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Astrophysics isn't subjective. That doesn't mean that it's easy to figure out how planets, stars, galaxies and black holes function.Obviously the person I was responding to has a different understanding of what's moral than you or I. Just because aggression is immoral doesn't mean people don't use moral arguments to justify aggression. I can show a thousand examples of what I said. Take just about any major war in the history of humanity, and it was justified mainly using moral arguments.

Are you really saying that moral arguments have not been used to unleash the worst aggressions in the history of the world? If something leads to aggression and chaos, then it's obviously not practical or utilitarian. It's a lot harder to determine what is moral and what isn't; since most people have roughly the same ideas of what end goals are practical/utilitarian, but they have completely different ideas of what's moral and immoral.

These are the types of problems you run into when your focus is solely on what's moral and you forget what's practical/utilitarian. A world without inheritance is a world without civilization. If something makes sense to you morally, but the universal application would cause massive chaos and destruction, something is wrong with your system of morals, even if it's the most internally consistent one.

No, the first party can specify terms that the second party must agree to in order for the property to be transferred over.

Western Union and Visa would be broke tomorrow if they only settled transactions in a currency with no market value. You're still putting the cart before the horse. How do you determine what is a "basic human need" and what isn't?Also, the device you're using to post this requires gold to make. The computers that host the FDR server require gold to make. The satellites used to transfer the information over the internet require tons of gold to make.The value of gold absolutely does not arise from it's "scarcity" or it's usefulness as a medium of exchange. The value of gold arises *only* from the fact that many people want to consume it, and consume goods and services that require gold to make, and they are willing to give other things of value in exchange for those things which contain gold, in order to consume them.

A will is just a contact that is signed in advance by one of the parties, and upon meeting of certain criteria (in this case the first signer's death), the second party(or parties) will be contacted by someone designated by the first party (usually the lawyer of the deceased). Then the second party will be presented with the opportunity to either agree to the contract and sign it, or refuse.

Again, none of this means anything if Bitcoins have no value. Thus bitcoins need to have value first, in order for it to be useful to transfer them quickly and cheaply. Now, clearly Bitcoins do have value today. But why?As I argue, they only have value because people speculate that others will buy them in the future (selling your goods or services for Bitcoins in this sense is "buying" Bitcoins, too). So far so good. But based on what will these people buy Bitcoins in the future? Why of course, because they themselves in turn speculate that others will buy them in the future. This is a vicious circle. It doesn't go anywhere. Bitcoins have value because they have value.Bitcoin enthusiasts say, -hey, it's no problem, because value is subjective, so things have value only and if people think they have value-. Sure, but there is a difference between people actually deriving value from consuming a product, and simply thinking that the product has value because others think it has value because others think it has value... ad infinitum.There is another type of thing that follows the same pattern. A pyramid scheme. People think the investment has value because they're gonna get rich, but the *only* way for them to get rich is if they convince others to invest more. In fact, this is the only way not to go broke while remaining invested in a pyramid scheme. It can work well for a while, until new investors stop coming in, and old investors start cashing out, and then the whole thing collapses. Do you realize that US dollars being the "global reserve currency" simply means that States all around the world tax their citizens in order to buy US dollars?Of course if States steal money and buy something, that is an additional demand for that thing and, ceteris paribus, that thing will go up in price (value).It doesn't surprise me that both Surda and Krugman agree that "US Dollars have value because everybody uses them".

What does this even mean? When I hear predatory, I think wolf running after sheep. The wolf wants to kill the sheep in order to eat it. We're not discussing murder here, so I suggest you use another term or explain your meaning in more detail. How? Honestly, to me this sounds like when communists say that hiring workers is "exploitative" even though it's voluntary. If we're talking about two people that have the mental capacity to understand what's going on and make their own choices, then what could be "predatory" or "exploitative"? And like I asked dsayers, what do these terms even mean? Right, and we shouldn't get into the habit of loosely redefining terms like this. Else we risk doing what Hayek did, who defined coercion as just about anyone doing anything you don't like, even if they've never met you in their lives, and this is how he ends up justifying statism without boundaries, to the point of socialism.Just to take one example, how on Earth is there anything wrong with a partner threatening to end the relationship if they're not gonna be intimate? How in the world is this "coercive"? I know, right?

As the owner of the airplane and the provider of the service, you get to establish terms which customers must adhere to if they are to board your plane. If you determine that it's in your best interest as the owner of the airplane providing a travel service not to allow customers to board with loaded guns on their persons, then you are perfectly within your rights to demand that they hand them over so they can be safely stored for the duration of the flight. That's great and I wish more people would do the same, and for the laws restricting this to be relaxed or eliminated, world-wide or in as many places as possible. Maybe it is, I don't know. There are arguments both ways here. And it's not necessarily either/or. Other measures can be employed to prevent hijacking or other criminal actions in the plane.

I tend to agree with this, but was just going along with the premise. Exactly. Why? Many people drink alcohol just so they can hook up more easily.

Right, I meant criminal as in initiating violence/aggression. It may actually be "criminal" in the sense of it being illegal. In the sense I use these terms generally, selling drugs is illegal, but not criminal; while murder is both illegal and criminal; and imposing&collecting taxes is not illegal but is criminal.

It's all about how you define things. My guess is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, none of this would constitute criminal behavior on the part of the females. It's like how women get drunk in a party or at a club, end up having sex with some random guy, then the next morning they regret it so they say they were "raped". If you willfully took a substance that you knew could make you do things you normally wouldn't, and then do those things while fully conscious (i.e. not passed out or something), you can't say you were "coerced" into doing those things simply because you were intoxicated. I can see how a woman can put drugs into a guy's drink without his knowledge, like heavy tranquilizers or something, and have her way with him (whatever that means for her), but other than that, it's very unlikely that an unarmed woman can "coerce" a grown man (or even most 14-16 year olds+) into having sexual intimacy with her.

Exactly. One wonders why airlines are not sued more often. If somebody dies in an amusement park or a zoo, even if the death was partly caused by their own reckless behavior, you'll never hear the end of it; but if a plane crashes or is hijacked, usually nothing happens, or at least it's not blown up to the same degree. I think this has a lot to do with how the State has been able to convince the masses that air travel is "an essential service" and it almost has a "public" status. I don't know if it's the best idea to allow customers to carry guns on their persons while boarding the plane (though if properly checked with your bags it should be fine), but having one or two armed guards just in case may be a good idea. The reason it may be a bad idea to allow passengers to carry loaded guns on the plane is that, as I understand it, a few bullet holes on the plane can be a big problem while up on the air.

Peter Surda, like Paul Krugman (who he quotes in this section), does not understand what a "store of value" really is. The reason gold is a store of value is because many people have always(*1) and will always derive value from consuming gold, and gold will always be used in the production of goods and services which many people demand because they derive value from consuming them. Hence, whatever gold is not consumed right now but is stored, can be consumed or used to produce consumer goods or services in the future, realizing that value. Therefore, when you store gold, you are really storing the value in it, to be realized at a later date. Bitcoins(*2) only have value due to empty speculation(*3). Thus the idea that these things are "stores of value" is completely misguided. -------------------- (*1) Gold has been used to derive value in these ways for about 5000 years, and new ways of deriving value from it's consumption or use in production are coming up every day, the reasonable expectation would be that it will be demanded for these purposes for thousands of years into the future, if not until the end of time. So for all intents and purposes, we can use the terms "always" or "forever" here for simplification. (*2) or US dollars, or any other fiat currency or any other paper or digital currency which doesn't have any intrinsic value as defined above AND in the call by me) (*3) By the term "empty speculation", I mean speculation that is only based on further speculation, which is only based on further speculation, ad-infinitum.

I think some posters here have misinterpreted the OP, when you say that children will experience suffering due to accidents or things of that nature. What the OP was saying is that the type of experience of having suffering inflicted on you by somebody else who does it purposefully, is very different to that of pain caused by an accident, where nobody is to blame and there is no "why", there is only a "how". I have to admit that the OP's argument made me pause, as I am strongly against punishments used in parenting, both physical, emotional/verbal, and of other types. Still, I think the answer is that, unless you keep your child in a bubble and they never get out and have experiences with other people, they will inevitably have the experience of somebody else purposefully inflicting suffering on them. My question is, supposing that for whatever reason they did not experience this, or did not experience it at a sufficiently young age, would the OP be right in claiming that this would diminish their ability to develop empathy? I don't know, and I am inclined to say no, but I don't think there's a way to know for sure. I would say that at least it seems to me that people who are repeatedly punished in these ways tend to become overly insensitive to other people being mistreated in the same ways, rather than becoming more sensitized as the OP claims. But I guess the argument that the OP is making is that they will become more sensitized to other, more drastic kinds of mistreatment and abuses... That could be true, but it just pushes the argument one step back, because then, even milder mistreatment would sensitize against the mild mistreatment that the OP is advocating... And so on and so forth...

Exactly. Think of someone who does the same thing in a personal relationship. We all know this kind of people. And those of us who have good senses stay clear of them.

We don't have an "overpopulation" problem. We have a population misallocation. The problem is not too many people in the world, but too many people who don't produce anything and just feed off of those who do, like parasites. In a free market, if you can't support your own children, they will have to rely on charity or starve. But because most people don't like to see their children starve, they will have less children to begin with. Also, the human body is not stupid. A woman is unlikely to get pregnant if she herself is starving, or close to starving. Therefore, the main problem is drastic changes in the amount of food available. Having a very powerful State which meddles in everybody's business is the best way to ensure such disruptions in the production of food, and having a State which steals from some to give to others is the best way to ensure disruptions in the the distribution of food. Finally, what the guy in the OP's video says is just wrong in terms of scales. Back in the hunter-gatherer days, the land could only naturally grow enough food to feed one person per square mile. Today, land can be modified to grow enough food for over ten thousand people per square mile. And with further advances in technology, we are likely to keep expanding this ability to massively produce food. What would likely happen in a free market is that population would be better allocated. That is, the more productive would have more children than they have now, and the less productive or unproductive would have less. Nevertheless, because productivity would grow drastically, the population would continue to grow at a fast pace. Whether we reach the point where the population can't grow anymore or not, is not terribly important. If it comes to that, then the birthrate will simply drop to the sustenance point. But even if that point is reached at one time, chances are it won't be long before the population can start growing again. Especially once you get to a situation where humans can profitably colonize the moon or other planets and/or build space stations that are fit and desirable for long-term living.

I didn't say that. I said it would hurt FDR's members and the credibility of the site.

Actually the United States of America is a republican democracy, also called a democratic republic. They're the same thing. It was set up as a democracy, even if the "Founding Fathers" claimed that it wouldn't become one. The US Constitution is just a piece of paper, but even if The State followed it to the letter, you would still end up with something quite like what you have now. Consider this analysis of the Constitution, which shows how many of the "restrictions to government power" are only interpretative at best, and more likely fictional to begin with (note: I don't like the guy who wrote it, who has since become a socialist, but this analysis is still very good and illuminating): http://fringeelements.tumblr.com/post/411147276/the-united-states-constitution

I don't see the point in arguing against the inheritance tax (or inheritance ban) by claiming that people who inherit a lot of wealth will squander it. That seems to me to be an argument for the opposite side, if anything. If inherited fortunes won't be squandered and consumed, but rather grow larger, and used to fuel further capital investments, then that's great.About the Rockefeller fortune, there's a lot of misinformation in your interpretation of how John D. Rockefeller operated, and how he accumulated his fortune. It was actually the other way around, he was the genius entrepreneur who figured out how to best extract and refine oil, driving down the cost and benefiting his customers so much, that his competitors lobbied the State to break up his "monopoly", on the argument that they couldn't compete against Rockefeller's low prices. (check this out if you want to know more: http://mises.org/daily/2317 ) It was only after the Rockefeller family was hit hard by the State that they began lobbying for protection themselves, and eventually became one of the most politically influential families in the US. The same goes for Bill Gates from Microsoft, and many others. It's not the accumulation of wealth that drove these people into the arms of the State, it was rather State violence used to steal their wealth, that forced them to start buying their own politicians. And once you start down that route for protection, it's easy to make the leap and make your politicians benefit you at the expense of everybody else.You seem to be suffering from the "Occupy Wall Street Syndrome"... Instead of looking at State power as the problem, (or at least the fact that this power is for sale), you see the fortunes of those who can profitably afford to buy the State power as the problem. You're not even holding the individuals who buy the State power responsible (let alone the State agents who sell it or the masses who support the system), you're just opposing anyone having that sort of wealth to begin with.That won't work. If you just prohibit people from making their own fortunes legally (or inheriting them, which is just about the same thing), all that will happen is that State power will either be sold on the black market, or it will be sold for political influence and other favors, and then you get total communism. Well I think that was uncalled for and very offensive for no reason.

A crazy man once said: "Culture and language tend to become traps... and yet they can be the platforms for enourmous freedom... *if* you understand what it's all about. And what it's all about, is you. You are the center of the mandala. You are not marginalized in any way... And the message that the culture gives us is that we are marginal... And so then when you look for guidance, direction and mentorship, we always look towards institutions. "Well I'll go to the university. Or I'll go to the army, or I'll do something. Somebody will tell me what to do, will give me a larger purpose." But, it's really yourself, that is the final arbiter. And if you keep yourself as the final arbiter, you will be less susceptible to infection by cultural illusion. Now, the problem with this is, that it makes you feel bad to not be infected by cultural illusion, because it's called alienation, you know? but this is... I can't solve all problems... the reason we feel alienated is because the society is infantile, trivial, and stupid."

Down and down the rabbit hole we go... You may find this post I made some time ago interesting: http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/32990-democracy-an-improvement-over-what-came-before/

You mean where all the extra water came from? Well as I understand this, all animals create water (H2O) when they inhale oxygen and break down carbohydrate, releasing the CO2 into the air and combining the oxygen with the hydrogen to create water and extract the energy from the carbohydrate. Plants do the opposite, they break down H2O, releasing oxygen into the air and binding the hydrogen with the CO2 they breathe in, which they use to store the sunlight as energy and as building blocks, and thereby create carbohydrate. Therefore, the total amount of water in the planet can change. Another possibility is that a lot of the water was frozen before. Well I find them convincing because they make sense to me. I don't see how else continents on Earth would fit on all sides when you remove the oceans (assuming they do), or how the same seems to happen when you examine other planets or moons such as Europa I find this important because if it was true, it would likely change a lot about the scientific truths that we hold as verified in a lot of areas, not just geology.

So I watched several other videos from the same guy talking about how planets grow... The following one was the most impressive, about Europa, a moon of Jupiter This one was also interesting, but very low quality video, about our own moon: And the following one was also interesting, he claims to debunk the pangea theory in this one: Any thoughts?

Lol the second video has been removed too