Brandon Buck _BB_

Adding the word "inherently" doesn't change the meaning of the statement "I control my body" and the statement (with or without the clarification) doesn't prove ownership. I can address a letter to a stranger with the phrase "Hello, my name is Brandon Buck, a human being, and I'd like to blah, blah, blah". By adding "a human being" I've done nothing more than state an obvious, a priori assumption. Likewise, I can control a rental car but the fact that I control it is not an a priori assumption that I own it. Moreover, if I build a simple rocket and set it aflight, I own the effects of my actions but I do not control them. And if I hit you in the abdomen with a ball bat, I own the effects of that action but I do not control what organs I injure or don't injure. Stef touches on the aspect of control that, with respect to self ownership, proves the same but, he didn't elaborate. Control only helps to prove self ownership when we consider that a man cannot control another man's vocal cords, arm movements, etc. This is unique to self ownership, given that our bodies are the only property we can own which cannot be controlled by others and it is (to my reckoning at least) an a priori assumption. With that said, there is nothing about ownership that should cause anyone to assume a person should or should not control his body responsibly. For instance, if I don't want lung cancer, I should refrain from smoking cigarettes. But if I smoke them, my self ownership is not up for grabs to the first person who promises not to smoke with my body.

The above quote is a perfect example of why you cannot argue a statist out of being a statist. Might makes right conditioning in action, folks. Gee... who do we learn that from?

Yes, but you disagree without actually doing any research to back it up. So I'm going with the guy who did research. If you are an empiricist, which I thought people on FDR are, you would go with the research too, or at least hold yourself responsible to refute that research before just blindly disagreeing. I've not made assertions about the amount of study you've put into this subject and I would appreciate it if you would afford me the same courtesy. Also, you're having a conversation with me, not the FDR community. If you want to snipe me for not being an empiricist, while not knowing my level of education, feel free. But I don't represent this community. I represent myself. []

I disagree.

I don't have any doubt that she would be happier with fewer tax laws to deal with. But that's not what I said. I said that having more tax laws to deal with doesn't cause her to become unhappy. I'm happy when I come home and my wife has made me my favorite dish, but I'm not unhappy when I come home and she asks me what I want for supper.

There is indeed a problem that needs to be dealt with but it certainly isn't a problem of too many choices. Any well adjusted, rational person can be happier with thirty choices and with three. If there is as strong a correlation between expanding choices and unhappiness as he asserts, perhaps we should blame the neuroses inflicted on children through inconsistent child rearing practices. What I see this guy doing is what so many other intellectuals do.... looking for the cause of the illness only in the symptoms. Or perhaps more apropos, looking for the cause of the neuroses only in the triggers. I find it strange how you're willing to just throw out totally baseless speculations such as "only neurotic people who are badly raised will be happier with the 3 choices than the 30." How do you know? Did you do research on this? It's a worthwhile hypothesis and one that might be worth asking Schwartz about. But for all we know he accounted for this. But regardless it's baseless to just claim that's the reason. This response is ironic because what I see is you projecting your own "cause" onto what he said, when I don't see it in what he said at all. It's a perfectly legitimate hypothesis to consider that we simply did not evolve to deal with this level of choice. It's unprecedented in hundreds of thousands of years of human history and there is no reason to assume we'd deal well with it or that a healthy person would find it pleasant being put in so many difficult decision-making positions that never used to exist. In fact, I could make a case for the exact opposite. The people who most enjoy having this incredible amount of choice are unhealthy people who need constant distraction to keep from facing their wounds. That speculation is no more founded than the one you made. The point is there are logical reasons you could believe either one. Ultimately, it takes research to tell us which plausible-sounding statement is actually correct. I didn't claim my assertion to be an absolute truth, although I do understand how it came accross as such. My point is that more choices isn't a cause of anything. Not in my example, not in yours and not in his. It's a trigger. As an example, I have an aunt who is a CPA. She makes very complicated decisions out of myriad different decisions that could be made for her clients, every day. And she does it with confidence. But when she goes to buy a new washing machine... she could well be one of his results. She has the logical thinking abilities to process thousands of tax laws, tax avoidance mechanisms, tax avoidance strategies, et al... so to assert that more choices causes her nurosis is absurd. She deals with new tax laws every year with no problem. It has nothing to do with the number of choices. Could it be the nature of the choices? Perhaps so but that's not what this guy claims.

There is indeed a problem that needs to be dealt with but it certainly isn't a problem of too many choices. Any well adjusted, rational person can be happier with thirty choices and with three. If there is as strong a correlation between expanding choices and unhappiness as he asserts, perhaps we should blame the neuroses inflicted on children through inconsistent child rearing practices. What I see this guy doing is what so many other intellectuals do.... looking for the cause of the illness only in the symptoms. Or perhaps more apropos, looking for the cause of the neuroses only in the triggers.

Adding choices does not increase freedom, it increases the number of choices. One adds to freedom through the act of subtracting restrictions.

I'm here at the workbench right now and just a few minutes ago I got to watch mom and dad make the rounds feeding them. First time I've ever seen them both at the same time. Nature rocks. []

No doubt the Magna Carta fought a much more tyrannical government at the time it was accepted by the monarchy but, read that last part again... It was presented by the serfs and accepted by the king. The constitution was not written by "the people" and they were not counceled before it was made law. Also, the constitution was made law before the Bill of Rights. That was only added after the blatant and numerous problems with the constitution were realized. And speaking strictly from a performance perspective, the US constitution is an abysmal failure at protecting liberty when the benchmark is the Magna Carta. The latter was some six hundred years old before it began to be bastardized and ignored by the state. The Us constition is less than three hundred years old today and it has been horribly corrupted for at least 150 years. And to clarify, I'm not arguing for the Magna Carta as some sort of solution to the US constitution. I'm just making a comparison of what the founders had experienced and what they foisted upon the prols. And as I said above, that comparison doesn't lead me to believe that human liberty was on the front of the founders' minds.

I accept their objection and ask them to describe the proper context for rape, murder, slavery or whatever other Biblical atrocity we're discussing. A theologin once tried to paint me into a corner with the interpretation argument. I responded to him that it seems rather counter intuitive that God would write a book that he expects everyone to follow to the letter and then make that book so confusing that one has to have a college degree to decipher it. That was the end of that debate. In the end, you're not dealing with contradictions when you debate theists. You're dealing with cognitive dissonance and dissociation. Logic can't penetrate those.

Millions of pages of philosophical writings on liberty have been written over the past 25 millennia and the founders of the US decided they could redact all that down to four pages of medium sized script.... The US constitution's model document was the Magna Carta, which was a far more comprehensive document by comparison. And wouldn't human freedem warrant some efforts in minutia? I would think so. Nothing about the US constitution leads me to believe the authors were interested in human liberty. Essentially, what the document says is "what the federal government can't make you do, the state government can". Gee. Thanks.

On my shelf, above my workbench... From May, 17th: And from June 5th: So far the mother has become rather comfortable with me being there, so long as I don't make too much noise or get too close. It's gonna be fun when they get older. []

If this statement were true, there would be no nation states.

I just wanted to mention that the visual aspects of the youtube content has become second to none in quality and appeal lately. Congratulations to Stef and company for the outstanding efforts!