Josh F

I think crime has improved a lot since the 1990s, when I grew up there, and there were the Rodney King riots, Rampart police department, korean street gangs, bloods and crips. Now it is completely controlled by the gang network MS13. Businesses are impossible to open. Employment is a huge issue. Hollywood is moving away. Legalized marijuana is its saving grace, economically. Northern California has seen a an increase in property value, as a result. Los Angeles is a police state. I literally saw a police division TANK parked outside my wealthy suburban neighborhood. One city inside LA, called Reseda, has an entire community behind metal gates with 24/7 cameras on everyone. Every fart in your car is a $500 ticket plus driving school. The people suck too.

The issue isn't people who disagree, but people who are unwilling to ever agree, and the skill required to notice it. And its always in the first post, usually the first few sentences, that tell you every thing you need to know about how a person will respond. If you don't think that this person was shouting clues at you, screaming "hey, I'm not here to learn", then are you being an empathetic listener in the first place? My understanding is a couple things: 1. Unempathetic people pray on empathetic people's sympathies. 2. Many people, including myself, in this community struggle establishing boundaries. You're setting NO boundaries, you're saying someone can come into a situation unempathetically and that you will indulge them and waste your time on them. Establishing boundaries is an essential skillset for being empathetic without being a victim. 3. You are a wise human being, and this is a rare and valuable thing. It is a complete waste of your time to engage someone like this, when there are millions who will listen and benefit from your words who have not been exposed to these ideas. If the entire community modeled their approach to spreading this message on what you're doing, engaging people who are uninterested in learning, how far would this message spread? Billions still have not been exposed to these arguments, but by all means spend your entire life debating people who aren't going to listen to you if that makes you happy. I am not pretending. I am basing my opinion on evidence. But, you're trying to base your actions on a prediction that is not based on the available evidence. Why?

You're very free to do what you want to do, let me say that first of all. My goal is to take this time to converse with you, since you're clearly empathetic and willing to learn. This might not apply, I don't know, but in my experience a lot of the childhoods of the people on this site make them, and me, suckers for trolling behavior. The people already on this site, struggling to develop those missing qualities are NOT helped by the constant indulging of troll behavior. Comments like this person's can easily upset and discourage others on the path, others with a genuine interest. What I see you doing is indulging abusive human beings, spending your time and energy on them, despite what it costs you or other good people to engage them, you're willing to play the martyr to dealing with these people. Why? The world has BILLIONS who need to learn, how much do you think focusing on one insulting troll is really worth it? And without know anything about you personally, do you not share in my fears when I engage these people that I am repeating unhealthy relationship pattern? This is a little annoying, to be completely frank. Being reasonable and empathetic makes it so easy to predict this person's response, your inability to predict it should be discerning. He would have continues to insult you and advocated for hitting children, obviously, so obviously, again, there isn't a single doubt in my mind. Why is there doubt in your mind? What clues didn't you get that I am seeing jump right out at me?

Yeah it is okay to judge people based on their presentation. In fact, more than okay, it is an essential skill to avoid manipulation and abuse. I guarantee without hesitancy that he next reply wasn't going to suddenly beam with empathy and understanding.

I disagree, I think we did have a chance. "I can predict that Stefan's child will grow up to be (if there are no other factors intervening) ... an intellectual sissy who will analyse accurately all the problems she encounters in life but will feel little, if anything, in the way of empathy." Empathy has very clear markers. The first is curiosity. He didn't ask a single question of the community, just heaped poorly spelled, poorly written insults on members of the community. There wasn't a single clue that this person was interested in being shown another perspective. And if I can extrapolate a lesson out of that, is that as a community we should value our time more. Why spend the collective hours upon hours of discussion with this person, when all the content and arguments are already just a quick google search away?

You dont think it is almost an instantly bad sign that someone lacks the required empathy for these ideas when the go to a forum against child spanking to advocate child spanking? There are people here who were severely abused by their parents, and this author expressed zero empathy for them. Also the argument was terrible. I don't have a problem kicking him off the website just for his inability to reason. I don't understand why "letting everyone say whatever they want" is confused for philosophical honesty. Philosophical honest doesn't come from insulting argumentation, but empathy and understanding which this person is clearly incapable of.

I think to some degree this already exists in the unschooling community, and with the internet there are "online" podcasting teachers like the guy from School Sucks. He often has unschooled kids call in and participate.

I can provide a way to synthesize this dichotomy you've drawn between "force" and "structural violence." The circumstances which you would classify as "structural violence" are only ones in which the violence is not direct. For example, a poor person with limited options is not necessarily the victims of violence directly. Other business owners and people who could provide more options for that person were the direct victims of the violence. So a poor person born in N Korea has no choices, and thus has to work as a slave for some Russia logging company. This isn't the free market, because the entire economy this person was born into uses violence to push out options. In the cliche of a poor person having their lands taken from them and then forced to work in a factory on their own ancestral land, it takes a special set of blinders to blame the factory and not the government who stole the land in the first place. A lot of this understanding comes from a lack of insight into how the economy in these places actually function. For example, in China the Chinese government is notoriously corrupt. They'll make baby food with lead in it if you bribe the right officials. It is companies like Walmart, Nike, Disney, the Gap and others which send in armies of private investigators to make sure that factories are not using child labor and have lawful and reasonable practices. The suicides at the Foxconn factories illustrate this point: while the mainstream media tried to lay the blame on Apple for outsourcing some of their manufacturing to this company, the true culprit was the climate in Taiwanese and Chinese governments which use violence to prevent strikes, bribes to shut down competitors, and tricks to keep the value of their currency low. Foxconn's suicide rates were actually lower than the average in China, thats the truth of it.

Any links?

Personally, I am very curious about the perspective from a peacefully parented, unschooled kid of society at large. And specifically, what impression you've come away with about your public school counterparts. What do you think their households are like? What qualities in their character do you notice that you don't see when you hang out with peacefully raised children? I actually have a few more questions too, I just wanted to add. I am under the impression that unschooling kids are in communication through a pretty large network that includes websites and meetups and conferences. Are any of the kids bullys? Is there much drug use? Are the kids sexually active? For me as a public school kid, I remember going to Jr High (11 to 13 years old) and there were pregnant girls and people doing drugs in my school. Some kids were gang affiliated and would fight other kids. I was personally in a "highly gifted" program that ran inside a public school, and kids in my own program were not pregnant and drug use didn't really begin until high school.

Mostly the FED, but also Banks, China and other countries, individuals as well. You can go buy a bond right now. China at one point was legally obliged to buy US Bonds, that seems to be diminishing The Treasury sells the bonds, the FED buys them with Federal Reserve Notes (AKA Dollars)

and people are afraid of them regulating the internet or bitcoin, please lol

The lender is the Federal Reserve and other central banks. They just print it, super easy. Actually, I dont think they even print it, to be honest. They just email it, lol. They sell bonds to "back" it, which is the debt part, since they have to pay back those bonds though interest rates are really low at the moment.

If you look at smaller planes though, you'll see a lot more change. I had the chance to fly on a newer "eco" plane, and it ran silent on biodiesel. I had no idea these dolts hadn't updated the computer systems in the old planes though yet, sheesh.

The free market is already providing a lot of useful alternatives to the traditional corporate hierarchy. Distributed networks, sometimes of volunteers, are providing very valuable content these days. Wikipedia or Reddit online. Even decentralized work from home call centers, decentralized gaming with minecraft. Even some gourmet farming is starting to move in this direction, like for marijuana or coffee or wine. In the case of wine, many large companies are not farmers. Small farmers sell product to larger producers, many of whom mix the wine. These like mega companies, these huge huge oil providers.... is that really the result of the free market? Without state sponsorship I wonder to what degree they would have been able to consolidate all the assets. If you think of the gold rush, individuals and small groups did the brunt of the work setting things up, even if larger gold companies did own larger mines or buy large amounts of gold it would be hard to describe the gold market as this oligopoly (except where the government reserves are concerned). I'm really thinking out loud here, but would a system without a regulated stock market even have CEOs or Boards of Directors when those functions aren't necessary to the business's success? I wonder to what degree hierarchy can be and is being removed from business as well.

Yeah, you're very unwilling to respond to that question, and I think you'd be served by exploring it a bit better. I was actually thinking about you the other day, there is a new altcoin coming out called Etherium. The currency includes this counter, and long story short the money is directly correlated to running a computer process. So for example, you can spend your Etherium to host files in the cloud, or run files in the cloud, basically pegging the currency to the processing speed and memory. Not pegging the value, but it does add that "intrinsic value" quality you keep looking for, because now the currency can be used as something other than a currency (though this already existed on TOP of the bitcoin structure, but I dn't think you understand how that works). Does this satisfy your demands for these currencies? To explain in more detail, etherium is basically bitcoin, but each coin can come with a code, and the transfer of the coin includes running the code. Thusly it embeds hosting, emails, file transfers, and any other computer function to the coin.. and this can be used fluidly to create simple smart contracts and other arbitration tools for free.

It would appear that it wasn't a fallacy, why can't you now adjust your argument that many Muslims did own slaves?

Yeah, under hyperinflation the cost for all things goes up significantly because the currency is worthless. This is doubly true with precious metals, as they might become a safe haven for investors Truth has no need for ideology, it is a reluctance which accompanies labeling yourself based on your conclusions.

Exactly. We're being deprived of solidarity.

Right, and the people don't have to see the face of the donator, or feel the appreciation towards that specific person.

I have been watching these very uplifting youtube "prank" videos where people give large tips or other helpful charity to people who could really use it. The people who receive the $100 or $200 are brought to tears and hugs with joy and appreciation. Comparatively, I got on food-stamps for 3 months years and years ago. I went to the welfare spot, and the amount of disgruntled entitled belligerence from the welfare recipients was disgusting. I can't help but wonder if one of welfare's most destructive qualities is a society without frequent acts of kindness.

I don't understand why there should be a test based on your personal comfort. Entrepreneurship is risk. You don't have to be into entrepreneurship. As someone who believes in market solutions to complex social problems, bitcoin sure takes the cake as something perhaps even bigger than the internet itself. Soothsaying is just so boring and irrelevant and irrational.

The real question is why are you sending your children to any school. We already invented the internet, hello!??!?!?!

I don't know about that, from my perspective, some lifeforms are nearly indistinguishable from things which are not alive. Humans are vastly different than a rock, but is coral as different? Live and inanimate things share many qualities. They're composed of atoms. They have weight. They both have motion. They both involve complex chemical reactions. Are they so different?

They SUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!! I really hope that alternatives begin seizing more of the market.