jimmo100

Wow. Always interesting to hear personal accounts of cross-cultural relationships. Especially M.E. and Western. It did occur to me to ask what the M.E. cultural history is on the subject of child abuse. Every country deals with it in a different way. Among the worst offenders might reasonably be anticipated to over-correct.... which might mean you hide any sternness towards children. Just speculation on my part. I mean no offense. As I said every culture deals with the problem in their own way. And again... it may have zero to do with your scenario, culturally.

Good question. You're probably familiar with the saying whatever you reward in your society, you get more of. Increasing debt rewards the least productive. If you continue to pile up debt.... you'll get more of these people i.e. the politically-protected class... and they will necessarily become poorer because of a shrinking productive class. They might become poorer slower than the rest of us. But it's a cinch... they will become poor. Look at the authoritarians in countries which have capitulated already to authoritarianism... their authoritarians are dirt poor. It may not happen overnight, but if authoritarians persist... it will happen. And when(if) we're all poor and miserable - when authoritarianism has won the battle - the war for individual liberty and free markets will resume. Those who are around to resume it might not remember the details of happened the previous cycle.... but they will engage in the fight for liberty again... because they will know they are better-off free from authoritarians. It's just they(we) will have have lost the momentum... again... for the who knows how many-eth time!! So. yes. It matters very much. Because going into debt amounts to an erosion of productive capacity which immediately affects living standards.... which makes it harder to oppose authoritarians and win for sufficient length of time to break the cycle. If we are to break the cycle, then we have to learn to push through at our strongest moments... to not capitulate and throw it away once again. Each time we throw it away it seems we suffer some kind of mass amnesia which means we are forever treading water, in the bigger picture.

ValueOfBrevity (that is one username I wish I had thought of, btw), What you say here is in my view better summed up (for the sake of honing in on the crux of the issue) as violating the NAP. If you ask me, I would never use 'not an argument' without the suffix: 'for violating the NAP'. Because that is the one thing that makes any lack of argument of any danger or threat to the innocent. To elaborate further, I mostly hear 'not an argument' as a response by those who assume a winning argument is all you need to resolve conflict. That is of course a truism but it doesn't address the problem that people in fear are effectively disabled from engaging rationally in a debate or argument. From what I can observe - and I'd be interested in anyone's thoughts on this - it appears to me that no person - ever - has been able to occupy a state of lucidity, with the capacity to reason on the basis of observation, and a state of fear.... simultaneously. And this(or more precisely, not being aware of this), it seems to me, is the ultimate barrier which holds mankind back. And he is oblivious to it. Because as I say.... moving from lucidity(being capable of reasoning) to fear, necessarily involves abandoning reasonable thought and immediately engaging in pure instinctual reaction. It's a human frailty which probably serves us in some raw-survival capacity. If you had a lot to hide. Let's say you were an intelligent criminal. You made it to the highest levels of an entity that provided shelter for you from the prying eyes of those at liberty to observe and draw conclusion to problems. And from there you proceeded to engage in crimes from one end of the scale e.g. petty thievery, to the other e.g. crimes against humanity. And let's say that if a small contingency of the masses were free to observe the mechanism by which the worst criminals are able to perpetuate their destructive ways.... that there is no way it could continue. Now you as the intelligent criminal need - more than anything else your life depends on - to find a way to interrupt this freedom to observe... before the number of observers grows. And there you have it.... fear-inducement and the ability to hold in fear.... the masses. So that that small contingency of people who, through knowing this trick alone, render themselves largely unaffected by it(the fear-inducement) and hence retain their ability to observe... are left impotent in opposing the mechanism.

Seems to me that what Thomas Szasz referred to as the 'Therapeutic State' - drawing parallels with the Theocratic State - has high profile, celebrity, Mental Health lobby-endorsing Stephen Fry on a very short leash. Notice how the article I link to - which amounts to a feverish attempt at damage-control by the mental health lobby - constantly affirms Fry's endorsement of 'mental illness'. And from the article you linked to, preceding it, the Charity he is President of said this ... Constantly trying to re-assert, to the unsuspecting public in general, that the presumed legitimacy said people confer on the Mental Health industry is reasonable and justified. Yet they can't rely on the force of argument alone.... they need to have the gun to back up their argument. Otherwise it doesn't work so well. Mouth-pieces of the Mental Health lobby should be accountable for the effect on society - of undermining of individual responsibility - which their considerable influence has.... whether it be in the 'charity' space or the 'journalism' space. You will never hear the mental health lobby emphasize the fact that individual liberty and individual responsibility (for knowing what goes on in the world) are 2 sides of the same coin. If, for instance, you wanted to undermine individual liberty you could attack it outright, overtly, and be shown to be the holder of a degraded view of mankind that you are.... OR... you can chant freedom slogans whilst at the same time doing everything in your power to effectively undermine individual responsibility. What you do to one side of this coin, you ipso facto do to the other. It's not a new trick and it is still very effective. This is exactly what the Mental Health lobby does.... it uses its considerable societal influence to undermine individual responsibility for becoming and remaining well-informed. It wants the State to be responsible for your decision-making.... because then making the State's case for violating your property rights, on their holy whim, is as good as a done deal. The one thing they fear - more than anything else - is that you'll be free not to associate with them. Public education institutions are a great example. Their curriculae are decided at crony-level. The narrative on curriculae is controlled by the politically-protected class i.e. those protected by the State from the consumers' only real ally.... would-be competition. Stephen Fry makes good comments, but then backtracks when he feels the sharp pull on the lead around his neck.

Interesting, Caley, Thanks for that response. Disappointing that the scoring system wasn't reflective enough... if that is what you were getting at. That would seem to indicate people had other criteria which they rated as highly or more highly as the liberty values. Seems there is so much potential in this sector, though. So much unmet demand for romantic partners. But maybe it is also a sign that friendships are not blossoming first. Because that is apparently how a lot of people find their match in life... friends of friends & family. Could it be as simple as that? The focus is on finding a match, specifically, because of practical biological timing. It's as though finding a match through making friends is the more organic way of going about it. And results in higher quality relationships. But there are social pressures which are brought to bear on individuals for trying to hold on to their integrity in a world where the opposite is encouraged. That, I think, is also true. May I ask, why do you think a free dating service vs a paid-membership service makes little or no difference to one's chances of success? I always assumed that regardless of the product/service one tends to think things through far more before putting something of value up. Perhaps it would act as a filter of some kind which works out beneficially. Your thoughts on that? aviet, No, not in the US. Sometimes I wish I was, other times I'm glad I'm not. I will check out that link, though. thanks

Hi, Can anyone recommend - through personal experience - any dating sites catering to customers with libertarian values? I mean I know most people are pro-liberty, deep down, but I'm looking to reduce the grunt-work to manageable levels. [edit: no, I don't mean that kind of grunt-work ;-) ] I tend to shy away from 'free' sites, but if I get a good recommendation I will check it out. I'm in Europe currently but I'd still be interested to hear about other geographical areas as well. I've tried dating sites before with not much success. It could be time to have another go, though, as that was a few years back. Thanks.

Des, I must say I'm not sure I understood exactly what you are driving at. But before you elaborate, I just want to clarify something. When I said 'individuals are better left to think and/or entertain whatever thoughts he chooses/accepts', I didn't mean nobody should not try to reach the person. What I meant is that nobody should initiate force to rid him of thoughts. Only once he has violated the NAP is any force justified. Suggestions are fine. I have no problem with encouragement and any other form of inducement to moral behavior. There are plenty of ways. But there can be no initiation of the use of force. It seems to me that underlying the assumption(/mocked-up scenario), of a rational society, is the question of to what extent the use of force is justified, beyond the NAP. Do you think I'm wrong about that? Also, I hear many people - who call themselves 'atheists' - emphasizing the need for a knowledge/acknowledgment of THE TRUTH! It's always THE truth! If I'm honest, it smacks of intolerance to me. If you ask me, one person's 'rational' may not be another's. If you try to force a rational standard of morality onto people it tends to backfire. This is why any enforced standard of morality(legal scope) is best kept to a minimum i.e. the NAP. The notion of the NAP, in my opinion, if it and it alone were enforced rigorously would be sufficient to solve the vast majority of human problems. I don't claim we would be problem free but we would undoubtedly put ourselves, by virtue of the adoption of the NAP, in a position of immense strength insofar as solutions to the remaining problems would be concerned. The reason we have such trouble in human affairs is precisely due to our failure to keep the scope of the State limited to protection of the NAP. Not sure if any of that is an answer to what you said. But I specifically wanted to emphasize that when I take the laissez-faire approach it is a matter of legal implementation. People would be free to engage one another in any way they like, as long as it was voluntarily. This leaves the options wide open. Mistakes outside of the violation of the NAP are paid for, though, as far as possible by the actor responsible for the action. This, under a system in which the NAP was adopted as the limits of government power over individuals, would be sufficient for us to flourish and prosper like never before in history.

They both rely on the service of moulders of 'public opinion' .... I call them professional mass manipulators and distractors. Obama and Clinton have whole teams of psychologists managing public expectations. State intelligence services have turned to those trained in manipulation techniques such as memory-wiping. The phenomenon of multiple personalities can be engineered(Manuchurian Candidate). This is well-known among researchers of the topic. Trigger words are used to switch a person from one personality to another... very useful if you ever wanted an action to be performed at arms length. Whenever I hear of another school shooting, where the perpetrator finally uses the gun on himself.... I wonder how much manipulation is involved. Some have been calling for an investigation into the possible connection between psych-drugs and such mass shootings for a long time. Governments have the general public's consent to conduct operations out of the public view. Seems a bit naive to me to expect the worst among us, drawn to the State for this very reason, not to take full advantage of their relative anonymity. I wouldn't say Hilary and Obama are hypnotists themselves although NLP techniques are widely available today and becoming quite popular with those who see nothing wrong with manipulating their fellows without letting on. I know of people in PR who have become very fond of NLP. They're in mid- to upper-level management positions in large companies. I get the impression many people brush off the notion of hypnotism as some kind of magic trickery... more like a form of entertainment. A gimmick. It's real, though. Go back and watch some of the well-known names. Derren Brown, for example. These techniques I think would be too good to pass up for anyone with a monopoly on mass information dissemination. On the topic of NLP, I once met someone who's brother 'threw himself' off a 3rd or 4th floor.... she said he was fine one day but had learned some potentially damaging info about higher ups in the banking institution he worked at. The next day he was cornered into a meeting room and on his way out he jumped to his death. This is a well-known bank in London. There have been similar stories about other banker 'suicides'. There are some things most people don't know. Not because they can't know them but because it is disturbing to learn about some of the things which are going on. And not least because, when you know something, to some degree you acquire a sense of responsibility/duty to do something about it. That applies to most normal people who have a conscience and are not cold-blooded. Doesn't mean they will act on that sense of responsibility. It just means when someone feels it, they know that it is sometimes best not to be at the cutting(bleeding) edge of awareness. They usually just stay quiet on such matters. Who knows, perhaps wisely. Then there are those who vociferously claim to have knowledge that nothing of the sort could possibly be going down. Such is the tone they take. No power could possibly be consistently abused. It's only ever an isolated case. A one-off here and a one-off there. Why? This stuff takes decades to come out.... and one only has to look to see the what these nutters get up to under cover of secrecy laws. Why not just be honest about what you know and what you don't know? Makes one wonder why they are so defensive of the State. Anyway, out of the two I'd say Clinton is by far the more dangerous. I feel her hatred and utter contempt for original American values... for anyone who harbours some hope of a return to a strictly limited State aparatus. It's palpable. Obama is more of a puppet who has warmed to his role among the elites.

Not if preserving the freedom to choose badly appears high on your list of priorities. It seems to me that as part of this game of life, sometimes a destructive thought(destructive even to the thinker) can be a) entertained and b) acted upon. From personal memory/experience and historical precedent, it appears to be the case that individuals are better left to think and/or entertain whatever thoughts he chooses/accepts. It is the acting which is where the rubber meets the road. If you don't divorce these two, categorically, you are a dead duck. I say that because by failing to categorize thoughts and actions separately, you are guilty of denying the presence of a responsible actor. And as soon as you get into a habit of failing to distinguish them, to that extent you get into a habit of dismissing a sentient and therefore culpable actor. To me a friend is someone who helps one to reclaim individual responsibility. An enemy of mankind, on the other hand, is one who tempts you into undermining your ability to respond to a problem you find yourself suffering from. p.s. hypnotism - or variants thereof - is where things start to get really interesting because it is a technique by which a person can be made to act according to someone else's thoughts or implanted thoughts.

bschu, I must admit that I can't recommend this first hand, as I haven't read it yet. But I'm currently in a similar head-space to you in that I'm looking into Sumerian historical records and I thought what the hell, it may be of some interest. There is a book which comes highly recommended by Gerald Clark(find him on youtube, too. Annunaki radio has some very decent interviews with him and James someone or other, the host). The title of the book, which Clark recommends, is 'Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others' by Stephanie Dalley. It is high on my list of 'books to read'. I'm assuming you have heard of the work of Zecharia Sitchen, who's writing is pretty well-known.

Many of the posts on this thread are on topic but by no means all of them. I recommend you read my comments from the beginning. Not that your reply isn't useful. I'm not happy calling myself an atheist. To me, if some atheists would have no hesitation in violating the NAP in order to end all religion and other atheists encourage people to think for themselves or at least are indifferent to assertions made without evidence, that is as different a position as one can take. There is no way I want to be mistakenly categorized as being for an end to freedom of conscience. The two viewpoints are so different as to be opposites. To me, this is a clear-cut case of someone trespassing on someone else's turf, so to speak. One party needs to vacate the label, if it is to have any unambiguous meaning. Or call the other party out. One or the other. Otherwise the label is serving as a shield for those not courageous enough to admit their coercive leanings. If you are telling me the vast majority of atheists are pro- freedom of religion - by definition, then the small minority(which include very prominent, high profile individual 'atheists') are giving the rest of you a bad rep'.

Thanks, sweathog1. Given two things: a) that it is possible not to know all there is to know, and b) that people's definitions vary, sometimes wildly, I expect at least most of the time to hear a lot of people saying hey, listen, that claim you are making about x, y or z.... it may be true, but from where I'm standing, I just can't tell one way or the other. So good luck to you. If it floats your boat, jump in... knock yourself out, but I'm going to carry on regardless. Now, mostly, we do see this ... in the West. Most people take this general attitude to unusual beliefs. But not everyone. Some have taken it upon themselves, as a personal mission, to engage in fervant and, at times, vitriolic indiscriminate anti-religious ranting. It's the religious equivalent of bigotry. Which is still legal in the West... thank God! I think this form of bigotry should be tolerated legally. That is to say it does not justify physical force, in reaction. Freedom of speech is actually a tough thing... because it works both ways. And hence it means nobody can hide behind the state to avoid other people taking potshots at one's treasured beliefs. I hasten to add, however, where it may not be obvious to some, that the freedom to do something is not the same thing as an invitation to do it! Just because you *can* doesn't mean that you *should*. Where others get the energy to spend their lives making counter-claims, where they themselves have no evidence, intrigues me. I'm not saying there isn't a good explanation for the way they feel. There may well be. But where it reaches a point at which the way they feel, or more specifically what they are prepared to do about the way they feel, begins to encroach on individual liberty itself, is red-flag territory. And of course this is so ironic because the very thing which is - in the West, anyway - no longer a legal threat to them or anyone else, by calling for an end to religious freedom would take us back to the essence of a theocracy i.e. the absence of the freedom to believe. If you check their narrative, these people make no distinction between coercive religion and non-coercive religion. I don't know about other threads - I certainly haven't read them all but so far I haven't seen one of them make this crucial distinction. Not one. To them there is no difference between religion in say Iran and religion in the USA. See, it's not theocracies that gets their beef. It's religious viewpoints, everywhere. If you've heard of Sam Harris, one of the more prominent anti-religious zealots, who has a large following, he has called for an 'end to all religion'. Now, as I have stated, I get why religion itself in theocracies is a bad thing.... specifically it is the alliance between Church and State. But I really don't get some people's obsession with religion in the West, unless.... they think the separation of Church and State did not occur. IFFFF that is the case, then that *would* explain an awful lot. (Ignorance of history usually does explain a lot) A person who doesn't know the difference between life under a coercive state and life under a strictly limited state, is going to call for more government power whenever he feels threatened. The problem of course, for anyone who still hasn't noticed, is that making people feel threatened is the stock and trade of governments and their cronies.... because it shuts down the ability to think critically. Because this - critical thinking - is the only thing which keeps government power in-check. The .... only.... thing. People who are too easily threatened, in this sense, are no longer able to make distinctions, to delineate differences and similarities.... everything becomes a broad, hostile generality. Their only means of engaging is through the use of blunt instruments i.e. an overblown legal system. When you and I see A, B and C, they see A, A and A. They are typically never specific about what it is about religion which justifies them spending so much time and energy in trying to refute other people's beliefs. Perhaps if they were, I'd have more to agree with them about. People in Iran are threatened with force if they do not believe or accept certain 'truths'. They can and are physically attacked, tortured and killed. This is coercive religion. In the West, people are - apart from one major exception, which no-one in this thread has so far asked me to elaborate on - free to believe in all kinds of things but they have no state power to coerce their fellow human beings into those beliefs. You may not physically attack, torture or kill someone, in the USA, because of their world view. It is illegal! That is a pretty fundamental distinction to make, right there. So, if we define crime as violation of the NAP, then it is clear what harm can be done to a non-criminal in Iran, in the name of religion. The question is what harm can be done to a non-criminal in the USA, in the name of religion?

Des, I would say that at no point, during a conversation with someone playing the god card, am I left defenceless in the face of any attempt to manipulate me. Could you give me an example of how one might be 'manipulated' into doing something one didn't explicitly/implicitly consent to doing, by someone else, playing the god card?

Thomasio, I will address the '[need for savings and loans to balance each other out]' but I first want to respond to what you have said, above. I assume that when you use the term 'money power' you are referring to government officials together with crony capitalists? i.e. it is not crony capitalists in isolation. Am I correct there? Because after the scope is shrunk to NAP, even though ex-cronies will still have their money, they will not have any more on tap. This is crucial. Their dependence on a market which is uncompetitive is EVERYTHING to their survival as dominant players in the market.... EVERYTHING.... obviously I can't stress that enough. It may appear as though crony capitalists can go on dominating the markets after consumers reclaim - en-mass - the responsibility inherent in the role. I realise I'm asking you to imagine something which doesn't exist to a large degree now and which hasn't been practised for a long time to the extent required to render the society 'free'. I get that that is a bit of a stretch, but I'm only asking you to join me in this thought experiment. There is a big IF which is the premise to my argument. And that is this.... individuals... however many decide that they prefer to take this decision, voluntarily opt back in to a) shrinking the scope back to NAP and b) KEEPING it at that proportion. That is the premise. Now if you will embark on this experiment and grant me this premise, for the sake of this discussion, then we can discuss it further. Otherwise we will probably not get very far. Think about what would happen. Think through the process of exactly how crony capitalists would continue to keep new competitors out. Competitors - new market entrants - who didn't before have the legal means to associate, to form some level of meaningful alternative to satisfy - what are currently clearly unsatisfied - consumers in today's crony-dominated market, suddenly no longer have that legal barrier to entry. They no longer have the regulatory burden... of taxes and bureaucracy and a depreciating currency. The spigot of money printing is cut-off. Boom... just like that. No more transfer of wealth by stealth. All that is left is the vast majority of their existing income - up to 50% more than they had before and vast swathes of unsatisfied customers and a fat, lazy privileged class of cronies who never had to really apply themselves to satisfying customers(the ultimate arbiter of whether or not they were pleasing cutomers was always the state, rather than risk-bearing customers). I'm saying this does require some mental gymnastics i.e. bearing in mind that two-part premise I stipulated, but if you grant me that premise, how would it be possible for any crony-capitalist to go on preventing new entrants from taking a share of their markets, other than having to offer their wares at a lower-cost - low enough to prevent new entrants over time? Assuming they could do this which would be a massive ask... because they only know one thing.... how to survive in a rigged game. They are the weakest players, not the strongest. Don't confuse dominance with strength, in a crony-capitalist system. They are the weakest players and they know it. Which is why they would pull out all of the stops to prevent consumers from reclaiming responsibility as consumers. Including taking us to war..... one of the most effective ways of inducing fear in the population. Think about the Cold War and what happened when it ended. Think about the military industrial complex's need for another war. It serves a purpose. As soon as there are no monsters abroad, people begin to inform themselves. They begin to join the dots and to discover the fraud that is money-printing and central banking in general. This spells upset for politicians and their crony-capitalists. It spells and end to privilege and a return to open competition. And they are very alert to it. Their biggest fear is that ordinary people will gain a simple but thorough understanding of what constitutes fraud. And hence be able to unshackle themselves from the spell they have been under, restore limits to political power and quite possibly, in the processs, gain the ability to maintian those limits. Of course there are going to be losers. Economically and socially there are going to be losers. The next generation is going to want answers from their parents... and their children from them. How could you let this happen? This kind of talk unfortunately can feed the fears. But some attempt has to be made to wake people up. Because it can and will be far worse not to wake up. The nightmare is going to continue and the longer it continues the worse it'll be. Their only route to avoid being brought to account is to perpetuate an environment of fear which will keep people running to the state for protection. And as long as they do this, people will be running in exactly the wrong direction viz., into the arms of their enemy. The enemy, as I defined it: those who claim to have your best interests at heart(liberty) but who work to undermine individual responsibility. That one-sided coin. So, I'm asking you to have a look at what would happen - how their dominance could be perpetuated, given that two-part premise. Regulatory capture is only possible through continued relinquishing of consumer responsibility to mitigate or bear market risk, to the state. Representative power *is* misrepresentative power. Unless one has a workable plan to turn politicians into moral paragons of virtue, one had better be prepared to face the reality of the mechanics involved in regulatory capture. The power to dominate markets comes from consumers relinquishing their consumer responsibility. They are cowed into it. It wasn't always this easy to buy politicians. There is a trajectory and it corresponds to that level of consumer responsibility. The modern consumer is epitomized by his entitlement mentality... this is a complete 180 degree reversal of pre-1850's American consumer values. Now, if it can be made to swing 180 degrees in one direction, it can be made to swing 180 degrees in the other. Most probably at a substantial cost. You can't expect to give up your responsibility without sacrificing your liberty... which will not be handed back to you with an apology. Previously, revolutions were required to regain it or at least attempt to regain it. Most of the time that is a very, very costly way to regain liberty. Very often it didn't come off. It remains to be seen if there is another way. But consumers need to wake up.... fast because it gets harder and harder to do an about turn. As Mises said of middle-of-the-road policies i.e. interventionism, they always lead to full-blown Socialism. And it was Thatcher, who said the problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money. Both were spot on, with regard to these statements.

[msg took so long to go through, I thought it hadn't made it so this post was a duplicate]