Pepin

An idea I have is that there'd be a guy facing a woman and making all of these odd gestures. This would happen for a few panels. Then someone walks in and asks what is going on. The man proceeds to explain that the woman is deaf, and he is trying to tell her that nothing exists. There might be a few ways to execute it better, but I find the idea pretty funny. It kind of brings up the idea of philosophical charades. Anyway, I felt a pretty strong emotional reaction to number 3. I really feel like it captures the rupture of the outburst. It uses the panel format as a strength.

Just to be slightly critical of your wording, he doesn't "think" the free market worsened it, but rather "claims" or argues that the free market worsened it. I bring this up because this is the sort of language Stefan often points out when people bring up rebuttals of his arguments, and I think most of us here on the board would agree that it is a bad use of rhetoric and will point it out when others do it to us, so I feel like we ought to strive to not use this sort of language with others. As an argument goes, this is actually pretty good. If you take out the annoying rhetoric and just take the situation as follows, it would indicate that more food would get shipped to foreign lands if possible and that banning the exports would have resulted in an increase in supply and therefore a decrease in the price of food. After reading the result of the article, I can confidently say that there is no way the author came up with that argument. The author can really only seem to put words together and pretend as if they mean something. It would be my guess that these businesses were influencing the government in a similar way that businesses and unions were influencing the US government during the great depression. This is where the author starts to unknowingly contradict themselves by stating all the ways the government was not in favor a market. The one line I think says a lot and perhaps destroys the entire argument is the bolded line, which I am sure is indicating that the government was making quite a lot of money off of the export. Though I am speculating, I am going to guess that Britain was also having a difficult time with food production as well, which is probably the reason why the price was so high in comparison to Ireland. It seems as though the British had a large incentive to secure the food granted by this line Perhaps I am looking a little to much into that, but I get the impression that England had a large part to play in all of this. This really discredits the author because the opposition is providing solely evidence to the contrary. The author's claim is that there was no or too little government involvement, and the article he links to claims the complete opposite with plenty of supporting evidence. After reading the article, I can see why you used the word "think", though I'd still suggest calling it an argument. Essentially it is the cliche anti-market pro-government speech with a few arguments the guy picked up to support the speech. I think it is clear that the author isn't a thinker, he is more comparable to a MSNBC news anchor giving a little history lesson. I don't feel like my response here is very helpful in rebutting the argument, but I'm going to guess that the mises article linked is right on the money. There tends to be far less filler and far more argument in libertarian articles, especially in that a large portion of the articles are spent addressing rebuttals.

The main question to ask and to answer is whether it is morally permissible to use force against someone who abuses an animal. Essentially, can you kill someone who tortures and animal? A further question to really provide grounding is "would you yourself pull the trigger". I really have a difficult time answering the question because I really love animals and hate seeing harm come to them. I'd prefer to live in a society where there was no animal abuse. When I was younger I had a friend who upon seeing an amazing caterpillar picked it up and smashed it against the ground. After seeing this I quickly left the area with tears in my eyes and cried when I got home. But would I pull the trigger on my friend? I'd have to say no. Perhaps this is reflection of knowing many hunters and having caught a few fish myself in the past. Perhaps this is the result of growing up in a culture where this sort of stuff is permissible. Perhaps it is because I prefer people over animals. I mean if my friend is getting mauled by a moose: I'd shoot the moose, but if the moose is about to get shot by my friend: I wouldn't shoot my friend. Perhaps this is some kind of biological effect where stopping others from killing animals is not really programmed into our DNA because it wouldn't have been evolutionary advantageous. I don't really know, but I do know that someone with the opposite position is unable to use force against me for my inaction. In a large way the question doesn't affect me because I don't abuse animals and there is no positive obligation to stop others from abusing animals. Where it gets really tough is in asking myself if I'd shoot someone who had shot somebody else for abusing an animal. Let's say my best friend Steve shoots and kills a bear, and Joe sees this and shoots Steve. In the case that killing animals is a violation of the NAP and ignoring the comic book portrayal of the principles, it would be immoral for me to take any form of retribution against Steve. If I were to shoot and kill Joe, I'd be charged with murder, whereas I don't, Steve's actions are completely in the right and he is not changed with anything. Though this isn't an argument, I am quite uncomfortable with this result, which doesn't effect the validity of anything, but it is important to point out I have a large struggle in accepting this consequence. I hope this is useful. I didn't really take the philosophical approach of making an argument, but I do think that this gives some indication of the emotional and personal component. If you are arguing the position that animal abuse is a violation of the NAP, then a great way to convince me is to make the proposition of shooting my friend who is about to shoot the moose feel right, to have me feel the same or at least similar feeling as if Steve was going to shoot person. Of course you can get into "the situation is already tainted because you are friends with someone who you already know commits immoral acts of violence against animals", but I feel like the basic idea is still intact.

This is an issue I've been struggling with the last two years, but more so in the last six months as the question has been much more pressing. For anyone who is interested in my family history, I wrote a rather lengthy post about it here. There was a recent podcast that has been really ramping up these thoughts. First I'll describe what I am going through now as it is likely not unrelated, and then I'll describe the issue in more detail. Hopefully it doesn't seem like a mess of thoughts and stories. I'll be 23 in a month. I lost years 19-21 from being home-bound due to constant panic attacks. I have $15,000 in debt that I have been paying off from my one year in college. Though the debt is my ultimately my responsibility, my therapist has told me that it really doesn't seem like it was my fault for incurring it and is rather the fault of my high school and my parents for refusing to help me. I would agree and also add that at the time I was on a very large amount of unneeded seizure medication, I was almost always tired and in a haze, constantly fighting off the non-epileptic seizures. I have been living with my parents, now just with my Dad since they are getting a divorce. He is an alcoholic who no licence due to a second DUI who watches the news loudly almost all the time he is home. I have been wanting to defoo for the last two years, but it has been rather inconvenient because my Dad takes care of all of my expenses and doesn't charge rent which is the only thing allowing me to pay off my debt with the amount of money I am making. When I was making a more money and when my parents were together, I attempted to move out, but my Dad brought me into his room and emotionally manipulated into staying, and now that my Mom is gone, I can't really leave until he gets his licence back. I really have a difficult time introspecting to find what I want to be, to find who I am, to find what actions I ought to take. It is rather strange to describe because I continue to get the sense that I am without a self. In school and for most of my life, I had taken up so many random interests and would get rather decent at it, and then would move on to the next thing. For a while drawing was my interest and I spent a long amount of time practicing and creating some pretty good works of art. Then it was computers and I became quite competent in building and repairing them at a young age. My freshman year of high school I found this program called Flash and I taught myself how to program in it and created a website to host my games and animations that most people seemed to really enjoy. I read a lot of books on the subject and became rather decent. I then began to take an interest in the guitar and in music and have spent quite a lot of time composing and practicing, and I left off at a point where people were really starting to like my music. Then my interest was economics, followed by philosophy, economics, and now physics and mathematics. With people who know me, they recognize that I had a really easy time picking up new things and getting good at them. I myself really don't feel particularly constrained by my ability, but I feel immobilized in not having any clue what I want to do. There is a real lack of commitment as I feel like everything is a hobby. I really don't like showing others what I can do, and tend to keep my work more personal. I continue to work past a lot of these feelings, but they are still there. It is like I'd prefer to keep everything I know and can do all to myself and not let anyone know about it. I can imagine this has something to do with my parents and school authority figures never encouraging me in what I was doing or even taking an interest. Listening to various self-help advice and also the recent podcast mentioned earlier, I find myself totally blanking out on figuring out what I want to do with the rest of my life. I know I don't want to be where I am now, but when attempting to imagine where I want to be in the future the problem is not only that I can't imagine what I'd be doing, but also that I can't even imagine myself. In a psychological test I had done, the results concluded that I had very little sense of self. At the time I didn't agree with because I know a huge amount about myself, much of the introspective knowledge coming from an isolated childhood. Yet when I attempt to grab the hand of who I am, I feel as though I a trying to pull up a ghost. Hope this post made sense. I think part of the solution is getting away from my family, but I feel like there is a deeper problem. Thanks for reading. It is a bit of a long post, and I am really hoping that people can relate. I always feel a little better when I find I'm not the only one with this issue.

Perhaps this is a little off topic, but I get the sense that when most intelligent people speak about God that they are talking about something else, something personal. As an ineffective way a demonstrating what I mean, many people who delve deep either into the practice of meditation or psychoactive drugs describe this feeling of oneness in that everything is connected and the same. I myself had this experience not too long ago, and it was not the result of meditation or drugs. It was a very amazing feeling, and without the rational part of my brain continuing to remind me that this is a subjective experience generated through the position of atoms within my brain, I feel like I could have come away with the conclusion that the feeling, that the thought was true. In a similar way, I had an experience one time that would be described as God confronting and or trying to help me. This was at a time in a rough time in my life and though the experience is really difficult to describe, if it wasn't for that rational part of my mind continually telling me "this is an effect of my mind, this is all in my head", I would have come away from that experience believing I had communicated with God. It wasn't like I was an atheist or even agnostic at the time, I called myself Christian and I certainly believed in God. A few years ago, a good friend began talking to me about God. She was an Atheist and had quite a lot of anger about being brought up with religion, particularly that her parents used spanking and other means when they frequented the church. Apparently she confronted them about it (I am unsure if she got help), and along with stopping they also stopped being religious. In our conversation, she continued to figure out why I believed in God. I had done a lot of thinking on this subject in the past but more avoiding thinking, and I gave her my honest answer: "I believe in God because I would prefer God exist. To make a bad analogy: if your best friend is charged of murder, despite any evidence against him, you really want to hold in your heart that he is innocent". I go could on, but I think it is really important to do a lot of introspection in regard to your belief in God. Forget whether God is real or not, yet rather look for the psychological motives and reasons for your belief. Doing so really doesn't affect the conclusion. For instance in regard to anarchism, I accepted the idea so easily because my family was very neglectful of me in my childhood which left me with no family to project onto the state. Does this mean my conclusion of anarchism is "wrong"? No, not at all, but it really does help me understand and differentiate between the rational and emotional components of my belief.

I think conspiracy theorists tend to far better at reasoning and associative connections. I remember watching a video about critical thinking that talked about conspiracy theories, and the author talked about how they are really difficult to understand because they demonstrate that they have a very strong sense of logic, evidence, and argumentation, but that they ignore or look past the irrationality contained within the point of contention. If anyone is honest, I don't think an conspiracy theorist can be considered stupid because they are demonstrating quite complex thinking. Similarly, the more intellectual Christians have an amazing ability to reason and use logic and evidence so long as they aren't alerted.

I'm sorry, but you're not addressing the arguments that the people are making to support their claim that the NAP only applies to humans and instead framing it in the sense that "why do they think X?", as if X is arbitrary and is just an opinion. It is like asking "why do communists think that capitalism is immoral?" and not addressing any of the hundreds of arguments that communists make that lead to the conclusion that capitalism is immoral. If there is a flaw with the opposing argument, don't talk about how the conclusion is unintelligible, but rather focus on the reason and evidence.

I don't understand the claim. Working backwards and finding reasoning and evidence for or against and then responding to this post with my position on the question is a possibility, but why? I'm not trying to be antagonistic, but I have a difficult time understanding the purpose of posting a claim that likely has plenty of reason, evidence, and thought behind it, but is presented with none supporting it.

I was rather amused by the article, especially the part about pollution.

The state isn't going to be brought down tomorrow, it is going to have to take a few generations of continual progress. But lets say that somehow it does happen and the state collapses tomorrow. Well, we can't predict anything because the removal of the state would cause an overwhelming amount of constant change from a vast number of individuals all acting with different motives and plans for such ah long period of time that the period could not really be described. It would likely be described as a form of systematic chaos and creative destruction. Why do I think this? Because the fall of the state would also mean the fall of everything the state is involved. As a Libertarian guy, you know how much control the state has over the economy, and the vast effects even small incentives have on the economy. Almost all markets are structured around pointless and irrational regulation, certain sectors of the economy such as tax services are only in place because of the government, and so much of the goods people consume are sponsored through corporate welfare in the form of subside. Just try to imagine all of this control melting away in an instant and how that would be handled. How would the chronically ill and elderly be taken care of in such an environment? Well, I hope my response would suggest that there is no answer in the sense that it is impossible to predict. Would they get taken care of? I'd guess yes since this seems to be something that people claim to care about? How would they get taken care of? In unimaginable ways. It is of course possible that perhaps the collapse of the state in the current day would not fair very well for many of the elderly and chronically ill. I don't find that to be very likely, and that combined with the plausibility of the situation makes the importance of the question not a concern.

A physicist address the article.

I can't say knowledge of physics or C+ is self knowledge. Certainly the self is what attains and stores the knowledge, but the knowledge does not at all pertain to the self. You can label yourself based on the knowledge you prefer to take in, like someone who learns a lot about philosophy can perhaps call themselves a philosopher, but the actual information doesn't relate to the self. I don't think you could say that you picked up a book on modern physics and that you intend to read it from cover to cover in order to gain self knowledge. Would you say that physics is now apart of you? I do feel like I understand where you are coming from, but I think the idea makes everything far more complicated. I'd say that self knowledge is knowledge that pertains almost exclusively to the self whereas other knowledge does not pertain to the self and is independent of the self. Physics for instance is completely independent from the self. Knowing that you can't be in two places at the same time is not a feature of self knowledge because it not a result of the self, but rather a result of physics.

Cheryl, I'll answer that question just for the heck of it, though I'd describe them more as challenges. I have this sort of automatic repression that happens very quickly, which makes sense granted how it was my primary coping mechanism. This has been more easy to spot within the last couple of months, but it at times feel like catching an arrow that you didn't know was going to be fired. Unfortunately, if it flies by I really can't access the emotion. For instance, I felt an urge to cry for about half a second and then it was gone. I spent about 10 minutes trying to find the feeling and to cry, but was unsuccessful. Parts that don't want to experience certain emotions taking the seat of consciousness. This is an issue that can be more easily dealt with if I am alone or have some free-time, but in any other sort of setting it is really difficult to handle. If you are having a conversation with someone you really can't take the time to negotiate with yourself. In situations of time, a sort of emotional procrastination occurs. A high IQ doesn't seem to help in certain respects. Most people have issues with rationalizing, I can't say I do, but I seem to have issues with constant Red Herrings where it takes a lot of continual effort to keep on the same subject. Worse is when your mind starts coming up with all these sorts of thoughts that put you into a fog. This last point can be seen in so many of the Call in Shows. A high IQ, or rather a diligence to reason and logic I think can be a great asset. It does become really dissociative though because the emotions tend to be in conflict and don't change. For instance, two years ago on some forum there was a debate about spanking and this was my response: This was the first time I had ever put thought into the question, and I think the internal struggle going on is quite apparent. It is actually really interesting re-reading this post because my rhetoric and argument are trying to say very different things. I mean the second to last sentence sounds like I am saying spanking is ok, which of course part of me is saying, but the argument I am making is the whole "if the child runs out into the road" stuff. Talking about this post reminds me of a great self knowledge tip, which is to re-read and analyze what you wrote in the past, particularly stuff you didn't think you'd read again. You are likely to be surprised.

Here is a nice video that talks about swearing.

I first began swearing in the 6th grade because I had a friend that did and I wanted to impress him. Not too long after that I found that almost everyone in my class was swearing because of a similar reason, and also wanting to sound more adult. I didn't start swearing really till last year when I started to make certain psychological gains. I've been finding that certain parts of my personality quite like to swear. One part that tends to come out when I am frustrated or angry and will put quite the slew together. Another part of me that tends to be an explainer seems to use swears as a means of in-formalizing. For instance, it might be something like "so physicists had been debating whether light was a particle or a wave for quite some time. Some dude came up with an experiment called the double slit... [short explanation]... and everyone was like "what the fuck""?. I believe I can confirm this theory in regard to myself, though I'd stipulate that I was always apathetic to other people swearing unless it was around children or in other inappropriate contexts. It was a standard I only applied to myself. To my grandmother it just wasn't swears, but also the words "Pokemon", "rock music", and I was of course hit for any sort statements that could be construed as talking back or using rude language. I've never understood the societal contempt even when not swearing. As an aside, I'd rather angry that anything but the light and fluffy form of Christian music was considered to be from the devil. I wasn't able to start listening to music until I was in 8th grade and I missed out on a lot.

Thanks for the reply. I realize that this might be a dumb question that I could find out for myself with some research, but is it possible for a weak computer to find the answer and be awarded the coins? The way I understand it right now is that winning is a bit probabilistic, meaning that you have a much greater probability of winning with a great rig, but that there is some still some luck involved. The factors involved are likely more complicated that, but essentially I am wondering if anybody mining a coin could win due to luck, but that it is just very unlikely because the the probability is about 0, or if there probability is just 0. I'm not asking this because I think I could get lucky, more a technical question.

If the statement "you can't express empathy to others if you can't express it towards yourself" is true, then the refusal to express empathy for others is fundamentally a projection of the person's internal circumstance. What I think you are describing is the sort of rationalization that occurs which is projected onto others. For instance, if you talk about the damage done to you through spanking most will respond to it by saying "I was spanked and I ended up fine", "it may have not been good for me, but it is something you just have to live with", "it was good for me, it gave me character, people should be spanked more", "it really has no effect on my life so I don't know what you are talking about", "first world problems, do you know there are starving kids in Africa". All of the responses are really rather horrific in that they not only ignore the plight of a victim, but they also degrade the wounds of the victim by telling them that they aren't wounded. I'd put forward that this degradation is intended to create shame in the victim so that the victim stops talking about because the subject creates a large vacuum of anxiety with must be managed externally. If you think about how most people react to self-help material, there is a sort of lament towards it, almost like the idea of reading a book about the subject is silly. There is a bit of an idea that getting help in psychological areas is a sign of weakness, which I think also connects to this idea. To expand a bit on the culture idea, I think that many people aren't really open to these discussions and general and try to avoid them because of these factors. I think behind closed doors these people would be fine expressing empathy, but when in a more public setting they fear attack for showing empathy Just my thoughts on your thoughts.

It may help to think of what not to do, or to think of what a therapist would say. I think listening closely and asking questions is pretty essential. What I tend to do is to express how I'd feel in that situation and might extrapolate a little. For instance: my friend was telling me about how after his parents got a divorce that they tended to talk back about the other with him. In response I said something like "that must be really tough, there is this sort of instinctual love children have for their parents, and this not only puts you in an odd situation that you have no control over, but it also really screws with your ability to have a strong relationship relationship with either of them". What I wouldn't worry about is how it feels at the moment. This is an area that I've had a tremendous amount of issues with, especially in regard to giving myself empathy, so I can't expect the process to feel natural or comfortable at all since so much of my life was spent not flexing this muscle. It is like if you were injured in an accident and were in a bed for four years. When you finally start to make your way out of bed, walking is not only going to be extremely difficult, but it is going to feel very: stiff, strange, and deliberate. Whenever you begin to use a new muscle, you have to put a lot of conscious deliberation into every small move you take, and I'd argue that showing empathy is just the same. In my own experience in sharing my experience with a close friend about my childhood experiences, he told me that what my grandmother did to me makes him angry. I felt really good when he told me this, not sure what the feeling would be called exactly, but it was really quite positive and stuck with me.

I wish you luck. It's not like I am an expert in this, but I've heard mining is pretty competitive.

Ignoring the use of the word "rational" and instead substituting it with "advantageous", it depends on the definition of just and unjust and the circumstance. In most circumstances, even more in a free society, the ability to make any substantial and continual income through immoral actions is improbable. Circumstances that ensure a low probability of getting caught might appear once in a blue moon, but in general you are taking a huge risk in acting immorally. This would indicate that it is not adventurous. There is a lot a large amount of research on criminals, and even in the current system they tend to make less than minimum wage. The elephant in the room is how my argument relates to government as they clearly profit from violence and almost no chance of retribution, but I feel like it can be ignored in this discussion. Not really certain what the first part of the sentence means, but there is no harm to an individual through ethics. It is like saying, "by not permitting rape, isn't this denying what is benefit an individual would gain through rape", which is to completely ignore that there is a victim. Ethical violations are win-lose, what is beneficial for the perpetrator is detrimental to the victim. Is promoting a message against rape to the benefit of the individuals in society and to the detriment of the rapist? Yes. Is that a sacrifice? No.

I wouldn't disagree with the feel of the argument, but again I would disagree with the with the use of the term rational. Rational applies to arguments and motives. Might stealing seem like a good idea to someone who is on the brink of hunger and has failed getting food through voluntary means? Yes. Is it rational for him to steal? The question doesn't make sense. Might stealing a large sum of money without possibility of detection be a good idea for someone who wants a large sum of money? Yes. Is it rational for him to steal? The question doesn't make sense. Might raping a young man seem like a good idea for a woman who wants to envelop his naught bits? Yes. Is it rational for her to rape? Is that even a question?

Feelings aren't objective, which doesn't meant that they can't be right, but putting ethical weight on what would feel immoral can't be universalized nor rationalized. This doesn't address any of the concerns of the original post. It's not a bad pragmatic argument in favor of acting ethically, but it isn't objective nor does it deal with the topic of irrationality. The argument really doesn't work because of many economic concepts such as diffuse costs and concentrated benefits. The long term success of thieves is certainly predicated on people not stealing, but this does not stop a thief from stealing. Rather, you are likely to get the argument "they make plenty of money, what I am stealing is barely a drop in the bucket, plus the management accounts for a certain amount stolen every month".

Actions can't be irrational, only claims and intentions can be. Is it irrational to hoard straw wrappers? No, the concept of rationality gives no answer. Is it rational to hoard straw wrappers because in the 22nd alien invasion they will spare the one who hoarded the most? No, because the motive makes no sense. It is similar to a rain dance in that the implicit claim is that rain and dancing are correlated, which it is proven to not be, therefore doing a rain dance is irrational. Superstition is irrational not because the actions are irrational, yet because the claim is disconnected from the actions. The intention of throwing salt behind your back might be to ward off bad luck, but the foundation the claim is built upon is completely faulty. It is easy to take the term "ethics" and to simply apply it to all humans, but there are criteria that a person must necessitate in order for ethics to apply to them. The first and foremost is an understanding of ethics. This is why a bear cannot be tried for murder that camp of hunters. A true hedonistic psychopath that lacks all basis for ethical thinking is not immoral or evil for killing a family, rather she falls into the same category as the bear. A politician on the other hand shows quite a knowledge of ethics and will constantly make arguments based on ethics. If a politician makes the claim to general public that murder is immoral, and then murders her wife, then it is clear that based off her own claim: she is immoral. Furthermore, she can't argue to have no moral capacity as she had demonstrated quite well that she understood ethics. But is she irrational for the committing murder though? I'd say again, no because rationality doesn't apply to actions. Where does the irrationality come into play with ethics then? The answer to this is the arguments. If a politician was to make the claim that murder is wrong, but that it is acceptable for them to do, that claim is irrational because it contradicts its self. If murder is wrong for people to commit, and the politician is a person, then the exception being made is irrational. To continue this further, arguing that it is immoral if you are not in Hong Kong or Brazil at the same time is irrational because it contradicts physical law. Arguing that physical desire is immoral is irrational because it is part of our biological programming. I hoped this helped

I'd argue the term Anarcho-Capitalism is rather poor in that it does a poor job of describing what it describes. A society in which all trades and interactions are NAP compliant otherwise known as a voluntary society: is capitalistic. As a consequence, this also implies that that "anarcho" bit is redundant. Certainly there'd be many that would disagree with this, primarily minarchist, but I'd put forward that it is just a consequence of consistency. What does the term "capitalism" really describe? It really doesn't describe anything that you can imagine. If capitalism is trade without violence, then imagining this is like imagining a society without rape. There is no issue in the concept and understanding the difference between a society with and without rape, but you really can't imagine a society without rape because what you imagine could be anything provided that there is no rape involved. This is why I think the term "voluntary society" or something similar is far superior. It describes the same thing as the other words do, but it gives something to visualize. I really quite enjoy the free-market terminology, but it really doesn't help to use it with outsiders. The metaphor of the "invisible hand" is quite brilliant, yet people who are primed against a viewpoint tend to have a lack of understanding as to what a metaphor is. I think the best language to be used in talking to others is concrete language that describes concepts in solely individualistic terms. Instead of putting things in terms of fiction such as "government", it is far more important to put things in terms of people. I think FDR is quite good at that aspect. Something else I'd like to see are strong focuses that are not related to the government. Certainly with FDR and the emphasis on child rearing, this is already in practice, but I'd like to see it expanded. I think libertarians ought to be some of the forthright people in speaking out against child rape and slavery, sexual abuse, domestic violence, gang violence, and any other topic.

A possible reply to this would be that if your criticism of government workers is that they are inefficient, that it makes little cents to make them more inefficient. To go further, if this department is ever running out of work and therefore possible at risk of being de-funded, they might pass a law to require people to pay all bills in pennies. It would be heralded as a sort of stimulus and would work under the campaign of "the only real use for pennies". Senator Rand Paul would look at the bill and would begin to make the case that it is all about the Benjamins, to which Sidney Crawford would lambaste Rand for not having any cents, all the while Al Franken would be shoveling a pig into a pork remarking "cents... ain't nobody got time for that".