Josh F

He is a post-modernist, right. I think he presents challenging criticisms of some of the central ideas around FDR: namely moral shaming. He challenges some of the more "victorian" aspects discussed around issues like sex and drugs on this website, as well. I'm not a diehard objectivist or moralist, my personal resonance with this entire website is the topic of child abuse. I was an anarchist prior to getting into the philosophical stuff on here, and economically sympathetic with libertarianism. I came, like Thad, from the post-modernist school of thought regarding philosophy. I remember one of my early topics here was trying to discuss that different approach to philosophy, which comes from a much different cannon, and how it could still be applied to these same principles (free markets and peaceful parenting). The topic went on for pages, but ultimately went no where...though I'd be happy to discuss them with anyone interested, one on one. I think in general what I like though is that he, and others like him, taking a less objectivist approach to some of the issues of liberty. And in so doing, create the framework for shortening the philosophical gap between left and right anarchists (and I dont mean Zietgiesters). Issues like drug legalization, anti-spying and cryptography, anti-imperialism/war, and the willingness to criticize any ancient institution is central to both groups. This merger of interests has had interesting byproducts, from Anonymous and Wikileaks to bitcoin and 3dprinters, and combined we're sort of the last remnants of the dying anti-war movement. The left brand seems more critical of capitalist institutions, whereas you'll find many libertarians defending Koch brothers or Monsanto or Walmart as if they were somehow a byproduct of free markets. On the right, they're more willing to criticize the welfare state and the progressive White Man's Burden or savior complex as a false morality, the professional victimhood market of academia, etc. I brought up the topic of Queer Theory here, but no one seemed interested. Market Morality, like Rand's ideas of self interest, seem a bit off the radar, too. Thaddeus talks about some of those things. The Q&A episode you linked me, by the way, was incredibly frustrating because I don't think either parties were particularly skilled in the philosophical debate. I'd rather see Molyneux engage someone like Richard Rorty (who is dead now), a rigorous post-modernist philosopher.

Oh yeah, sorry. Guess I mixed up the topics.

I mean firstly I'm no professional. I've been investigating how this stuff on a very amateur level. 1:1's benefit would be that it wasn't a scam because they were giving you 1 colored bitcoin in exchange for an uncolored coin. This whole idea is flawed though... So lets take an example that this service strictly provides medical care. The contract itself could be insured through bitcoin: the bitcoin acting not only as the contract itself, but as an escrow on your investment. The insurance company pools together the invested bitcoin to hedge against the cost of available healthcare. In most places you'd need to repurchase the services from a healthcare provider in their area. The business itself bulk purchases the insurance, like any company which provides medical care to their employees. People who opt-in would simply gain access to some coverage at some kind of comparable rate in bitcoin. Maybe you could get them a discount through the bulk purchases, maybe. Then you'd have to have a nice cash flow built up to hedge against major value shifts in bitcoin. Assuming in some cases, perhaps in the realm of medical tourism, you could directly set up contracts with specific doctors offices who accept bitcoin. In those cases it would be like any other healthcare provider, you'd insure the costs, you'd hedge their average output costs against the fees. It would be hard to compete, since you're hardly the first player. I'd rather just see one of these companies already in this space simply ADOPT bitcoin. Bitcoin isn't a business itself, which is why that model sounds flimsy as hell to me. Bitcoin is a business tool, like money. So its a business model that just says "oh we copy that real business, say its in bitcoin, and somehow thats better. Except we aren't already the owners of an existing business in any of those fields, but... you know... bitcoin." If there is a way to develop a market in those spaces, the money would be as a consultant to businesses thinking about how they could integrate bitcoin into their already existing models. The REAL missing market though, the big one in my opinion, is in business to business (BTB) transactions. If Chinese manufacturers could buy silver from a Bolivian mine using bitcoin, its the dawn of a new economic reality. But thats a big boy business.

History is a often a history of the extremes influencing the center. Its nice that this lady has to pay service to the idea that feminism is anti-man, even if she is defending it, it was an issue not to be mentioned for quite some time. Similar to the Adrian whatever NFL guy who hit his kid, its really nice to see the media actually jumping on that topic. Its a positive sign that the messages of peaceful parenting, or male disposability, have entered the mainstream dialogue. Excellent point. I mean if I wanted to know something about acting I'd defer to her wisdom, so in that sense it makes sense to defer to wiser people. Problem is, and having lived in Los Angeles you see this kind of shit a lot, is that there is a massive billion dollar market in trying to get celebrity endorsements to anything from their pet cause to their new smart phone accessory.

Without child abuse, who will make the state?

bahahahaha this made me smile! That alone is worth the 1700 DVDs wasted by imprinting Zietgeist films onto them.

Whats the buy in, though? 1:1?

ahhhhh got it, excellent point!!

"too high" as in it is a byproduct of violence. That it would be less in a free market.

I'm curious, I dont know if I understand that, can you go into more detail?

Yeah you're not wrong. (Its more Mother Hen, then chicken) She does have some issues with martyrdom and we've been able to explore that. We've also been able to talk about how parenting might work if we had children. She does not read the bible, go to church, or do anything formally religious. We've come to a consensus that as we home schooled neither of us would attempt to teach our child about religion at all, though we would be honest if the kid had any questions. We wouldn't baptize them or send them to church, nor would she suddenly have a bible in the house or teach the bible to the child. My compromise is that if the child, as an adult, wanted to be religious (which I doubt will happen) that I would be tolerant of that. Her Christianity is practically being an atheist in terms of the culture she is from, saying you're christian in a Catholic country amounts to saying you won't attend church or do catholic ceremonies like baptism or communion. Its a new thing in her culture, to reject Catholicism and decide that your "relationship with Jesus" is a personal one. The way she reconciles that I'll be burning in hell is that she 1. might be there with me since she doesn't think she'll qualify as the 144,000 chosen and that 2. it isn't her place to predict god's judgement. I've never attempted to convert her, nor do I rattle off a bunch of logical disproofs or anything like that about the Bible. In general its not a big topic for me, personally. I wasn't raised Christian, I got a very secular light (low quality) reformed education in Judaism, but was never really pressured into being religious, praying, etc. and it was not a big part of my family. We do talk about atheism in respect to how it feels to be an atheist, how atheism functions, and mostly about objective morality as a moral philosophy. Her family doesn't use corporal punishment, though there are some issues. I'd go into more detail but I dont think its okay to explain something that personal about her to a stranger. Needless to say though, we've been able to talk about it a lot, and she's been extremely curious about it. We've even watched some Molyneux together, and she's always saying, again and again, "yeah he's right, he has the truth" in spanish. We've talking about childhood, dream analysis, real time relationships, and now we're even getting into internal family systems. I don't know if I got lucky, in that she definitely would set off a few of the above mentioned red flags, or that having an expectation that someone is going to meet all of those qualities is, as described as above, harder than finding a needle in a haystack. I know with Molyneux, from a podcast, he mentioned that some of the ideas of deFOO were foreign to his wife and that it took time, not sure how much, to introduce her to those ideas. That eventually she began to explore those ideas in her FOO, but it wasn't something that happened prior to their relationship starting. I mean I'll open this up as an idea... lets say we used some of the above check lists. How many women would meet all of them? My own list would be something like, do they have empathy, are they dynamic, and would they hit children. By dynamic I mean someone who changes. I'm always scared of someone who has been dealing with the same problem forever and never evolving past it. I need to see that they're evolving humans, taking information in with a critical but open heart, processing it, and actually changing if the new information calls for it.

Do you think that raising children to question things is common amongst christians, or are you more unique in this approach? The protestants burned witches, owned slaves, etc. Their protest against catholicism produced a wide range of outcomes, and each protestant group is different. The born again school where its "all about love" is fairly new, and full of its own problems worth criticizing. Most protestants have extremely unkind things to say about the majority of us here who are atheists.

You didn't talk about the children.

The CEO's prices are way too high! This is a byproduct of regulatory capture, which allows businesses to squeeze out competition. Their extremely high pay in many of these large industries has much more to do with the rotating door policies between government and CEOs. CEOs and "consultants" are often receiving backpay for the work they did while inside the government, setting favorable regulations. Its bribery.

he's right though, without rulers, what will measure the roads?

You've replaced the word aggression with damages. On the issue of pollution, Stef has a great podcast on how pollution would be dealt with within a free society. Maybe someone here remembers the name and can post a link

vice news drumming up war, that meeting with shane smith and rupert murdoch must have been deep

What does ANY of this have to do with religion? Religiosity has been injected into a conversation about respect, for no reason. And its really goofy to pre-emptivily demand respect. This whole thing wreaks of a much deeper thing not being expressed. The OP has only 2 posts. You have 9, and Shane 12. This conversation feels very dishonest, like we're being trolled.

Don't expect anyone to respect your religious ideas, but you can absolutely expect us to be respectful to you if that respect is mutual. We're hardly a vicious community.

I hope you can understand that many people here were abused into religion, and to expect them to respect it disrespectful to their own experience. I was personally brainwashed into a different cult called Jews, so I can relate tangentially.

Sure yeah.

You should see what environmentalists have to say about genocide.

One tool I've found valuable, but isn't always an option, is to find out what other people think about her. Prior to dating my current girlfriend everyone described her as a sweetheart. In Spanish they say Mama Gallina, which is the kind of girl who takes care of other girls almost like a mom. Giving advice, making sure they're well, trying to keep them away from bad boyfriends, etc. That was a sign of empathy. After we dated and let people know, more people than I could count came up to me privately and told me "you better treat this woman good, she is special." That was a sign of respect. For me, that was important information to continue forward. It took some time before we were able to explore much deeper topics like family violence in a safe and intimate way. She was very supportive when I deFOO'd, and gave me the chance to explain my perspective, something which is practically unheard of in latin America. We've had the chance to talk about her relationships, which she has worked on repairing and understanding better. With her sister's kid, we were able to talk about peaceful negotiation tactics. Now, I did ask if she thought spanking kids was okay early on just because that is a deal breaker for me personally. And I asked about her childhood generally, and I tried to get a general feel for her ethics. She is a very reformed christian (no church or anything too weird, but a general belief in God and Jesus) and it was important for her that I, as an atheist, would respect her religion. I told her I couldn't respect the beliefs as ideas, but that I would always respect her choice to have them and I wouldn't fight over it. That might be easier for me because I wasn't raised with a lot of religious repression so it isn't a "trigger" for me. My point being that some of the above suggestions are very important to discuss prior to committing to a serious relationship, but are not necessarily good questions on a first date. Those are some very personal questions and I think its important to establish intimacy. First questions might be anything which you consider a deal breaker. For me, this was spanking, so I had to cover it day one.

lol exactly

I think what I've said is extremely clear and trying to interject other things is frustrating. Can you please try and make my own argument for me, so that I know that you're understanding what I said and this isn't about being right, but that you're actually interested in understanding me and getting at the truth. I highly recommend you read my last post, which does a very good job of articulating a perfect response to this last post you just made.