Mister Mister

Mises states pretty clearly at the beginning of Human Action, that questions of motivation behind a person's action, are entirely in the realm of psychology. Praxeology and economics rests on the fact that humans act, in order to achieve some imagined ends. Why they desire a particular ends, or choose a particular means, is not of concern to the economist. For example, if people believe rain dances will cause rain, and that in a drought, people will desire rain, they can predict that those people will do a rain dance when there is a drought. Why they believe this, or if their belief is true, is not part of the study of economics.

my feeling is these are all nice thoughts, but it means nothing if they aren't willing to push back against misandry and lies and authortiarian/statist feminists.

What is the market like for Icelandic lessons ? I don't mean to be snarky, just curious. It seems to me that Icelandic is probably quite difficult, and is spoken by a very small percentage of the global population. As a tourist I assume you could get by in English, and I'm guessing immigration policy in Iceland is pretty tight.

Why do we have to show this...why is it not you that has to prove that events are "necessitated"?

LSD is not a cure for anything. However, there is some evidence that, combined with the right environment, it can be very therapeutic, especially in dealing with compulsive behavior such as violence and addiction. For mentally unstable people, and/or in the wrong environment, it can very harmful - Syd Barrett comes to mind. At the moment, it is incredibly illegal, and hard to find. Furthermore, whatever you get a hold of which is called acid could be any number of compounds, some of which, like 2CB, can be very harmful, and even if it is LSD, it's very hard to tell the dosage. So at the moment, the risks outweigh the rewards in my opinion. But I do agree that there is potential to learn a great deal from these kinds of compounds, and it is both tragic and criminal, that the government has prevented exploration in these areas. I also agree that it is inappropriate to include these kind of substances in the same category as "drugs", in the sense that they don't exactly ease anxiety. Most people will tell you that after a "trip", there is not an urge to use the drug again, but rather that there is a lot of new experiences to be processed. People tend to feel refreshed and re-committed to their goals, and under the right circumstances, it can actually help with other addictions such as nicotine, as I mentioned before. But these experiences, in the absence of philosophy, are no different than any other mystical experience, they may give the person a positive feeling about themselves and life in general, that is more sustainable than most drugs, but don't directly lead a person to accept truth and reject falsehood. And because of all the risks I mentioned before, and the inability of mental health professionals to help us with these experiences, for legal reasons, I would strongly disagree that psychedelics are some kind of shortcut to self-knowledge or philosophical truth. Also, what's so bad about a little caffeine?

I'm currently in the same situation in Seattle. Maybe we can share notes. Feel free to PM me

yes I agree. concepts imperfectly refer to reality. just because there is some gray area, doesn't mean you throw out the entire concept. For example, just because there are "egg-laying" mammals like echidna and duck-billed platypus, doesn't mean that the words "mammal" and "bird" don't refer to anything tangible in reality. This reminds me of the radical feminists who point out the extremely rare phenomena of Intersexualism, where a baby's genitalia is not clearly male or female (though most of these individuals DO produce either sperm or ova), and use this as proof that gender is entirely a social construct. also I'm not sure how Siamese twins have any bearing on the abortion issue.

Reminds me of watching monkeys in the city. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq2mykyhl-0

Anarchy means no rulers. In order to have no rulers, you need consistent and objective rules which are easily communicable to everyone in the society. So I think a lot of the prefixes have to do with what are the guiding principles, in absence of a centralized arbitrary authority. For example, anarcho-capitalism says that property rights are the basic rules. Anarcho-communism says democratic ownership of capital is the organizing principle.

The average calorie intake, life expectancy, and many other standards of living went up across the board in the 19th century. This idea that the rich "let people starve", when starvation was regular until the Industrial Revolution is factually incorrect.

I agree that there is a problem here. Though I think there are multiple solutions that a free society/common law might come up with. Historically, men were responsible for taking care of a child if they got a woman pregnant. This was enforced more socially than legally, however. With feminism, women have demanded greater sexual freedom, but often have not always accepted the responsibility that comes with it. They don't want to be chaperoned on dates or shamed for wearing certain clothing, but also blame all men for harassment or assault committed by a small number of men. They want access to birth control, but want others to pay for it. They don't think men should have any say over reproductive rights, but also want legally enforced access to their money. They want men's money to pay for children, but they also want to be able to keep the men away from their children. To me, if you want guaranteed access to child support money from a man, then you should also require his consent to have an abortion. OR, if you don't think he should have consent in the matter of abortion, you don't have rights to child support. Thirdly, as a compromise, men should have rights to what is called Legal Paternal Surrender, a kind of financial abortion, as a corollary to womens' biological abortion rights. That is to say, before the stage of pregnancy where a woman can legally have an abortion, a man can legally terminate both his obligation to care for the child, and his right to be involved in the child's life. Of course this is all ignoring the abortion issue which we should maybe leave aside for now. Women and feminists I have talked to about this, vehemently reject the idea of LPS on the grounds that women would be "forced" to change or restrict their sexual behavior in certain ways...I'm like, "yea, that's the point."

This really hits home for me. My mother does not deal with her own anxiety well, and treated me like a very valuable investment that had to be carefully managed towards the ends she had imagined for me, rather than a person with my own ends unimaginable to her. She thought that if she could just nag me into eventually getting into a good college, I would flourish independently. The fact that I eventually had a meltdown, and attempted to hide my failing grades from her was a total surprise that she probably still doesn't understand or take credit for her part in helping to create. It has recently dawned on me how this constant management towards some idealistic ends is exactly the same mentality as socialist central planning. The fact that she thought she knew what was best for her child and was horribly wrong, hasn't changed her mind in the slightest that she knows what is best for billions of people. I agree this article completely misses the point. It doesn't get to the root of why parents act this way, and is instead likely to just cause more anxiety, that their behavior will create anxiety in the child.

I think the point is, that we shouldn't have standards for people, independent of their behavior and expressed values. The Golden Rule doesn't quite take this into account. The Golden Rule says "don't hit", but obviously it's not that simple: if someone hits you, you can hit back. You are right to point out that just because someone is abusive, doesn't mean you should be abusive back. But you also shouldn't treat abusive people exactly the same as nice people, otherwise, "don't be abusive" is just a nice thought, it doesn't have any consequences, RIGHT?!?! So, on it's own, The Bronze Rule as you call it, is not precise enough. But Stef's greater body of work fleshes it out in greater detail, so that it should be more clear what is meant. There are stories of Jesus and Buddha I believe, taming the wicked hearts of murderers with their kindness and compassion (Jesus reserved his violent outbursts for the horrible crime of lending money at interest). This sounds nice to a lot of people, that we can turn people away from evil by showing them love, nobly turning the other cheek, but in reality it is a dangerous fantasy of chronic abuse victims - it doesn't mean we "sink to their level" necessarily, but also doesn't mean we reward them with our precious time, energy, love, and empathy.

Good question! Poverty is certainly relative - the definition seems to increase every year, in part to justify massive welfare programs I assume. Also the difference between poverty in first and third world countries is very significant - most poor people in America today have at least one car, a phone, internet, air conditioning, and so on. Also, many of them are obese so...make of that what you will. Poverty in the third world is associated with malnourishment, disease, and a whole host of other unimaginably horrible conditions that people in the third world, for the most part, don't experience. As a larger answer to your question, poverty in my opinion is not just a lack of stuff, but often a lack of intellectual and social capital (I like the term "cultural capital" used by Shelby Steele). It is correlated with low IQ, violent or otherwise authoritarian parenting styles, and with cultures that have a certain toxic mentality: collectivist, mystical, anti-intellectual, anti-capitalist, and so on. Often one of the greatest struggles for a person with skills and ambitions, to get out of poverty, is not some vertical institutionalized oppression, but the horizontal attacks of one's peers, who don't want to see one of their own achieve excellence. Or can only tolerate him/her using those skills to benefit the group in some way. The recent call in show "The Black Man's Burden" had a caller in this very situation and was very illuminating.

that's really interesting. I commend you to being open to new facts. I have found that most people, though if you really press them, will admit that they don't understand the science, have a strong bias against any criticism of this subject. I think this is for two main reasons: the "Growth Panic" phenomena, whereby people are uneasy with success, civilization, wealth, and technology, and have an almost religious conviction that it must be fundamentally wrong somehow for people to build stuff, improve our lives, and change the Earth in the process. The other is that I think Academia functions as a kind of Church for the Left, and if academic consensus loses its authority, the Left loses a lot of power. the real challenge you will face in my opinion, is that most people are driven more by economic self-interest than by any dedication to the truth and reason. But at the same time, most people can't admit this. So they may respond instead by trying to make you feel bad.

I have a similar outlook on this topic. It's easy and quite natural to fall into those kinds of generalizations, especially in the absence of self-knowledge and first principles. That kind of rage and viciousness I think, can be a cover for vulnerability. It's easier for many men who know about the facts on this topic to say "all women are evil", than to say "I want to follow my biological imperative, and seek real affection and intimacy with a woman and build a family, but I'm afraid of things going badly". I've also noticed there is a kind of naive glorification of the past amongst a lot of people in the man-o-sphere, similar to that of many conservatives: they look at the past through rosy glasses, thinking that things were better with men in charge, when the fact is that power corrupts both men and women, although the effects look much different. Anyway I could go on, but I commend you on not taking the easy road, and committing to improving yourself. Look forward to hearing how things go.

Thank you so much for sifting through all this information, this topic makes my head swim

I don't think there is inherent wisdom in crowds, not if there is no check against mass irrational delusions. Similarly, a very intelligent person does not always know best, when there is no feedback from the crowds. But I think this example is talking about a free market, in which the desires and resources against the crowds, are in a feedback with the ingenuity and efforts of entrepeneurs, which does yield results with greater "wisdom" than any one person, i.e. a central planner could determine.

I have been assaulted and threatened several times in my life, almost always by young black males. If I have a negative association with people of this demographic, does it mean there is something wrong with me?

thanks for the summary

I'm not sure what he means. Does he mean that he will renegotiate with the debt holders, to compensate only a part of the loan, while saving the currency? I don't know...but yea, seems impossible.

First of all I would point out that the whole article assumes a utilitarian POV, that capitalism has to prove itself to be "good for everyone", which is a nonsense concept. The burden of proof is not on those who advocate capitalism, but on those who wish to initiate force through the State. But, if I'm to play their game, I'll take a quick stab. #1. This is relative. Markets can be relatively free, or relatively controlled. You have to look at the growth and improvement over time, relative to the amount of freedom in the market. #2. Health Insurance in modern America is a terrible example of free markets, as it is a heavily regulated industry. The best example would be something like tech and software, which gets better and cheaper every year, is readily available to the poor, and easy to get in as an entrepreneur. Also, the US is responsible for most of the innovation in the Health sector. All the socialized health care systems in Europe and Canada and other places, use drugs and technologies developed by evil profit-seeking companies in the US #3. Tax cuts as a Republican policy, specifically under Reagan and GW Bush, did not go along with spending cuts. That's not what libertarians advocate at all. Also, there's no mention of debt or unfunded liabilities here. #4. This is a very complex issue, one facet of which is race: Norway is a very homogenous white, high IQ society, which is funny because multicultural liberals have such a hard-on for places like this, along with Finland, Denmark, and Iceland: the whitest places on Earth! But again, this is very confusing. The article concedes that US is actually not a free market, but also presumably all of our problems are to blame on the free market. The fact that we have 10-30 million illegal immigrants subsidized by the government, from 3rd world countries may have something to do with wealth inequality. Also, the Federal Reserve System and Regulatory Capture probably have something to do with it. And yes, in a free market there will be wealth inequality, as there are vast differences in peoples' capacities. But the benefits of capital accumulation and technological innovation accrue to everyone. #5. Wait...weren't they just saying American capitalism is bad, now America is not capitalist??? Also, do any Libertarians argue this point? They're a tiny political minority who has great objections to all kinds of US government policies, from the military to monetary policy to economic regulations etc...so it's a complete strawman to say that the modern US represents libertarianism at all. And don't get me started on Chomsky - he's pretty good on foreign policy, but on domestic/economic issues, he just makes blanket assertions without ever arguing anything. This whole article is either incredibly confused or deliberately manipulative - if you really want to discuss these things, you have to start with basic definitions. Of course they've avoided doing this, because the whole thing is about dismissing your annoying libertarian article with his tired Ayn Randian fantasies...

I'm not sure what the presumption is here...that once rich people have built robots to build things and perform services, the State should take the robots from the rich people and make them build stuff and do things for the poor people who have no jobs because robots took them?

Does he have any analyses of Obama speeches?

Why limit yourself to be persuaded only by reason and evidence?