FreedomPhilosophy

I was considering making a program about this because most of the alleged achievements of feminism have been via proxy of the state and thus the enforcing classes, i.e. men of violence. That said, I think there is some gold in feminism, but it's the stuff less spoken of.

Pollution isn't inherently aggression, it can violate property rights. The atmosphere is not privately owned and so we see the tragedy of the commons phenomena. However when pollution falls onto my property, which includes my body, then that violates my property rights. Killing people because they pollute seems disproportionate, getting recompense would be the more reasonable response. Historically both heavy industry and railroad industry have been sued for damages caused by smoke. I would expect that if roads were fully privatized, vehicle emissions might be very restrictive, at least in some places.

I get the sense that the people who were cruel to the fat man were more sincere than the ones being kind?

That's over a century of scientific findings, it would be an epic piece of research to include all the data. There some meta analysis around like this one linking reduced fat intakes with lowered cholesterol outcomes http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/25173397?sid=21106139215843&uid=2&uid=3739136&uid=4 There's plenty of clinical data and animal studies, most that data points the same way, and when it does not there's usually a reason.

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Evolution is the best explanation given the available facts, but the set of relevant facts may never be complete. The suggestion that there was a "helping hand" invites more questions than it answers.

I've seen no evidence of this. The founders of veganism were individualists, humanitarian and spiritual and they established veganism because of the absurdity of vegetarianism. The reasons for starting the vegan movement are given below, no mention of Marxism, it's all about the feelz. VIP: What events in your life led you to vegetarianism? What brought you to veganism? DW: As a child seeing animals pushed through doors alongside butchers' shops to be killed. I once saw a cow and a calf enter together. I wondered later which one the butcher killed first. On one occasion I actually watched a cow being killed at an abattoir in a field where local children were free to watch and where they hoped to be given a bladder to use as a football. I also watched a pig being killed when I visited an uncle's farm. I turned vegetarian at the age of fourteen. My conversion to veganism was about eighteen years later when I learned about the biological mechanics of milk production. http://www.vegparadise.com/24carrot610.html As the price of pasture land rises to create a premium, rain forest is felled to create more beef ranches. Supply increases with demand. I suppose if the various governments released the millions of acres of land they had stolen, that could offset the present rate of growth in cattle ranching, but for how long?

This just reminded me of a Mises Inst program describing how the Communist Party of China used to obtain catalogs from Hong Kong because their magical commie committees didn't know how to conjure prices out of thin air. They had decades to abolish money and create their utopian commune, but it all slid back to markets. The Burning Man phenomena reminds me that experiments in societies without capitalism only; happen in exceptional circumstances, are transient or else are in primitive societies. People can go back to the woods, but they will have to forgo medicine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJt47Whs0HM

I think Libertarian Socialism and Anarcho-communism are sophistry. Their ideology is full of vague definitions. What is "ownership", what are the "means of production". I do not think they provide categorical definitions of either, and yet they are foundation to their envisaged society. How is the concept of "just hierarchy" and "unjust hierarchy" applied to the real world? The examples of attempts to establish Anarcho-communism or syndicalism as practical are under irregular conditions, failed, or are in technically primitive societies. I just don't find any of these ideologies compelling and certainly not in the way that private property and capitalism are. It all seems like pseudo intellectualism, Peter Joseph is a prime example.

Relatively free and private banking worked fine for centuries. Purely state run banking systems like in the USSR and China are a mess and corrupt as well. Really no different from cartelized banking as per the Western democracies/ Still, with the likes of Bitcoin, I don't think banks need to be a part of the basic payment system anymore. They could evolve to a more speculative function.

Where existentialism meets love, next Tuesday 10th March 7pm PDT. Register at Eventbrite absolutely free: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/beyond-fantasies-webinar-tickets-15857546348 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl_jfKJM2mA

Why should governments control currency instead of leaving it to the market?

The government must enslave young men otherwise another government might enslave us all. Sounds legit.

Suppose a business own all of a scarce resource?

Wow, these rules feel like unspoken stuff I picked up at school when I was moved from the high achievers class to the underachievers! Staying in line seemed to be the desired outcome.

Exactly what was the bias?

I agree. The political left always blame intervention by "capitalists" for messing up experiments in socialist economics. But then US foreign policy really has been about heavy handed interventions in the South Americas.

John Pilger thinks that the US is manipulating the Saudis to lower oil prices to destabilize Venezuela and Russia. http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/What-is-Inexcusable-is-Venezuelas-Political-independence-20150216-0011.html

I read about the problems with sky-high condom prices recently, although I didn't check the source. With the prevalence of HIV in Venezuela, this is a very serious issue. http://www.medicaldaily.com/public-sexual-health-venezuela-looking-bleak-condoms-birth-control-and-hiv-anti-321078

In Cholesterol Lowering, Moderation Kills Esselstyn CB Jr.: The Am J of Cardiology 1998 November 26; 82(10B): 1T-4T Even if all Americans kept their total cholesterol below 200 mg/dL, as recommended by the American Heart Association, millions would develop coronary artery disease. Strong evidence from a wide variety of sources shows that total serum cholesterol levels must be kept below 150 mg/dL to stem America’s epidemic of coronary artery disease. My own experience with heart disease patients shows that cholesterol levels can be kept below this threshold with a diet low in lipids and cholesterol-lowering medications as needed. This low-lipid therapy stops coronary disease from progressing and even reverses it. Unfortunately, our national health and medical organizations continue to recommend a cholesterol threshold of 200 mg/dL and a diet containing up to 30% fat, despite clear evidence that this threshold is too high to prevent or cure heart disease. It is true that these recommendations have the potential to reduce the incidence of heart disease, but only by a moderate amount. Unfortunately, when it comes to lowering cholesterol, moderation kills. With lower lipid levels, coronary artery disease need never exist. When it does exist, it need never progress. A Plant-based Diet for Advanced Disease In 1985, I embarked on a program to help a group of patients with severe coronary artery disease. Most were debilitated by angina and other symptoms, and their angiograms showed severe stenoses. In some cases, disease was so advanced that standard interventional techniques such as bypass grafts or angioplasty could no longer be offered. These patients (1 woman and 23 men) agreed to adopt a plant-based diet with fats making up less than 10% of calories. They ate no oils, fish, meat or dairy products (except skim milk and non-fat cheese and yogurt). The patients also took cholesterol-lowering medication as necessary to maintain their total serum cholesterol below 150 mg/dL. Social and personal support was crucial for this group to learn about and follow the program, which was called arrest-and-reversal therapy. At enrollment, we discussed the treatment objectives in depth with both the patient and his or her spouse. For the first 5 years, the patients came to the clinic twice each month; visits were once a month during the second 5 years, and quarterly after that. On the evening of each clinic visit during the first year, the patient was telephoned to discuss his or her lipid results, diet, and medications. The patients also met several times a year as a group to discuss the program, share recipes, and socialize. I committed myself to the same diet, and patients reported that this was an additional source of support. No relaxation or structured exercise regimens were included in the program. In my opinion, people have a limited number of lifestyle modification “credits”; if they spend all their credits by trying to change too many aspects of their lifestyle simultaneously, they may “go broke” and fail to change any of them. At 5 Years, Heart Disease was Halted Eighteen patients adhered to the diet and medications, bringing their mean cholesterol level from 237 mg/dL at baseline to 137 mg/dL at 5 years. None experienced any coronary events; in contrast, these 18 had had 29 events in the 8 years before the study. None underwent any interventions. All 11 of those who underwent angiography at 5 years had no additional stenosis, and 8 had regression. One patient died of ventricular arrhythmia just after his 5-year angiogram, but the angiogram showed that the disease had regressed and autopsy found no evidence of myocardial infarction. Six nonadherent patients were released from the study within the first 18 months to return to standard care. Although their baseline levels of disease were similar to those of the adherent patients, these 6 patients suffered 13 new cardiac events after leaving the study. 1. At 12 Years, the Benefits Continue Today, the remaining 17 patients continue to follow the prescribed diet and medication schedules. At 12 years, their mean cholesterol level was 145 mg/dL. They experienced no disease progress or interventions. One left the study briefly but suffered a recurrence of severe angina and returned to the diet and medication after undergoing an elective bypass operation. The rest experienced no coronary events. 2. These results are important because they show that sharply reducing cholesterol levels is safe and that it stops coronary atherosclerosis rather than merely slowing it. Support from Other Research When our arrest-and-reversal study began, strong observational evidence already supported the benefits of low cholesterol levels. For example, 35% of the cases of ischemic heart disease found among the Framingham Heart Study cohort occurred among those with total serum cholesterol levels between 150 and 200 mg/dL. In contrast, few of those with levels below 150 mg/dL developed the disease, and none died of it. 3. Atherosclerosis was already known to develop silently over many years of high-fat diets; autopsy studies of young, healthy men killed in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts found that many already had advanced atherosclerotic lesions. 4,5 More supporting data continued to pour in. For example, coronary artery disease is virtually unknown in populations that subsist primarily on grains, legumes, vegetables, and fruits, such as those in rural China. 6,7 Normal adult cholesterol levels in these populations range from 90 to 150 mg/dL. More than 10 years ago, Blankenhorn and colleagues showed that coronary artery disease can be halted or reversed by lowering lipid levels with medication. 8 More recently, Dean Ornish and other investigators confirmed the benefits of a low-cholesterol diet. Their results showed that patients derived the most benefit if lipids are lowered by diet combined with medical therapy, rather than by diet alone or by modest diet changes combined with medication. 9-11 The AVERT study provides similar supporting evidence. The study showed that aggressive lipid-lowering medication is at least as effective as angioplasty plus standard care. However, the AVERT patients continued to eat a fairly standard diet, and 13% of them continued to experience cardiac events. This suggests that medication alone cannot confer the full benefit of lipid lowering. 12 A recent review of cholesterol-lowering studies showed that the degree of benefit is related directly to how much cholesterol is reduced. 13 Low Cholesterol Addresses the Cause of the Disease figurebCoronary artery bypass grafting, angioplasty, and other coronary interventions are directed at severe coronary stenoses. However, 85% of heart attacks are now known to be cause by rupture of smaller, unstable plaques, many of which are not even visible on angiography. Thus, costly “heroic” interventions do not reduce the risks of new heart attacks, slow disease progression, or even prolong survival for most patients. 14In contrast, lowering levels of total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) prevents coronary disease from starting or progressing. Lowering lipid levels also lowers concentrations of harmful foam cells within plaques and reduces the quantity of proteolytic enzymes. As a result, plaques may shrink, their caps stabilize, and they become much less likely to rupture. America Resists Lowering Fat Despite the strong evidence in favor of reducing both dietary fat and serum cholesterol, Americans continue to increase their consumption of fat. Television and print advertisements aggressively push delicious, colorful, habituating, high-fat food. At our most memorable and emotional events – birthdays, weddings, funerals, and banquets – the food is even richer and more harmful than our everyday fare. Fad diets even promise weight loss and better healthy by increasing our consumption of fats and protein. It is clear that we live in a toxic food environment. Unfortunately, the American Heart Association has failed to show strong leadership on this issue. If the coronary artery disease epidemic is seen as a raging fire, and cholesterol and fats are the fuels, the AHA has merely recommended cutting the flow of fuel. The only tenable solution is to cut off the fuel supply altogether – by reducing cholesterol levels to those proven to prevent and reverse coronary disease.

I don't doubt this.

I speak with Louise Koch as we contrast the claims that the Danes are some of the happiest people in the world with real life experiences. Louise, aka "Fruity Lou", is from Denmark and we struck up a conversation about a meme that makes the connection between the happiness of the Danes and their extensive welfare state. But are things really as good as the propaganda suggests? I had to interview her to find out more and do some research of my own. The research institutions that produce happiness reports are funded by governmental agencies and of course they tell us that government intervention helps to make people happy. To find out more about Louise and her great work visit http://fruitylou.com/ Sources Depression and Antidepressants: A Nordic Perspective http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3854846/ The number of persons with alcohol problems in the Danish population http://sjp.sagepub.com/content/39/2/128 Happiness Research Institute http://www.happinessresearchinstitute.com/

I might be up for this, have a look at my site and see if it aligns... http://newlivingparadigms.com/

A reading of an excerpt on the Labour Theory of Value in Marxism by David L. Prychitko. With the election of Marxian politicians in Greece recently I thought it timely to look at the false theoretical underpinnings of Marxism. Source http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Marxism.html