I listened to this today while working: It's him debating Lawrence Krauss and the first thing Craig does is launch into his syllogisms. One nice thing about Craig is that he's consistent. Every single debate he gives the same spiel. Just postsing for anyone that wants to hear his pro-god arguments as syllogisms...I may write up my own take on them later. One good point made in this debate by Krauss is that while Craig is doing his damndest to prove god, for Krauss he doesn't believe anything until he's tried and failed to DISPROVE it. I mean this is really the same song and dance that theists and atheists have been going over for decades (probably longer), I only bring this up because Craig is so influential with Christians.

Order and consistency are not the same as design. The way you evidence design is by identifying a designer. Otherwise all you're observing are naturally occuring repeating patters based on naturalistic phenomenon. For example, beaches are highly ordered phenomenon. The sand is ordered from largest to smallest in a gradient pattern. Yet this isn't because someone designed beaches to be this way, it's because of the laws of physics.

That's interesting because when Dawkins refused to debate him (dawkins won't debate creationists), Craig made a big song and dance about it. He took it so far as to debate an empty chair (Dawkins' empty seat). Yeah, it's always disappointing when he debates atheists that just don't understand what he's talking about and end up losing. They accept a lot of his assertions is valid when they aren't and it allows him to structure the discussion as he prefers it. Especially on the topic of morality. They just give him the "You can't have objective morality without god" premise as a given.

No problem. I only bring him up because he's very influential with theists and he really makes an effort to get out there and debate. That and creating a book specifically about applying reason to theism seems right up your ally....though as I said he seems to feel reason is a problem to be solved with theism. But the general perception of him, at least as far as I can tell, is that he's a legitimate philosopher/authority that routinely 'beats' atheists in logical debates.