RandR10

I'm not an economist by training, but from my understanding, QE is a move to buy bonds from private financial institutions in addition to the government bond purchases that the central banks were already doing. It's an effective way of "temporarily" printing new money and using it to buy assets (and keeping interest rates low). They get the funds by electronically creating new dollars that before didn't exist. This in turn causes the money supply to grow. More dollars chasing the same number of assets causes prices to increase and everybody's dollars become worth a little less. QE like the Fed's other bond purchasing programs is sold with the intent to eventually retire the created money as the debt is paid back. People like Peter Schiff question the validity of whether QE could ever be stopped without the government defaulting. I tend to agree with his skepticism. If the government retires those dollars as they're paid back, deflation of the money supply will be occuring, and I believe price deflation will occur as well (we're actually already seeing that in the commodities markets since the Fed began phasing QE out). If that continues to happen, tax receipts will go down. As it sits, the government already needs to keep borrowing to meet its current obligations, and would need to borrow even more just to maintain current levels of spending if deflation were occuring. Considering that they're (the US government that is) on the hook for $100 trillion+ over the coming years due to entitlements in addition to the $18 trillion in debt, they won't be able to handle a reduction in tax revenues any time soon, as that is many multiples of current GDP. So to say the least, they have a huge incentive to keep going, and Europe is now following suit.

Did this end up happening? I live in San Diego and the last meetup here was in February, and since I wasn't on here or that meetup group, I didn't have the opportunity to attend. I would love to meet some fellow philosophers if you're still organizing it.

Is that a cross post from another thread? Maybe you should start a new one if you have an unrelated question.

The alpha/beta designation is just taxonomy, the same as a biologist would use to categorize living creatures or different parts of the brain. I find these types of taxonomic designations to be boring and limited in their usefulness in any real world application. For example, when genomes began to be decoded, biologists found that there were many errors in formerly agreed upon classifications of the interrelationships of organisms. Or when they began to decode how the brain worked, cutting it up into so many neatly compartmentalized sections wasn't actually as useful as they had thought in describing its functionality (not to say that there aren't anatomical differences between different parts of the brain, just that infinitely slicing it into smaller descriptive pieces was sort of silly). In short, I agree. Alpha/Beta/Zeta designations are just quick descriptive shortcuts to describe one aspect of the human personality; dominance/submissiveness. There are some rare individuals who exist almost completely outside of this paradigm because of their rejection of dominant hierarchy as a way of life. I would venture a guess that there are quite a few of those in the FreedomainRadio community.

It's funny, I read her entire post and couldn't find that she said anything. I think that takes true talent. To formulate that many sentences without syntactical or grammatical error, and still say basically nothing. I'm not offended by it though. Just bored.

My biggest pet peeve on the road is the guy who likes to go 10 under in the passing lane. Drives me batty. Here in Southern California, this is the norm. People who just want to cruise around mindlessly, and there are lots of those, like to do so in the lane that is normally used for passing. Drivers who wish to pass these people are forced to pass on the right, which is unsafe due to blind spots, and the far right lane, the one used for merging, is usually the fastest moving in heavy traffic, heightening the danger. The other day the guy slowing up traffic in that lane a few cars ahead of me decided to spike his brakes as well because he missed his turn. I was paying attention to him because my peevedness had been piqued, so I was easily able to stop, and even the fully loaded 1 ton dually flatbed behind me stopped fine (but not without some tire squealing), but someone crashed into the back of him, which is about the worst type of vehicle you can hit due to the risk of decapitation. I continued driving on after that, but I hope no one was injured. Most law enforcement efforts focus on speeding, but these types of drivers are equally as dangerous or maybe more so. This is pretty much another version of the impatient Sunday driver mentioned above by Songbirdo. They're always in a hurry except when it's time to get out of the way of other drivers. I love to drive, but I hate driving in traffic with incompetent people at the wheel. I wish there was train I could ride instead.

Politicians misrepresenting their true belief system? What's that you say?!

I think they'll wait for some new financial crisis to precipitate before the western powers commit to an all out hot war with Russia, if they ever do. It remains to be seen if they'll get their opportunity sooner than later.

I think that purpose might be better served by just having him on the show as a guest. Not that a debate wouldn't be interesting to listen to, but I'm just not sure what they'd be disagreeing on.

@threebots That's messed up. I have a similar story. I had my whole car stolen, which is a felony, and the cops didn't even pay a visit to the scene. I was dirt poor at the time, so I really needed that car, even though it was a POS. I actually found it myself by driving neighboring streets with a rental car the next day. When I called them to say that I'd found it, they said to wait at the scene for an officer. They made me wait there for 4 hours before one showed up. When the cop finally got there he didn't even have the wherewithal to take pictures or check for prints. He just told me to take the car and go home. It would have been easy as pie to just plant a guy there until the morning and wait for the a-hole to open the door and get in. Voila, no more car thievery in that neighborhood. They seemed bothered that they even had to talk to me. I agree with you. Total do-nothing scumbags. Revenue generating cash machines is all they are.

The hand around the neck move was desperation. He thought his number was up. These guys are trained to have their hand on their gun and have it ready to draw in these cases where the suspect is getting mouthy, because he could be armed and dangerous. It's a legitimate concern, but the apprehending officer seriously dropped the ball there and let the situation get out of hand as a result, and his life flashed before his eyes. Being an internal affairs officer familiar with protocol, the suspect's behavior is a little messed up as well. He was probably drunk based on his poor judgement. It's not surprising that this sort of thing happens though. You put two hyper-vigilant guys in a situation at odds with each other that could be remotely construed as threatening and they will both freak. It could be worse though. My brother had a cop draw his weapon and point it at him because he denied speeding in what he thought was a polite tone.

Yeah, I thought this was interesting as well. Who knows, maybe they're buying these companies up to pull the military applications for them and instead make happy anthropomorphic consumer friendly Android brand robots that can only shoot smiles and winks. Seriously though, it's kind of scary if that's not what they're doing.

I don't know how much of a debate there would be. I doubt Stefan has any moral opposition to defending yourself against police who are enforcing unjust laws. I think he would argue that it's a stupid idea though. I think he put it best when he was talking to a girl whose parents worked for the World Bank or some other nefarious statist organization on the call in show. You can't out-evil the evil people. You can't out-violence the state. The whole thing is predicated on its willingness and extremely competent ability to commit violence without regret or remorse. Trying to beat them at their own game at this point in history is just plain suicidal. I think there's a certain amount of self-preservation in mind for him as well. Someone earlier in this thread pointed that out by saying that if you support Cantwell's position you could go to jail for a long time. Similar to the reasons why earlier philosophers didn't go full monty and deny the validity of religious proclamations. If you go around in public telling people to shoot cops, you're going to have a bad time. That is, unless you're a gangster rapper from Compton.

I think a glaring omission from this guy's talk has to do with personal choice. If you don't mind living in a crappy apartment in a not so nice part of town, ride the bus, cook all your own food and shop for your clothes at Walmart, the average wage will not only meet your needs, it will allow you to pack away quite a bit of savings every month while living healthy. People aren't as poor as they think they are in this country. That said, it is very alarming the trend he pointed out. The doubling of worker productivity coupled with stagnating wages and high price inflation in certain items. I know this is probably preaching to the choir, but that's mainly the product of government spending and inflationary monetary policies at the fed.

The exhaust gases aren't nearly as hot as they are upon firing in the combustion chamber itself. The way I understand it is that the injection of the already burned gases into the mixture sullies it up enough to reduce the temperature at which it burns. According to environmentalist dogma it is. I used to believe the case for global warming was iron clad but with recent data I'm very skeptical at this point. In high enough concentrations CO2 (carbon) is toxic though. I couldn't find any data on whether its local concentrations are healthy, which means they probably don't monitor it. The point I was trying to make is that all of this extra effort and expense is to little to no effect compared to the rest of the country, which mostly has relatively lax standards, or at least more reasonable ones.

-Genetic modification via recombinant DNA technology is the most pure way of altering an organism. Researchers that do this know exactly what is being put into the crop, which is usually a single protein. If this protein, which occurs naturally, isn't toxic (no GMOs exist with synthetic proteins, as far as I'm aware), the resultant genetic modification will not be harmful to the consumer. This process has no relationship with natural selection or even artificial selection, which are messy processes that have many side effects. -Most pesticides in modern use are non-toxic to the human body except in extremely large doses that are only seen in laboratory testing. Any of the crops that I know of that generate their own pesticides are engineered with naturally occurring repellents, like the BT toxin that is widely used in organic farming to keep bugs away. The others are resistant to pesticides that kill plants so that it can be sprayed in the fields without killing the main crop. The farmers do not harvest their crops for several weeks after the application of pesticides because doing so sooner would be a waste of the expensive pesticides. Do you have a particular GM crop that you're concerned with that maybe I haven't heard of? -Agreed. The main problem with GMOs is this intellectual property BS. Without the state or the ability to initiate aggression, this would be impossible in most cases.

Yeah, the hilly terrain here makes the haze stick around longer. It was reported in historical records that Native Americans making signal fires was enough to cause smog, so it doesn't take much to get it going. It's not as bad as the Asian cities, but it's pretty bad. I remember I lived right next to a freeway when I first moved here and sometimes I would get short of breath just walking up the hill to my car. I used to be a cross country runner and I was regularly exercising at the time, so that was unusual for me. There are no viable mass transport options here either. I tried riding a bicycle combined with the bus when I first arrived. It took me 4 hours to get from my apartment to downtown to buy a monthly bus ticket. It's 14 minutes by car, if there's no traffic of course. It's about 45 minutes during rush hour. Once I got a car and a job, my daily commute took 45 minutes. I switched to the night shift at the same job to get the bump in pay and the trip took 11 minutes door to door.

Earlier today I was thinking of safety testing for automobiles on the road, or the lack thereof, in the state of California, and that they find immediate personal safety of drivers and pedestrians less important than smog emissions. A quick bit of research on this led me to some interesting findings. I thought it would make a good little truth about video, or at least part of one, so I put together the beginnings of a presentation below: The Truth About California's Smog Pollution Controls -California spends roughly $10 billion annually to reduce smog emissions from motor vehicles per year in the state -Motorists spend another estimated $1 billion annually to have smog emissions testing performed (this does not include necessary repairs to emissions equipment for failed tests). -It is illegal for a motorist to make any modification to the engine emissions equipment, even if said modification will reduce emissions. Any aftermarket parts manufacturer must obtain a California Air Resources Board (CARB) exemption order for each part, costing 10's of thousands of dollars for each application. If any modifications are made or unapproved parts are used, the vehicle will fail the visual portion of the test. -This visual testing makes it prohibitively expensive for aftermarket parts manufacturers to produce auto parts due to the necessity to undergo rigorous testing to qualify, significantly reducing sales in what is a $310 billion industry in the United States, no doubt costing jobs. -This also makes the repairing of older vehicles prohibitively expensive in California, impacting the lowest income earners in the state the most. It drives consumption of new cars and the resultant manufacturing pollution that it causes as well. -These smog tests primarily test for carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions in motor vehicles and must be performed every 2 years. -Automobiles account for only 4% of NOx emissions, while about 75-80% come from agricultural production, of which California is the largest producer. -Despite motor vehicles being a small contributor to this type of pollution, Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) valves are mandated on vehicles in order to reduce NOx emissions. The recirculated exhaust gases reduce the high combustion temperatures that generate NOx during combustion. -Catalytic converters are designed to burn fuel that wasn't burned already in the engine combustion process. Their level of functioning is measured by CO emission. The higher the CO, the poorer the catalytic converter functionality. -In the process of completely burning the fuel, catalytic converters remove particulate matter that is produced from burning gasoline. This particulate matter has actually been shown in some studies to reduce global temperatures and increase rainfall because it seeds cloud cover. -Catalytic converters and EGR valves cause engines to burn less efficiently, causing total fuel consumption and carbon emissions to increase. -Despite the most strict and expensive emissions regulations in the country, California has the worst cumulative air quality of any state in the union. -California is the number 2 carbon emitter in the country next to Texas. -Of the 15 worst polluted cities for Ozone in the country, California claims 10 of those top spots, and the top 5 are in California alone. -California has 8 of the 10 worst cities in the U.S. for particulate pollution (the thing the catalytic converter is supposed to reduce). -Much of this pollution is caused by the government subsidization of roads and the total lack of viable mass transportation options in most cities in the state. Sources: http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/n2o.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Smog_Check_Program My undergraduate concentration was in environmental studies, and I live in California, so some of this info is from what I remember from my research on the subject throughout the years and my experiences having gone through this process a dozen or so times. Please let me know what you guys think. Update: Found some interesting stuff on this in my research. There's a concrete material that will remove as much NOx as 20 years of oppressive policies would if they just built the roads out of it. I imagine it would be less than the $220 billion or so that's been spent in the interim to the same purpose: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100706082058.htm

What SamuelS said^^^ Even if this wasn't a government contract, if low prices are what you get instead of whatever you call efficiency, that's the value that people demand. By redefining efficiency, this argument effectively moves the goal post, but it still doesn't make any sense. If people actually demanded higher quality and were willing to pay more for it, that's what would be provided in the marketplace. Because the provision in the marketplace is for exactly the thing that is demanded, this is still the most efficient outcome.

Hi Guys, I've only recently started participating in the FDR forums after listening to Stefan's podcasts for quite a while, so please forgive me if I'm bringing up an already well travelled topic. I did a quick search and didn't see anything on this specifically though, and I have only heard Stef mention it in passing, so here goes. Recently I've been looking at some of the other forms of anarchism out there and one of the pages I happened upon got me thinking about homesteading. Does anyone have thoughts on how exactly homesteading would work in a free society? I believe it to be an adequate refutation of many arguments against anarcho-capitalism and how hoarding of property could create situations that are systematically coercive, but I'd like to better understand the concept if possible. Any clarification would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. -Rob

Your hesitation is understandable because getting this woman to understand how wrong she is in her neglect would likely take at least several hours of discussion and her simultaneous open-mindedness to your arguments. While your brief intervention won't likely have a lasting effect on the moral action of this woman towards that child, at least you reached out to the child in the moment and made temporary amends. I guess it's concievable that your extreme act of kindness will stimulate her to rethink her whole parenting technique. Regardless, your courage is commendable and it's certain that you had nothing but positive effect on that situation, and that what you did was worth it. Thanks for sharing.