Dylan Lawrence Moore

I hope I have the right chapter, but I think this couple-minute clip explains the situation pretty well: https://mises.org/media/7327/14-Cooperation-How-a-Free-Market-Benefits-Everyone

Bumpity. I had a good 2-hour plus discussion with a relativist today. Got a couple more: 1.) Him: "For me, it's like this, and not like that." Me: "So is it this or that?" Him: "It is like this... for me." 2.) "Well, I just don't see it that way." 3.) Me: Attempting to define a term. Him: "You keep trying to define these words when we have totally different meanings for them. I choose to have my meanings and you choose to have yours." Me: "If we don't define the words we're using, that means the words have no meaning and we might as well talk to each other like whigamrigamekalekawhkk." Him: "Well, that's the way I feel sometime." Followed by a pause as if he made a productive statement. 4.) "That's the way it is for you." Oof. -Dylan

...I couldn't even come up with a sarcastic comment for this. Holy. Crap. The only word I can think of is "ditz". However, how a ditz passes physics I without figuring out what a vector is is beyond me.

I'm still looking for a longer video that Stef did on the same subject, but this one gets right down to the jist of things: And for the record, you can't be refused healthcare here in the US due to lack of insurance. Especially in hospitals, who are required by the state to keep an amount of money on hand called "charity care" for people who make money below the poverty line (although I'm not sure what's going to change due to Obamacare). I did this in 2011. I had no health insurance so instead I just went to the emergency room and racked up $3000 in hospital bills, which the hospital entirely waived after I showed them a copy of my paycheck. -Dylan

Just wanted to pop in: Richard Grove, the guy moderating the debate here, is the producer of Peace Revolution Podcast and one of the finest alternative media sources out there right now. If you haven't gotten around to checking out more of his stuff, I can only recommend it. Yea, that's him. I could barely watch it. There were several times during the "debate", after Tom made a total mess of himself and Stefan let him know it quite directly, that I had to pause the video because I was too embarrassed to keep watching. I've chatted with Tom a few times over at the Tragedy & Hope site (Richard Grove's network), and all I can say is the guy is the King of the Strawmen. I'm glad Larken Rose was able to produce something a little more useful to listen to out of him.

I graduated with a degree in chemistry and with a job in a lab at an oil refinery. I was an intern there while I was still in school and I had a guaranteed job upon graduating. My family sang my praises about how I found such a good offer. The only problem was, I absolutely hated it. It was like working with 400 Homer Simpsons and having my soul slowing but surely getting sucked out of me, day in, day out. So I quit six months before I graduated and ran away screaming. A little more than a year later I sold, gave away, or threw away any crap that was holding me down and bought a one-way plane ticket on the other side of the country to stay with my friends. I did that for about a year before things didn't work out so well, so I bought another one way plane ticket to Europe without a plan, where I stayed for two and a half years in total. After being gone from home for nearly three and a half years, I finally came back, where people still look at me in shock and ask me how I could have possibly quit such a good job at the oil refinery. When I tell them it was because I hated it, they just shrug it off like I'm the dumb one. Don't listen to them and do what you need to do. They sure as hell won't listen to you.

I vehemently avoid discussions on facebook (and youtube) for exactly this reason. The most recent post always gets the last word.

Get the community never to trade with this woman again until she voluntarily agrees to undergo therapy and rehabilitation?

I would be curious at the ability of such security-based agencies to develop new constituents if they embolden such behavior.

Holy crap. Freedom is all about treating people however you want? So if I just start beating someone and they complain, I can just say, "Hey, I'm just expressing my freedom, right?" The argument that really makes sense to me the following line of questioning: 1. "Children are human beings, right?" If you get a "no" response from this, walking away may be a good option. 2. "It's wrong from one human being to simply hit another human being if he doesn't like the way the other is behaving, right?" Again, if a "no" response comes from this, walking away continues to sound like a good option. 3. "So... what's the discrepancy, here?" I'm sure your standard abusive parent would then go into some tirade which boils down to "end justifies the means", but it would at least make clear as day how irrational and insane their argumentation is. Just popping in on this one. I get really nervous when people use the word "discipline", as if torture and violence creates a virtue within a person. To be self-disciplined to sit still for an hour is quite a bit different from the threat of violence if you move for an hour. This word is a gaping black hole for the fallacy of equivocation to fall into, and the etymological roots of the word don't seem to help: discipline (n.) early 13c., "penitential chastisement; punishment," from Old French descepline (11c.) "discipline, physical punishment; teaching; suffering; martyrdom," and directly from Latin disciplina "instruction given, teaching, learning, knowledge," also "object of instruction, knowledge, science, military discipline," from discipulus (see disciple (n.)). Sense of "treatment that corrects or punishes" is from notion of "order necessary for instruction." The Latin word is glossed in Old English by þeodscipe. Meaning "branch of instruction or education" is first recorded late 14c. Meaning "military training" is from late 15c.; that of "orderly conduct as a result of training" is from c.1500. So "discipline" appears simultaneously to denote "learning" (from Latin) and "physical punishment" (from French). Nasty.

Actually, the correct answer is "the bandwagon fallacy". Just because almost all of the world's leading religions agree on something, doesn't make it true.

Start with the Ultimate History Lesson. Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQiW_l848t8

Oo! Quick! Can you name the logical fallacy?

You can always just leave without telling anyone and change your mind later with a Skype call.

Omnidirectional thought-processing coherency does not make.

I just finished up writing my guide on hitchhiking and posted it over on my website. To those who would find it interesting, you can find it on the link here: Vyst's Guide to Hitchhiking It might be a bit of a stretch, but I think it's an interesting idea to look at hitchhiking from a free market perspective. It's a mode of travel that we still don't need a license for, it's probably got the cheapest distance-traveled/money ratio possible, yet it's virtually condemned by anyone you would even remotely suggest the idea to (almost universally by people who have never hitchhiked, never picked up a hitchhiker, and never talked to anyone about it who has done either). I'd like to know what people here think about the subject. -Dylan

See that key right next to your right pinky that has the word "enter" on it? If you use that a little more often, I would make a substantial bet that the amount of people who actually read your posts will go up dramatically.

Ahhh yes. I love that book!

Now that you mention it, I got this feeling as well. It's definitely a feeling of "smugness". I remember having a conversation with an Austrian guy about gun control (it was right after Sandy Hook), and after going through all the logical processes and showing him that his argument didn't make sense, I could see on his face he understood what I said and agreed with it. Despite this, he leaned back into his chair, crossed his arms, and said, "Well, we in Europe have a different opinion." As if to say, yea, everything you said makes sense, but you're an American so it's still crazy. Right. I don't know anything about Jörg Haider, but I was able to gleam some sentiment from the blue party there (Austria has four parties: black - conservative, red - socialism, green - environmentalist, blue - nationalist). The blue party used to be the brown party, but they were forced to change because brown was the color of the Nazi party--and this is how everyone I interacted with viewed them as. However, any growth in the blue party seems mostly due to anti-EU sentiments to me. I read one of their brochures/magazines once, and I was surprised to see that the information they reported was a hell of a lot more accurate than anything I had heard from any other party (i.e. they are willing to open their mouths about the EU debt problem). But of course, their screaming reactionist responses to these problems leave a little to be desired. Well, I don't really know if I'm glad to be back in the US or not. I was basically living as a vagabond in Europe for two and a half years and now that I'm back I don't really know what to do with myself. I'm having a hell of a time finding a job, and I don't know it that's just because the job market sucks or because I suck at applying myself to the job market. I want to begin a business of some sort (or at least something that leads into the direction of a self-sufficient livelihood), and I'm having a hell of a time doing it, probably because I was drawn through the meat grinder known as public schooling. I feel more comfortable here with the idea of starting a new business (dealing with that in another language and different "laws" sounds kind of daunting), but at the same time, if I'm forced to get a job, I would rather do it in a place I'm not familiar with. Mixed feelings, to answer your question. Definitely gotta agree with you on that one. Sometimes I get the feeling that "the conversation" is only happening in English and I wonder how it can be transmuted to other languages. The response to this seems to be that everyone else just learns English.

I haven't looked into unschooling at all, but I just wanted to ask: -Why do you think your child won't learn "math, grammar, science, etc." with a non-academic approach? -Why do you think your child will learn "math, grammar, science, etc." with an academic approach? I graduated with a bachelor of science in chemistry in 2009 and this is what I have to say about my academic career in regards to math, grammar, and science: Math: I never learned how to apply mathematics to anything, despite completing my fourth quarter of calculus and surviving 3 quarters of physical chemistry. The math that I did learn to do things is quite a ways out of my head and, even though I could probably brush up on it a hell of a lot quicker than learning it fresh, I have almost never used what I learned in math classes outside of math classes. Really USEFUL mathematics, like finances, interest rates, and statistics, I barely touched and have had to teach to myself recently. Grammar: I didn't learn grammar until I took classical Greek in college, and that was just because my professor enjoyed using old textbooks which used "old teaching methods". Seriously. I remember my jaw dropping in Greek class and yelling at my professor, "Oh my god! I finally understand English!!" And even after Greek (and Japanese and Sanskrit), I didn't really get grammar until I started getting into the Trivium and going through the book Trivium by Sister Meriem Joseph. So basically, I learned grammar through self-study and a fluke at school because I had a quirky professor. Science: Having majored in chemistry, one would think I would have some knowledge about science. However, half-way through my third year of a chemistry major I realized I didn't even know how to mix the chemicals under my sink, while my dad dropped out of highschool and spent his teenage years making fireworks, rockets, and laughing gas from reading science books. After graduating I couldn't even explain to you what the scientific method was, and I finally stumbled onto a clear explanation of it when reading a book by Carroll Quigley--a historian. I can talk up and down the road about chemistry, but actually making something or doing an experiment with chemicals? Forget it. What I can do is, surprise surprise, self-taught. So yea, I don't know what to recommend to you to do with your child, but I definitely know the standard "academic path" is a bunch of crap. Save all parties involved the misery and figure something else out. -Dylan

Hey tymophy, I know what feeling you're talking about. When I spent a few years in Europe (mainly in Austria), I got the same idea from the people there. The majority of people I would talk to were definitely miffed about government, money, economy, and "the way things were run", but I don't think I ever heard anyone bring it to the level of libertarianism or anarchism. My guess is that this results from a combination of three factors: First, that historically Europe does not have a tradition of libertarianism, whereas North America does, so we at least still give it lip service (land of the free and home of the brave, right?). Second, the socialism of Europe (at least west of the iron curtain) has the appearance of functionality. At the moment, everyone is happily coddled by the state. "Free" school (university in some countries!), health insurance, child care money, welfare, unemployment, subsidized housing, government-protected jobs, you name it. Hell, in Austria, if a woman gets pregnant and has to leave the workplace, the company is required by law to continue paying the woman while she's at home, during the pregnancy and for the first few months of infancy. My Austrian girlfriend worked for a company with about 30-35 employees that is actively paying six women to stay home with their kids. One of these women has popped out 3 or 4 consecutive kids and has used the company as a free rider the whole time. You have to like socialism in Europe, because if you don't, you're throwing away free money and threatening the rest of the population's free money. To use my girlfriend as an example again, her entire un-retired family is currently on unemployment (parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, you name it) and has been for YEARS, and they all seem to think that the money is magically going to fall out of the sky forever. Consequently, it appears the people of Europe can't do math. Obviously, elements of what I just described exist in the US as well, but there appears to be more of a divide from those feeding the government troughs and those sucking off the teat of the welfare state. In Europe, EVERYONE is on government money at least to some degree. Thirdly, since WWII, Europe hasn't had much do with causing and maintaining catastrophic imperialistic wars like the US has (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc.) and doesn't have 750 military bases around the world ready to pounce as soon as someone looks the wrong way. The immorality and insanity of these acts have reached such insane levels that all the excuses (communism, 9/11, terrorism, brutal dictators, etc.) aren't really working anymore. The hell that the US has unleashed in the last 70 years has really brought to the attention of many people here that something is fucked up with the government. With those 3 things, I'll add that the level of propaganda and brainwashing in the US is such that there appears to be a growing divide here between people. People here seem to be either in total government fantasy-land or they're miles down the rabbit hole after taking the red pill. The feeling I got in Europe was that, on average, people are more aware of government, politics, economics, and current affairs, but their awareness is in the middle of the spectrum.

Cu plăcere.

Dylan's Safe-Posting Guide: Open up your favorite word processing program (one that preferably keeps formatting like italics and bold intact). Copy and paste your post periodically (not just at the end!) into this word file. Save it onto your desktop as "post". Make sure you do a final copy and paste before you send it. Once the post is viewable on the website, THEN you can delete the post.doc on your desktop. You're welcome.

The word anarcho-capitalism contains the word anarchy. The word anarchy quite literally means no rulers. We live in a world and a society with rulers. Thus the premise of this thread is false. Just sayin'. Tell that to my girlfriend, who will be forced to move back to Austria at the end of February because she was unable to give the government here a good enough reason why she can stay. Then tell it to me, who will be forced out of Austria if I can't give the government there a good enough reason why I can stay.

1.) I choose to understand what you said this way. Or any other subjectively blathering where my argument gets criticized because the guy doesn't like it.