tasmlab

Stef is listed as "ask an expert" for the site. (scroll down) http://liberty.me/join/

Whoa! Are you talking about your parents immoral decision to bring you in, or your decision to bring your three kids in? Who cares about passing judgement on your folks, you have yourself to contend with.

Does anyone else feel the urge to buy something from a business they entered just to use the bathroom? I do. Does anyone else tip when you go the coffee or ice cream shop? I do. Does anyone here give to charity? Or donate to a podcast series you can totally get for free with total anonymity? I doubt doglashes shotgun would even have to come out too often. Edit: I just noticed that there is precisely one person on this thread who has skipped the FDR cash register and just walked out the front door.

No Soldier either. In many school districts it costs $200K to education each student for the whole 13 years. I wonder if you just cut the kid a check for that amount if they would fare better. They might still be cashiers, but they'd have money.

If someone doesn't like to exist, then they can exit anytime. This minority can cancel out what they viewed as an immoral action of being forced to be born.

Does the premise of this discussion assume that the world is a shitty place, everywhere? If the opposite is true, than would it be virtuous to bring in as many folks as possible? If I were to ask my children, who all are closer to being born than me, they would think that it was pretty good that they were born. With my own experience, I'd say the same thing.

There is definitely a homogeny on this board, but I think it is a good thing. It lets people debate details in the same framework. I also post on a fan forum for the New England Patriots football team and everyone who posts there all tend to like football and the Patriots. It works out pretty well.

I ended up buying a used copy for like $50. As an aside, that this book doesn't remain marketable for even a few decades is sad news. I know Stef has plans that FDR will be around for centuries.

Well, we don't really know, of course. If the bosses have competitors, than prices would drop, just as if a commodity became cheaper or a technology improved productivity. Someone will undercut the boss who just pockets all of the extra profits. At least that's how it seems to work with just about everything else, and is one of the basic phenomena that Austrian economists agree on. The money they send back to their relatives will be in US (or Canadian, in the example) dollars and will have to ultimately be spent here. There wouldn't be less money in the economy unless the foreigners decided not to consume anything with it. But the macro-economic performance doesn't interest me personally. If the immigrant works and makes money they should get to do with it as they please. I want that for myself. The desire of the collective shouldn't trump the right of the individual. That native workers take pay cuts is, again, just one group of strangers vs. another to me. There's nothing special about being 'native', it's an arbitrary birthright that nobody gets to choose. It doesn't have to be a zero-sum game, either. Historically, immigrants have a huge disadvantage in terms of language and skills. They don't necessarily compete for jobs with the natives. At least not in a lot of categories. Would taxes rise? Yea, no, probably, maybe, probably so. But that's not a market reaction to immigration, it's the government making arbitrary decisions like they may do for a thousand other reasons.

I saw the headline and thought of Wendy O. Williams, front lady of the Plasmatics http://www.google.com/search?q=wendy+o+williams&newwindow=1&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=DJheU472GevJsQSim4HQBA&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1716&bih=976 Am I dating myself here? I'm pretty old....

My current thoughts on open borders: 1. What do I care which group of poor strangers gets the wellfare, the free schooling or the jobs? If I advocate for these things, than it doesn't matter if the strangers who get them were born here or there. If i don't like these things, than I still don't regardless of what group of poor strangers is getting them. I have equal sympathy or respect for someone I don't know who was born in Alberta that I do if they were born in Mexico. 2. Incoming lower-costs labor will probably make me richer as the goods and services I consume will be cheaper to produce.

I guess you could phrase it that "you are aggressing against the child by bringing it into the cruel world" But then you are also giving it life (vs. death/non-existence) which is a pretty cool thing!

As a side note, "privatization", in current practice, more often about making something fascist and not private. Texas recently privatized their electric companies, but the govt told them what they had to do, established fixed monopolies, gifted the hundreds of millions, etc. The prison and military industries are just as 'private' with the government being their sole market and customer. I've found this admission to be appealing to my lefty friends as a starting point for discussion.

I'm currently reading Harry Browne's "How I became free in an unfree world*", and it reads like a summary of FDR. I know Stef had great affection for Browne and schooled off him quite a bit. He strongly advocates for finding personal freedom. He claims 'indirect' methods (e.g., convincing other people) is largely fruitless and ineffective. Personally, I think taking your kids out of school is the biggest thing anyone can do for liberty. In my case, it removed 120 hours of government participation EACH WEEK for my family alone. Even as a signal to others (a tertiary benefit to be sure), people know I'm more serious about this than any bumper sticker could portray. * Sadly out of print.

It'd probably be better take the money for schooling rather than go back and get a paycheck to go kill people in the military. You could probably make a convincing restitution argument to justify taking the money. The money has already be absconded or will be anyway, continuing to pay in (being forced to) and than voluntarily not taking the goodies probably won't end or even lessen the state. I don't know. What dsayers says about getting some schooling/accreditation vs. education is all perfectly correct, IMO

What Daniel said, essentially large scale incarceration of the offending priests and disproportionate financial restitution to the victims and it is still too little too late.

Ooh ooh! I've had one. But we were coworkers sharing the same office for a couple years. Put each other in stitches. She was very attractive and we never thought of hooking up. We'd even hang out outside of work frequently and she introduced me to her family many times. I'd say it was more of the exception. Depending on how broadly you define 'friends', people in groups seem to be able to have boy/girl friendships to a degree.

Hi Logan, I don't have all the answers but maybe some ideas. We've only been at this for a few months. On keeping your 4-year old home, I'm sure there's a lot of interruption. Just peeling apples and opening toys all day long. If I have to watch my almost 3-year old without my wife, it can sometimes be very hard to work and watch her. My only suggestion would be to take the hit during the day and catch up on your work after your wife comes home. Not ideal by any stretch. We live in the Charleston area in an affluent community. (Mount Pleasant). The 'social' problem hasn't been a problem. They play with neighborhood kids in the late afternoons and weekends. We sign up for sports and activities like karate, swim, and lacrosse and meet lots of kids. Homeschoolers are also more forthcoming on doing park days and meetups, sort of by necessity, but we also don't have an 8.5 hours of school eating up massive chunks of the day. We even met a family of market anarchists whom we get along with. Even the dads! Having siblings help make play time social. And, remember, beyond first grade, the kids don't get that much social time in PS. There's a lot of time spent glued to desks with your mouth shut. And there is no alone time. The worst of both worlds. You may have to just be net poorer to accommodate your values. But you'll make up the money misery with more time, preserving your values and giving your kid the best development. As a disclosure, I make a pretty handsome paycheck. Having money makes everything easier. My wife doesn't have to go to work. We hire a babysitter a couple times a week to watch the kids for a few hours on Tuesday and Thursday so my wife can go grocery shopping or exercise or whatever by herself. It's easy for me to make it sound easy and put on moral airs because the money is there. And I'm sure San Diego is much more expensive. You might also go to care.com or ask around and see how many nanny hours you can get with the money you pay in pre-school tuition. For example, my boy's preschool tuition was about $580/month I think. You can hire a babysitter at $15/hour to give yourself some dedicated working time. This would work out to about 9-10 hours a week. Not a ton of time, but it may help in scheduling undisturbed work calls and such. We've also employed 'mother's helpers' for as low as $2/hour. This is a neighborhood 12 year old or so who isn't old enough to be left alone with your child, but can play with them, get them snacks, etc. and only interrupt you when there is a medical emergency. This worked out great for working at home and watching the kids. Unfortunately, they aren't available until their school day is done. This practice violates child labor laws, minimum wage laws even though my kids loved it, my wife loved it, the mother's helper had a great time, developed her work skills and generated some pocket money. You may be able to find a teenage homeschooler to hire like this. It's a valuable experience for the teenager too to be valuable, learning, working, etc. They could even do curriculum if you weren't unschooling.

It's the only place where you actually give a shit. (rimshot)

Intuitively, if somebody's job was to filter porn, he would have to download and analyze all sorts of it. As an analog, if somebody's job was to make mosquito repellent, you'd expect him to have all sorts of mosquitos to analyze. I guess it depends on whether he had his dick out or not.

Sounds like you are done with the relationship. People who are bonkers in love with each other tend to start with that fact vs. the calculated dissection you've performed. Describing the relationship as 'vacuous' is pretty convincing. Just as an anecdote, although my wife identifies as atheist, libertarian and peaceful parenter, she doesn't like to listen to philosophy podcasts as a hobby. It is possible to love somebody without every belief being exactingly perfect, but what you describe, the 'loveless' part hits me harder than the misaligned beliefs. (Just my very subjective opinion)

At risk of repeating the above, I really feasted on: - Gatto's "dumbing us down" and "weapons of mass instruction" (currently reading "underground history") - Lewelyn's "teenage liberation handbook". The first few chapters are superb and the rest can be scanned or selectively read. - John Holt's "Teach your own" was good, but I was already getting the concepts I haven't read Dayna book on Radical Unschooling but have gone through her site. I believe she also advocates for no bed times, no meal times, letting kids watch whatever they want on the internet. Some of her critics call it "unparenting". The Unschoolers I've come across can be super-persnickety about the right way and what constitutes homeschooling. Our approach has been to grab what we like from it and still do what we think is best, which in our case is providing some guidance and suggested materials, asking them to do at least something daily, and at least keep the unschooling ideas in our mind when we are doing un-unschooling like things. The later may sound fishy, but I mostly mean being constantly aware of how tops-down or joyless or counter-beneficial any school-like activity might be. It's a little like the minarchism/anarchism debate where both parties already went 99% down the road together and then fight over the last 1% w/r/t the distance between ripping your kids out of the PS prison and what you do once you are so distant from it. I really like everyone else's posts on this so far! Almost forgot, The best resource has been talking to unschoolers. They like to have park dates! And in ours, many of them had kids that weren't school age yet, but still identified as "unschoolers". You can show up to these and chat, although I don't know if I'd go without a kid in tow.

One of the Koch brothers just released an article in the WSJ (I think) carrying the libertarian banner and denouncing cronyism. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303978304579475860515021286?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303978304579475860515021286.html These guys have been investing in libertarian education via things like Cato and Reason for 30 years. They tagged Murray fucking Rothbard himself to launch it. Yet they lobby government and invest heavily in elections. What frustrates me is that, unlike other oil concerns or any corporation, they KNOW and PROFESS the right answer but go crony anyways. So they are wholesale hypocritical. BUT, if they came out and said something like this I could almost nod along: "We embrace libertarian ideals, but in order to react to the reality of today we engage in manipulating the government. We have to or we will go out of business. And, in fact, our naked and studied understanding of government's true role and mechanism make us especially adept at doing so." To your original post, I really don't think there's going to be a really clear-cut, high quality conclusion/answer. But maybe I'm giving up to easily.

I have four full-time salaried employees and people often ask me why I don't use contractors, because, after all, you don't have to guarantee them a monthly check in perpetuity, you can just hire them when you need them. It doesn't work for me because I can consistently drive demand and salary margins make the most sense. Unfortunately, contractors have to bury all of their lumpy downtime risks into their hourly fees, making the employers margin disappear. The salaried worker essentially trades his risk of downtime and reliable cash-flow for lower hourly pay. The employer trades their risk of idle resources for reliable, consistent wages. It usually only makes sense to use contractors for jobs that are outside of your core business. For example, a restauranteur keeps their servers and cooks as full time employees because they are in the business of serving food day-in and day-out. When they need to paint the restaurant, they hire a contractor who they only need for a couple of days since they aren't in the wall painting business. I do think there are opportunities to liberalize and update the pervasive full-time employee model, but am not sure lots of contractors will be it. Could be wrong.

I was in a forum explaining how god committed genocide in the Ark story and that he must have his own morality. A Christian told me the genocide didn't compare to the genocide we have going on now against the aborted unborn. I then asked about the unborn babies in the wombs of mothers drowned in the flood, and if god was cool with that. I didn't get a response. (Apparently I'm spending some high quality time on the Internet when not at FDR)