ResidingOnEarth

You seem to be overlooking the obvious here: The Swedish government is paying to train immigrants how to shoot guns effectively. Shooting guns is a popular method of initiating force against people to kill them; perhaps the most popular. There is evidence to suggest that at least some of these immigrants want to replace western culture with Islamic culture using violence. There is evidence to suggest that some of these immigrants will likely be immigrating to western countries to seek revenge and to retaliate against the violent actions performed by government organisations from the west. If 50 people wanted to build a nuclear power plant together, but you thought it likely that 1 of those 50 was planning to build a nuclear bomb and use it against you and others around you... don't you think it would be a bad idea to sell those 50 the radioactive material they asked for? Assuming they are only training a "few" and not a large percentage of them, I still think this should be of grave concern to any thinking Sweed. My reasoning is this: What percentage of these immigrants from these warzones are in Sweden to use violence as revenge or as a means to replace Scandinavian culture with Islamic culture? What percentage of these immigrants from these warzones are not in Sweden to use violence as revenge or as a means to replace Scandinavian culture with Islamic culture, but are amenable to influence from those that are? I think it is safe to assume that percentage is above zero for both groups and it is below 100%. It is clear to me that if someone intends to use violence as revenge against you or to further a religious and political goal, it is a very bad idea to train them how to be a better shooter. In the absence of accurate answers to questions 1 and 2 (listed above), training immigrants from warzones is like playing Russian Roulette with a gun of an unknown chamber capacity. To explain the metaphor: You know you are taking a risk that could result in death, but you don't know how big that risk is. Why not just not take the risk at all? Perhaps it would be wise to pick a fun, hobby activity for these immigrants which doesn't increase the risk of death for Swedish people.

Not so long ago (maybe 6 years) I was among that majority and I'd probably have latched onto BIG like a mosquito to a neck (I thought a parasitical metaphor was fitting). My economic, truth-awakening started when I stumbled across some documentaries about the true nature of money creation and the federal reserve. It's been a long and slow journey since then that has sent me down roads sign-posted "Austria this way!", "Free Market Square", "Number 21, Bitcoin Street" and "Keynesian, Unlit Back Alley... Of Doom". Also: you're right about the false dilemma fallacy. I deliberately didn't want to think too hard about what a BIG supporter might say. I figured thinking isn't likely to produce the kind of statement a BIG supporter might produce. The people that support BIG probably all have these 2 things in common: A lack of understanding of even the most basic rational, economic principles. They must only have superficially examined the BIG solution. This may be because they don't know how to examine a proposed solution to a given problem.

QE Infinity: thanks for posting up that video and info. It's the first witness account I've seen. It's interesting that the witness said he would have previously dismissed similar reports to his on account of seeing so much right-wing propaganda in the past. I feel similarly: not about the right-wing aspect, but propaganda in general. I feel like there is so~ much current-events, propaganda out there that my initial stance to new stories is to not believe either the official or unofficial narratives. I often question whether the events themselves even happened. I consider eye-witness accounts like this to be credible and I will accept them at face value until the time the eye-witness is exposed to be a liar or quality, contradictory information comes to light. I feel slightly saddened that there is so much insincerity, corruption and irrationality in the world now, that I cannot readily trust the words of others. I am, however, very gratefully that I have stumbled across teachers of critical thinking (like Stefan and other people on this forum) which empower me to analyse my environment and the world for myself without having to place so much trust on the honesty of others. That made me crack up laughing. Thanks. You didn't spoil it for me: no way was I going to waste time reading an article titled "its-time-to-consider-a-curfew-for-men" on a site named feministcurrent.com

I think the BIG supporters would say that cutting taxes is inferior to their BIG scheme because simply cutting taxes doesn't guarantee that people with no income (or very little) can afford the basics, eg shelter, food and water. If I have no income, the BIG scheme operators will give me money to buy food. If I have no income, a tax cut will leave me with no money to buy food. <Hypothetical BIG Supporter> If you support implementing a tax cut instead of a tax increase to support BIG, then you are ensuring that poor people will go hungry and thirsty! What kind of evil person are you?</Hypothetical BIG Supporter> (it felt painful typing that ^) The above point is one reason I don't like arguments for effects. You can cherry pick the likely-positive outcomes of a given action and use that in a sophistic argument to justify your actions. If BIG was implemented today, in England, it would have the immediate positive effect of providing every person in England with enough money for food, shelter and water. Obviously though the effects of stealing vast amounts of money from the economically productive and borrowing money to supplement it will have many more effects than just the positive one I stated. I made an argument in a post further up that all BIG schemes are ultimately unsustainable. When a BIG scheme inevitably collapses it will likely leave large numbers of dependent people in its wake without immediate recourse. Even my argument in my post further up (about BIG causing a collapse) is an argument for effect though. That argument for effect is not the reason why I don't support BIG schemes. The reason I don't support BIG is because I adhere to moral principles: the most important of all of them being the NAP. BIG is a violation of the NAP. To all BIG supporters, I have one simple question to ask them: are you comfortable threatening people with violence in order to coerce them into parting with their property? If not, you should not support BIG. If so, then do you think it's OK for other charitable organisations (like Oxfam) to use violence to coerce people into giving up their things, so that they can fund their causes?

sweathog1: I didn't answer your many questions because I felt like you were asking them as a means to dodge my statements and evidence backed claims as opposed to asking questions as part of a philosophical enquiry. The quoted portions of our interaction below are revealing to me: So at this point above you have admitted that you were originally using the term "we" in the context of a nation state. So why did you say you were not using it in this context and why did you not then explicitly correct yourself? Instead you immediately went on to say this in your next sentence: I am not sure why you are asking this. Are you attempting to build a case that because I am from a country which is colloquially referred to as being part of the west, that I am part of some kind of "western" hive mind and I am now responsible for the actions of some murderers working for government armies that also come from the west? Perhaps in my original post to you I came on too strongly by referring to your use of the term "we" as "insane". I wasn't in a great mood and looking back I recognise that I felt some anger. The destructiveness of statism and those that support it wears on me and I think that I -- perhaps unfairly -- hold people here at FDR to a higher standard than people I meet AFK. To restate one of my original points more politely... Nations cannot make decisions or perform actions. "Nation" is a concept. Concepts can't decide on things or act. As such it is not possible for a nation to "do it [do physical harm] to their [iSIS] innocent families" as you put it. I certainly do not share any moral culpability for the actions of some of the other people that inhabit this same land mass as me. I do not and did not endorse their actions abroad and I did not willingly assist them.

In context, it is clear to me what your intended usage of it was. Shirgall's use of "we" was in reference Trump's reasoning process. Trump is clearly referring to "we", as a nation.

When I see people talking about "we" in reference to a nation and a state it looks just as insane to me as people talking about "my" in reference to their god. There is no collective mind. Their is no social-collective agreement. There is no nation just as there is no god. These people that run these violent, hierarchical organisations referred to as states are doing exactly what they want to serve the interests of themselves and their cronies. After they've decided what they want they will then ex post facto justify their decision to their slave population and convince them that "we" all decided on this together. Here are a couple examples of this from very recent history: See the "Downing Street Memo". This contains evidence Tony Blair had already decided to organise a death and destruction rampage in Iraq with Bush. After deciding this he went through a pretend process of considering his options and having a "public discourse". See a document called "Rebuilding America's Defenses". This was written pre-911 and signed by the likes of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. In this document they declare the following countries a threat: Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria and they state their goal of "maintain[ing] American military preeminence that is consistent with the requirements of a strategy of American global leadership."

Bruce Schneier has written about this here. Bruce is a well known cryptographer and computer security consultant. He usually only writes about topics he has a high degree of expertise in and he also researches them well. I think he does a good job of explaining the problem and the likely effects if unmitigated. Where he goes a bit awry sometimes is on his proposed solutions. That is because some of his proposed solutions invariably involve initiating force against individuals (via the state). I do not throw the baby out with the bath water though. I think he offers valuable information and insights. Here are some excerpts from the article that I thought were valuable: As I said earlier. I don't think these credit systems are necessarily, inherently evil. I think -- as usual -- the NAP is what defines the morality of these systems in any given use-case. Do I have to use Facebook? No. I choose not to and I'm ok with that. Do I have to use a government sesame-like credit scheme? Yes. I choose not to, but it is imposed on me and others in the society I live using threat of extreme violence. I'm not ok with this. Having read this I immediately thought of Obama's recent speech where he advocated using violence to prohibit people from accessing guns if they are on the "terrorist watch list". Obama is many things, but he clearly is not stupid. He knows that the "terrorist watch list" is not appended to using any kind of legal, due-process. He knows that he and his cronies could use this list to arbitrarily, prohibit any individual or group of individuals in society from having access to a gun. In terms of credit ratings... I'd say getting on the terrorist watch list gives you a pretty low score. All the smart control-freaks know about the chilling effect. They will not openly advocate for a position because they want the chilling effect. They know that people would not support their position if they did that. They will make up some other excuse with popular appeal. ^ this. This is how it is being and will continue to be done. Encrypt all the things!

I have never-before, heard such a clear, powerful and succinct explanation for the existence of psychotherapy.

vizier42629: I also heard about this through James Corbett. I'm a fan of his show; especially his New World Next Week show he does with James Evan Pilato. One thing that makes these state-run, citizen-credit schemes immoral is the fact that you are forced to pay for them and forced to use government services that are hooked into them. So they are involuntary. I find that many ideas which are seemingly insidious (eg this credit scheme, eugenics and child labour) transform into something palpable and sometimes even positive when voluntarism is introduced. What's intrinsically wrong with a credit scheme that you choose to be a part of? Insurance companies rate you in various ways. What's intrinsically wrong with eugenics if you and others in your tribe are voluntarily choosing who breeds and who does not as per rules you voluntarily agree to? What's intrinsically wrong with child labour if your child wants to work and learn your trade? As Stefan often points out: voluntarism is the vital difference between rape and love making. Voluntarism is a truly beautiful concept! I'm from the UK by the way and I'm also new here. So hello and I've also watched Alan Watt and Alan Watts videos. I have taken some value from both Alans. More from that latter than the former.

I saw this interview a while ago and also found it inspiring.

This paragraph contains so much irrationality that I feel it would take me days to explain to you all the problems with it. I personally don't have the time to do that. I'm not even sure if you would be receptive to a critical analysis of your erroneous beliefs. The first sentence of this paragraph contains manipulation and sophistry. It feels like you are attacking me. I am not upset by it, but I will not humour it with a response. The paragraph as a whole contains numerous false and irrational statements. Perhaps someone else here has the time to help you. I do not.

The "western world" is a concept that refers to a collection of nations (another concept). As such it cannot make a decision. Concepts can't make decisions. We are not at war so we don't need to pull back. There are a small percentage of western-people that are statists of the violent-fanatic kind (eg they have willingly joined the Army). They are the ones carrying out these campaigns of murder and destruction. The statists that support these violent-fanatics share some moral culpability, but not to the same degree as those they support: those that are actually pressing the buttons and pulling the triggers. It is important to note that these supporters are not at war and neither are those of us who are non-supporters. The word "war" itself is problematic if you want to have a philosophical discussion, as it refers to combat between nations. I prefer to avoid that term. I don't think it helps us solve moral or other practical problems. I for one, would never support these violent-fanatics. I am however, trying to keep an eye on what these western-origin, violent-fanatics are doing. I accept that many of the people they are attacking are under a similar spell as the one they are under. I think many of the victims and many of the aggressors falsely believe that there are nations and that I belong to one of those nations (the UK). I think many of the attackers believe they are acting on my behalf and many of the victims agree with them. I expect the recent attack on those people in the Paris concert hall was performed by attackers who believed those people in the concert hall belonged to an imaginary nation call France and as such they are in some way responsible for the attacks that had been made against people from the land they came from. When I hear people say the following terms it becomes quickly obvious to me that they are under some kind of spell or trying to cast one on another: "Bring our troops home". I don't have any troops. If I did I'd ask them to help me with some gardening. "We are at war". No we're not. "America attacked". No it didn't. People in the American government organisation attacked. There are no nations. "Nation" is a poorly defined, internally-inconsistent concept which children are tricked into believing before they have the capacity to reasonably conclude that it is false. Now here are some things we can do... Spread voluntarism to make the world a more peaceful, safe and prosperous place to live in. If you can't make a voluntaryist out of a statist, then you can still discourage them from becoming violent-fanatics (joining the Army / Air-force etc). It's pretty easy these days to make a case to people that these violent-statist campaigns in the middle east are not solving the problems that they claim to be solving. Raise your children peacefully and teach them to think for themselves at an early age. These children will be drawn to voluntarism like flies to light bulbs. Finally: if the time comes where retaliatory-attacks from middle-eastern people become a significant threat, then you need to think about how best to defend yourself. The people who perform these retaliatory-attacks probably wont understand that you are not personally responsible for any suffering done to them, their family or more generally: to the people of the land they came from. If you're from France, the UK or the USA you may be a target. I hope this time never comes as, I don't know how on earth I will defend myself. The attackers in Paris has fully automatic, rifles. The French government organisation uses threat of violence against people in France to stop them from obtaining similar weapons to defend themselves with. I hope what I've said helps you think more clearly about this situation.

I found them disturbing too. It took me to a dark place. It sounds like his last day on earth was spent in a state of agitation and horror. I can picture many plausible scenarios for how this transpired. The most likely scenarios I can picture (though not proven) are: Fall-out with neighbour. (see: tweet about knocking on his neighbours door) He is drunk. This is not established, but is plausible. There is a prior violent incident recorded on police records of him getting drunk in 2009 I think. He was charged with battery. Someone took a screen-shot of it. I didn't verify the screen-shot was authentic. Neighbour calls cops. (Not established, but is plausible) Ian doesn't deal with the cops as you should (with calm and extreme caution) and becomes confrontational. Cops "teach him a lesson": effectively beat him up and sexually assault him. Twice. Ian -- both hung-over and traumatised by this experience -- posts these strange, broken, messages on twitter. Later he kills himself. I expect he had other problems in his life already and this pushed him well over the edge. Alternative to 6. is: he suffered a bad head injury when the cops beat him up. That would explain his uncharacteristic, malformed English on twitter. He later dies from the head injury. None of the above is proven. It's just a narrative that fits what we know.

For those of you who don't know: Debian is a very popular and influential operating system which is in use on millions of computers today. In-fact, looking at the HTTP response headers, it appears that the Freedomain Radio boards appear to be hosted on an Ubuntu server which will have been created from Debian. So you're all using Debian to read and spread philosophy. Ian Murdock died on 28th December 2015, aged 42. At present we don't know how he died or under what circumstances. EDIT: The links and content below this paragraph contain content that is dark and disturbing for some. He made some strange tweets before his death. They have since been removed from twitter, but can be seen here: https://archive.is/9HF4c He complains about extreme police brutality. His English is very broken in the tweets; which is not characteristic of Ian. Check out his blog and you'll quickly see he has a good command of the English language. Some of his tweets appear racist, but I really don't think he is or was trying to be. I think he was trying to point out that his suffering is real. There are lots of people these days that put forward the idea that "privileged white people" don't know suffering and they don't know police brutality. I think he was simply trying to say that, this meme is not true and his experience proves it. Assuming it really was Ian that posted those tweets, he was clearly not in a sound mental state, so he did not do well at communicating his thoughts. There is a reddit thread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3ytbmi/in_memoriam_ian_murdock/ Another discussion thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10813826 I read both of these threads, but neither of them revealed any new information on exactly what has happened. The only thing I gleaned from those threads is that it appears he really was in police custody: https://i.imgur.com/BGU8KLh.jpg It's very sad.

I got about half way through this podcast and have decided not to listen to the rest. Martin Armstrong really didn't make very strong arguments and at times he was incoherently babbling. Also: his analysis doesn't seem to be rooted in Austrian economic principles (of which I'm not expert, but I know some of the powerful basics). He seemed to frequently refer to the actions of concepts. Concepts cannot perform actions. His arguments did not seem to be based on the actions of real economic actors: individual people (including people working together within a hierarchical organisation). Here are some things in particular which I made a note of while listening. He said: How does interest rates set by the fed show that people are not afraid of a government collapse? That makes no sense at all to me for two reasons. 1. the fed (people in the Federal Reserve organisation) can do whatever they want. They can even deliberately sabotage a market if they like to serve their own interests. In-fact there are many that argue that the fed deliberately caused the 1930s great depression. The interest rate set by them thus cannot be an indicator of people's fear or confidence in a government. 2. The interest rate (the fed rate) is only 1 of many tools the fed can use to toy with the economy. For example the fed can: * adjust the commercial bank reserve requirement * adjust the fed discount rate (the rate slightly higher than the fed rate, which is the rate at which people can borrow directly from the fed) * issue bonds * perform open market operations * quantitative easing (money printing) So I'm pretty sure the fed could keep the interest completely stable and just mess with all the other variables. So my point is the interest rate is only valuable for analysis when you factor in the other variables. Note: for those of you not familiar with the terms I used above, there are nice descriptions of them in this glossary: http://useconomy.about.com/od/glossary/ In the context of hyper-inflation and what causes it he said this (at 16:55): This makes no sense to me. If a government organisation prints a lot of money over a short period of time (probably to try and service debts that they cannot pay) that could cause runaway inflation which in-turn could cause people to loose trust in the government organisation that rules over them. I'm not aware of a good argument to support the conclusion that it happens the other way around (as he says). Finally (saving the best for last... cringe...). The interviewer asked this question to Martin Armstrong (at 23:49): This is the reply he gave: What the ****? The question was really clear and simple. His response was this weird macro-economic, disjointed, consciousness stream! I'm pretty sure I wrote down what he said exactly as he said it. That second and third sentence make no sense at all; especially in light of the question he was asked. It sounds like he doesn't know what investors ought to be doing, but he didn't just say that. In-fact his first sentence is telling. He's saying you're "gonna see, initially confusion." I think he's talking about his own mental state. Disclaimer: I'm not an economic expert. In-fact I'm pretty new to the field of economics. I am trying to learn sound economic principles so I can make good economic decisions in my own life.

You said a lot of interesting things, but I just wanted to comment on this one thing as I can strongly relate: I remember a time in my teens and just after when I cared a lot about people and wanted to be nice to others and understanding of them. I remember receiving constant hints from my environment that this was uncool and will lead to unhappiness and failure. In the films I watched and among the people that seemed popular and happy; sociopathic behaviour and a general disregard for the welfare of others was quite consistently portrayed as a superior state of being and an admirable quality. It is only recently that I've realised that my strong sense of empathy is something that I should nurture, protect from harm and be proud of. It's not something I should hide and seek to change. Have you had a similar experience?

The BIG sum is this: (QTY_OF_CITIZENS x BIG_VALUE) + ADMIN_OVERHEADS + FRAUD_OVERHEADS where BIG_VALUE refers to the total amount each person receives per year. Everyone who has ANNUAL_NET_EARNINGS > BIG_VALUE is either paying at least BIG_VALUE in taxes or they are receiving some combination of: their own tax money, debt money, stolen money or printed money (inflation: which is really tax money). Everyone who has ANNUAL_NET_EARNINGS < BIG_VALUE is receiving some combination of: debt money, stolen money or printed money. If the system relies on debt money then it is inherently guaranteed to fail at some point in the future. You obviously can't indefinitely survive if your outgoing money is greater than your incoming money. You can postpone the inevitable by constantly increasing your tax paying population (plenty of ways to do this), continually borrowing more money or getting other government organisations to cover your deficit (this happens in the EU). As I said: those things will only postpone the inevitable economic crash. If the system is not relying on debt money then it must be relying on tax money (including inflation). In this instance: If everyone is earning more than BIG_VALUE then the BIG system produces a net loss for everyone as they still have to pay for the ADMIN_OVERHEADS and the FRAUD_OVERHEADS. If some people are earning less than the BIG_VALUE then other people are forced to pay for them to live. In all probability the "honest, poor, deprived, victims who are being exploited" will demand that the "horrid, greedy, wealth-hoarding exploiters" (the most productive in our society) should foot the largest percentage of this overhead. This will result in the following: It will directly discourage people from being wealthy and productive because the harder you work the more is taken from you. Better not earn more than TAX_BRACKET_3_CAP or I'll be taking a huge hit. The government organisation will be forcibly taking resources from a group of people in society who are extremely efficient at managing their resources and who are very good at producing valuable goods and services. They will be redistributing those resources to a group of people in society who are extremely inefficient at managing their resources and who don't produce many valuable goods and services. I'm not one for arguing for effect, but I still want to point out how obvious it is, that this will have a net negative effect on the prosperity of the people who are ruled by a government implementing this BIG scheme. Nations are not closed systems (the people within them can interact with or move to other nations). BIG incentivizes the most economically productive people to move to countries (or just transact in them) where there is no BIG scheme so less of their resources are stolen from them. Completely, utterly, obviously, insane. There isn't a face palm gif on the internet that truly expresses how I feel about this and the people that support it.

Implied consent is consent. If the person taking the paper-clip had implied consent then they would have my permission and it wouldn't be stealing. Introducing the concept of implied consent doesn't change my argument in the post above, at all. It is easy for me to imagine a scenario where someone takes a paper-clip of mine and they do not have implied consent.

I think you've largely just repeated yourself without making a case for why someone minding or not minding should affect whether an action is considered theft or not. I think laying out some definitions will clear this up: "Steal": To take the property of another without their permission. "Don't mind": If a person "doesn't mind" that an event has occurred it means they are not emotionally upset by the event and they are largely indifferent to its occurrence. They don't have any particular preference for whether the event occurred or did not occur. If someone takes 1 of my paper clips without my permission then it is theft. If I am indifferent to the act of them taking my paper clip (IE I don't mind that they took it), the following still holds as true: 1. It is still my paper-clip. 2. The other person took my paper-clip without my permission.

As I pointed out: at least some of what you wrote was incorrect. I took the time (and bother) to parse your words and noticed the issue. I asked what one of your sentences meant because it does not make any sense to me. Also: your "more pertinent" question as I pointed out is not pertinent at all and is not even applicable to this reality that we live in. If you are talking about the punishment of negative feelings brought upon by empathy; it would be important for you to acknowledge that a small percentage of people severely lack empathy so would not experience this "punishment" having stolen from someone. If you are suggesting that theft is only bad if the thief feels empathy then that means that it's not bad for psychopaths to steal. UPB does not rely on punishment in order to establish a moral principle. Also: you've dropped the word "deserved" in there. How are you establishing that someone deserves punishment for theft. Obviously you can't refer to your own argument (quoted above) to establish that, as that would be the logical fallacy of: circular reasoning

I thought that at first but realised that someone can steal something from you and you not mind. Think paper-clip! * I own some paper clips. * they are rightfully my property that I paid for. * someone steals a paper-clip from me. * It's worth less than a penny. I don't mind! It's still theft though as they took my property without permission.