Armitage

I have difficulties understanding you, because the way you think is something like... Freedom of ownership is the basic moral principle. Self-ownership is derived from ownership. Some systems limit ownership or do not even define ownership, which is a violation of freedom, which is violence, ergo, they're violent systems. I think that may sound appealing, but it's not a natural hierarchy of values. I'd say this is something that Ayn Rand believed, yet her philosophy was not objective at all, it was a rebound from the Communists. It's not freedom, it's anti-Communism. It's about as objective, as Satanists parodying Christian sacraments in order to piss them off. If you recover from the trauma of Communism and from the over-compensation of emphasis on private ownership, you can begin to think on what really matters in life. Does ownership of ore mines and other means of production matter in life? Or is it just another hoop to jump through in order to get what you want? One thing you can't buy in Capitalism is simplicity. To buy anything you have to earn, to produce, to advertise, to compete and in that simplicity is lost. People work all their life, looking forward to the retirement when they'll finally have simplicity, yet then they die from a lack of activity, because they lost the ability to simply know what they really want to do and just do it.

My guess is, the environment keeps people stupid, because it doesn't give enough opportunities to display virtue. Our daily life is so regimented that it is very rare to even have a discussion about anything. It's not like we have any discussion clubs. In TV (Europe) politicians get together for name-calling for the first hour or so, before they get to any serious matters. At work you just work. At home, it's either alone time or family time... The rest what people do is having a mindless fun with friends, they see intellect as a working tool and they put it aside when they get home from work. I think the only way not to be stunted intellectually is to learn English and visit American/global forums, especially disagreeing forums. Agreement is pleasant and productive, but disagreement is exciting and educative. Most people can't handle disagreement in real life, some even can't over the net. "The free minds of the twenty-first century challenge everything that seems self-evident. They like to try on mentally different points of view. They search for their hidden assumptions and delight in bringing them to the surface. They are experts at changing their minds. "There are many people I especially like because they do not share my points of view, I enjoy talking with them when they vigorously defend a position that contradicts mine. I know I learn more when I find people with ideas that challenge mine." Can you guess who is the author of that quote? Hint: the same author as this: "It is recognized that if each individual is to have a maximum of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," there must be opportunities from full privacy to full community participation in all activities. One should be able to choose whatever meets his needs best at the time. All planning is determined by the varied and changing preferences of individuals, not by what someone else thinks is "good for them."

What you describe is a simple trade-off or general economy. Capitalism means that going somewhere gives you a profit thanks to which you can go much further or faster or longer. You get repaid in kind, only more than to cover your expenses. Capitalism is essentially a positive feedback in economy, you try to do something thanks to which you get more of the same, re-invest, rinse, repeat. If that something also gives you pleasure besides what you buy for the money in your free time if you have any, consider yourself privileged. Our body is actually a centrally directed economy that is coordinated by several distinct information networks and circuits (sympathetic and parasympathetic nerve systems, endocrine system, lymphatic system, blood system, that's all probably all). Most of our body is a mindless automaton, on which our mind and will lives and consumes about 20 % of the whole thing's energy and also it has a total and deliberate control over the primary economy (the raw resources of food and water we take in). Our mind may be capitalistic, but mother Evolution evolved our body in a socialistic way Consider that we're centrally designed from mere two haploid cells

6) Gregariousness: Let's find some people who fuck the bullshit too. 7) Honeymoon: Aren't we great? 8) Frustration: Why do these people put up with so much other bullshit? 9) Quest: Let's explain the other bullshit to them. 10) Ethnography: They really have no idea what I'm talking about. 11) Gnoseology: What is the nature of explanation, comprehension and human consciousness? 12) Ostracism: They seem quite a happy little bunch together, secure from crazy people like me. 13) Graduation: That's some wonderful master's thesis material!

For your information, TVP does NOT predict people's preferences. TVP uses empirically recorded people's preferences, just like capitalism. No change there, none at all. What do you mean, you didn't know that? Well, now I'm telling you. I have never claimed predicting people's preferences, your mind filled that in. Do you think that capitalism is the only system that can possibly use people's preferences? Every survey or questionnaire does that. Every traffic counter on a website. TVP does not reject people's preferential information, TVP embraces it with all its digital capacity. We didn't have a conversation, you had a conversation with a straw man of me that you created. So, are you interested in having a real conversation?

NO, there is no violence. Lots of prevention through careful design, but (or because of that) there is no violence in the design. Do you have any idea what the topic is? The topic is something that is a replacement for capitalism and all the currency, trade, market, prices and so on, a whole new economic system, that does not need to have capitalism alongside.And all you're interested in is again your capitalistic stuff, the one we're NOT talking about. Are you interested in how TVP works? If so, then talk about TVP, not about capitalism. Capitalism is not the only possible form of economy. Capitalism is not the only natural law, it is not the only form of freedom. There are other natural laws and kinds of freedom. Do you want to learn about them? Yes, in case there would be some unimaginable obstacle or catastrophe, we can always return to some kind of capitalism as the way of last resort if countless failsafes fail, but that's besides the topic right now. What is TVP about? That is the question.As long as I know more about capitalism than you know about RBE, we're not done. You'd be about to learn a new way to look at economy, freedom, society, the whole world. It is always useful to learn a new way to look at things. We see things accurately only when we look at them from multiple perspectives. I have learned the classical Keynesian economy, the Austrian economy and RBE. Yes, I realize it must be scary for you. There is only one way of life imaginable for you and it is not the topic right now. No wonder you keep returning to it. It's like discussing a life without God with a Christian, who can not imagine a life without God, or can imagine it only in bleakest and most depressive colors. I know that Christians picture atheists as depressed, sad people without a moral backbone or purpose and joy in life. All their joy is God-related, even if not in practice. I assure you, any economic system that would replace capitalism has to be not just equal, but even better in providing the freedoms that you value. It must keep all the good stuff and provide new benefits, or it's not worth of changing. And I assure you, most of things that make our life worth living can not actually be bought for money, they depend on free time, health and basic subsistence, regardless of the economic system. TVP is better for them, because it offers more free time and simplier life style.

Well, so do we agree that ownership and private property is NOT necessary for an integrity of human being? I mean, there are a plenty of people, specially in eastern religions who make a point of renouncing private property and they lose nothing of their humanity. Furthermore, technically, children in families don't own anything as well, they are provided for, they have access to resources and stuff, but they don't have purchase contracts on anything. Do you understand the point, that access is even more primary and important than private property? TVP is a free society where people make sure that all available things are available without currency. So capitalism is not forbidden, it's just not technically possible, not for currency, anyway. In TVP many of us understand the importance of providing stuff for free, thus making currency and exchange obsolete, whether you like it or not. There is no vacuum in that area, there is a global computer network and resource database that serves in place of currency. If you want to do some project, you hook it up to the network and it will provide the supply and demand info for you. No currency necessary. In fact this network would put any currency out of competition, because no currency can compete against a sum of global resources.There is no profit in TVP, because if done right there is no competitive interest between you and any other person. Any benefit is a shared benefit. Trying any separate method of distribution on the side would cut you off from that benefit. There just wouldn't be much things to buy for the currency to bother with it. If you really insist, some currency might theoretically exist, though TVP is all about eliminating the need for currency. Its purpose is not to forbid it, but turn it into worthless papers, as the things we'd buy for it should be strategically mass-produced and available for free. And TVP is not a good system for consumerism of a notorious capitalistic variety of products, because there is no sharp division between producers and consumers. TVP does not make it profitable to produce 30 various kinds of ice cream and 50 kinds of soda. Such production would die off for a lack of interest. People would never invent such things on such a scale by themselves. Business to which nobody has a personal relationship will probably die off. We just got to one important point, that the function of money can be replaced by a global digital network and resource database. Money is not some kind of magical essence, it's a basic way of moving information around. It's an information aggregate, which means a price can mean multiple things. It's limited, which means if you give it away, it's not there to move information.A digital network is not limited, it can carry signals continually. In the current system we have a lot of scarcity, so limitation of money is important, so that people don't take too much. But in TVP scarcity is strategically decreased, so that people are not motivated to take too much. They take what they need at the moment. If done right, people will treat the computer as an extension of their own backpack, so that they'll reach into it when and only when they actually need something, never to stock up on supplies. The system will be seen as their stock.If you can't understand that, you can still be educated. Non-violent education can take many forms. It's not just sitting in class with 30 more people. It can be your own observation and experience. Some things you can't understand just off the bat, you have to go on a journey. Some things I can't explain, if I don't know what concepts do you use in your thinking.

You can not have an axiomatic concept of self-ownership, if it has the word ownership in it, which you just admitted is not axiomatic. I don't use self-ownership, I use integrity or human dignity, which can be philosophically deduced from basic principles. (I'd have to refresh my memory, the proof is a bit lengthty, my old teacher had it on Youtube and it wasn't in English) However, integrity does not necessitate the sacredness of private property. I really get an impression that you're tailoring your definitions on purpose so that they defend the monetary and capitalistic system. When I said capitalism isn't forbidden in TVP, I meant it. Number 2) it is. However, I think you're missing something important. There is a plenty of room for private business in TVP, but it has to be a non-profit business, because there is no currency. What can you buy and sell if there's no money? In TVP you can only share. You can get real rich on a social credit for running the best brewery in the city, but besides that your reward has to be that anywhere you go in the city, it's stocked with the best beer. You do it either for the beer and for the people, or you better don't do anything, because sure as hell you won't be able to do it for money. If you get any money, they'll be just papers. We do not make rules to abolish money and private property, we produce a technical infrastructure that makes them obsolete. If there's free stuff available, people will prefer it, because a) it does not restrict their economical level in other areas b) it does not cost them time to earn the money c) free stuff can be equal or better than anything we have today, because the production is not motivated to decrease quality to increase profit margin. Quite opposite, the production may be motivated to use all the available resources, so that they don't go to waste. d) anyone can join and offer help if they're not satisfied with quality/quantity. There are different rules in TVP, rules like saying "I don't know" when I don't know. AFAIK, there is no physical violence in TVP, except physically restricting people who are themselves physically dangerous.

You base the concept of self-ownership on the concept of ownership. Is ownership the axiom? Can you define it for me? You have to be able to define it, or it's just a word without meaning. I know we've owned stuff so far, but I am deliberately playing dumb to get a definition of ownership, if that is the axiom you mean. (it can't be self-ownership because it already has ownership in it) If you can make one definition, perhaps you can make another definition. Why would you want to work for products and engage in this practice of mutual taking and mutual giving up? People do that out of necessity, because scarcity is great enough to make you act this way. TVP is a systematic elimination of scarcity below this threshold level where people feel the need to trade or to defend ownership rights and codify them.For example, near water springs or waterfalls the rate of water theft is virtually zero. Water theft or water ownership is known only in the desert areas. Free access to resources eliminates both theft, ownership and capitalism. TVP is a systematic elimination of conditions that motivate people into capitalism. Capitalism is impossible if resources are freely accessible above our needs and TVP uses technology to achieve and maintain these conditions. Capitalism is not forbidden, only unnecessary.

Of course we agree on ownership, I just can think about ownership from so many points of view, that you don't recognize it. We agree on ownership in the current socio-economic system. But what I want is a thorough change of the socio-economic system, which mean that the current definition of ownership will not make sense. So you have to be able to define ownership within one system and re-define it within another system. All systems are objective, thus their definitions of ownership are objective as well. But they are not the same.Do you agree that the law, including property law, such as ownership, is derived from socio-economic conditions, such as resource pool, tradition, religion and so on?Or do you rather claim that ownership has been always exactly the same and unchanging principle for all human history?There is no "stopping" or "forbidding" or "taking away" in TVP. It is anarchy, even freer than capitalism, because it is free from the carrot and stick. You get "paid" by default by mass-produced or custom-produced goods and services. If you want some other or some more or improve the existing, you go to work, because you want the product to be available and you'll be motivated to mass-produce it as automatically as possible. If there is a shortage that affects you, you can either go doing something else and keep your free time, or you go and try to learn how can you help with the shortage and solve the problem.You might want to check out this magazine issue, it writes about ownership:http://www.joomag.com/magazine/mag/0710708001379549455?feature=archive

Private property is legally defined as an abstract legal norm, one that creates a duty to all people on Earth to respect the relationship between me and some object. I don't understand how that applies to self-ownership. I understand self-ownership as a philosophical concept of human dignity or integrity, which has nothing to do with property or what we think is our property.Property can be gained and lost, dignity or integrity can't be, it's a deeper, primary principle. So I don't understand why would you derive the greater from the lower. Basic rights can not be given up even voluntarily, property can.I have an impression that anarcho-capitalists are so focused on the economy, that they seek to derive all the other laws and principles from it. But economy itself is derived culturally and from environment.I don't know about the definition of violence. It seems to me that a violation of basic rights is enough of a definition of violence. If someone declares ownership of a continent, is he deprived of it if other people land on the continent and colonize it? What about a planet? Do we somehow extend our personhood on the things we declare as our own?If private property did not play such a great economic role and if our economy wasn't so vital part of our lives, such a thought would never enter our minds. For example, during most of our history, at least 90 % of people were farmers. Ownership of land was such a great aspect of the medieval culture that land was supreme, people belonged to the land as serfs, a noble would first buy land and the serfs would come as part of the package. Today farmers are only about 5 % of the modern technological society and ownership of land is not seen as a big deal. Each socio-economic system creates its own property laws, even though human needs and physiology remain largely the same.Our socio-economic system is very archaic, so is our environment and so by necessity are our laws and legal definitions, which are derived from it. A change of environment and socio-economic system by necessity requires a re-definition of the way we understand the human.What we actually are trying to do by employment, work and purchasing is gaining access to the use of objects. TVP seeks to eliminate unnecessary owhership and work towards it by the existence of access centers. What we today call ownership may be seen as a semi-permanent form of access. This arrangement would provide services at much lower consumption rate of resources, thus providing a higher living standard for everyone, using such methods as a strategic design for maximum durability, modding and recyclability of objects.

No, I don't speak of subjective definitions either. The thing I disagree with is deriving basic rights from current socio-economical arrangement. What you mean by a change of the current system (less or none government intrusions) is merely a cosmetic change by my standards, leaving most of the problems untouched. TVP is much more radical than that, the redefining goes much deeper.For example, ownership is not a basic principle. It is a legal fiction and in my Law studies I have dealt with multiple ownership definitions.TVP does not provide ownership, it provides access. Access is even better than ownership, because ownership means you also have to care for the thing, protect it, repair it, recycle it and most of the time it is sitting around idly, which is a waste of resources that makes us all poorer. So if you'd argue that ownership is a basic right or some kind of axiom, I'd disagree, access to resources, goods and services is a basic right, even more basic than ownership. We create ownership artificially by access to nature. Nevermind, I think it is much more efficient to remove any root causes of motivations that create such marketing, than to create mechanisms to counter it. We should take charge of our environment and design it, so that our families are not the only islands of safety and good manners. Why should our parental efforts go against the environment? Why can't we design our environment that it supports our parenting efforts? Why do we have to prepare our children to face all the vendors and ads, religious sects and homeless drunks, sweets, drugs and junk food, and especially, all this badly designed city traffic, going about the business?Most of socially pathological phenomena have to do with poverty, commercialism and the self-propagating cultural memes. Lack of education and the need for money on every step messes people up and it messes up our environment as well. We know how a proper living should look like. We don't need the market to figure that out every day. Well, the question is, what education can we have in order to earn money? In TVP this is quite unnecessary, but in any kind of Capitalism... What do you think about technological unemployment? Automation destroys jobs. The most popular jobs are the jobs that destroy human jobs. They throw blue collars and some white collars out of economy. The economy itself gets so fast, that schools can not keep tracks of what should they educate for. Most employers today seek college degrees as fetishes, we actually learn the job at work.In TVP we don't have this problem, we can learn anything we want, because we do not need to earn money in order to have access to economy. TVP does not have a work for reward mechanism like money, thus people are motivated to do only what they are motivated to do intrinsically or for something they care about, such as the community. What if profit motivates people to distort the market, weaken the competition and ensure future profit? C'mon, this one is a no-brainer. Violence is out of the question. We have to educate people. If we can't do this non-violently, we have no right to educate. However, be aware that social processes are mass and no social change ever happened with 100% consensus. If 100 % consensus was required, nothing would ever change.Basically, I believe in ethics, but I also believe in environment. The current environment is a hand-down from primordial ages and it was designed by very unethical people and mindless forces of nature. Therefore, it is not an ethical or ethics-friendly environment. If we want to be truly ethical, we have to re-shape our environment. The way our cities are built, cars are designed, economic and governing systems established, it is not ethical, it is all dangerous and affecting us in an undesirable way. Of course, nature does not obey ethics, it obeys technology. However, people are a part of nature as well and in a purposefully designed environment where ethical acts are the natural thing to do, we become naturally more ethical. Basically, I believe in the same ethics, but I require to use its principles in technical engineering of the environment. Yep, I'm an anarchist as well and nobody I'd know of is forcing anyone. Forceful revolutions create a group of people who used their force successfully and will use it again to maintain power.One of problems that many Zeitgeister have with capitalism, is that capitalism uses natural forces to force them into capitalism. Work or perish, basically. There is no unconditional basic income or living standard. And today, when the technological unemployment kicks in, there's no help.Yeah, capitalism is compatible with many kinds of systems, but it is NOT compatible with RBE or TVP. Why? Because TVP presents an alternate mechanism of resource distribution, that is NOT money. It works almost the same way as money, but it is not money. It is completely and decidedly opposed to money for many reasons.Obviously, we can't have two radically different socio-economical orders existing on top of each other, if only for legal reasons, like keeping track of ownership. TVP does not use laws either, it uses technical solutions where legal disputes might arise. Laws are a sign of badly designed environment.

I am interested in issues and concepts which I know how to talk about to a Zeitgeister, but not to you. First we have to establish communication protocols. I have noticed a big problem. I can feel xenophobia when exposed to certain types of arguments from an anarcho-capitalist. And I believe I have seen signs of xenophobia as a response to me on this forum. I am trying to pin down what causes xenophobia, so that we can avoid it. I'm not yet sure how, except it has also nothing to do with ethics. We are probably ethically on the same level. I caught myself doing exactly the same mistake that I accused others and you doing. I think I saw some flaws or blank places in your arguments or definitions and my mind paranoidly tried to fill in the worst possible interpretations and possibilities, even though I had no reason for that. Most probably our blank places are truly blank, there are things we have never really thought of. For example, I have never thought of equating a whole person to a single cell in an organism, except in a very narrow and particular aspect and context of a private analogy to understand something better. And I won't even tell you what my paranoia tried to accuse you of.It's really quite unsettling, this trick that my brain played on me. I don't like this and I'll watch myself. Have you noticed it too?Let's say that within the current system I pretty much agree on things like freedom, ethics, self-ownership and so on. The problem is, I think we can have an even better system, with healthier life style with more leisure time and room for creativity. The problem is, all the current ethical values which we both admire are defined in relation to existing institutions - government, law, human labor, division of labor and so on. The new system which we can achieve will not have most of these things, so we must develop a new, more general way to define ethics, liberty, self-ownership, ownership and so on, perhaps we will need some entirely new or unmanifested rules and rights.(hence I object to your use of the word "principles", they are clearly not principal, they're derived from the current socio-economic institutions) Is that a circular definition? Or is it just not important how do we choose a goal? I'd think that is extremely important. Is what we want the factor that all economy should go around? In that case I am worried, because desire can be easily manipulated. People could control economy by social means such as neurological marketing, as it is done today. Yes, the choice must be ours. But it absolutely must be an educated choice, or no choice at all. We need to be educated to know when to say "I don't know." If people had this rule, that saying "I don't know" is a noble thing, we'd save so much trouble. For example, nobody would create any new religions. And when we admit "I don't know," then we say "Let's go look it up on the net." That's just as important. I am all for freedom and choice, but at the same time I affirm, ignorance is not freedom. An ignorant choice is not a free choice. I know that most of things I would do, I'd necessarily do ignorantly. There are only two good reasons for an ignorant choice, either consequences of inaction would be worse, or we're doing it on purpose, keeping notes as a scientific experiment. As I said, people need to be educated to do that. And yes, this education must be non-violent. If we can't educate people non-violently, then we've got no right to educate. When it comes to education, I do not mean school classes 30 kids within, of the same age and 1 bored teacher. Not at all. I wouldn't consider that non-violent. But the main point is, saying "I don't know" allows us to listen to someone, who has a better education and experience in that area and grant him our confidence in that matter for a moment. Of course, we may also learn something in the process.That's how we choose our goals. We already do that today, we don't repair our teeth, don't do surgery on our own organs and sometimes not even our plumbing, cars and computers,we call an expert. We don't design our bridges and that is probably a good thing, if I designed a bridge, that would be a big disaster. Of course it is also dangerous today. There are motivations of self-interest that may cause people to pretend they are experts on something while they are not. So this is explicitly a rule from The Venus Project, where I know of no such motivations, it's a very different environment. Sounds good to me, this actually reminds me of the philosophical concept of "human dignity" from one lecture, which I would personally call "integrity". So this is a principle, I'd say. I agree with this non-initiation of violence. However, this is an important thing and I don't think it is defined broadly enough to cover all dangers that we need to watch out for.Firstly, I wonder why do you place such an emphasis on damage coming from other people, when the damage coming from natural forces and processes is potentially much more dangerous. People are bound by social norms, but hunger, thirst, diseases and winter are not. this is why primordial people preferred the company of a tribe to company of hungry cave lions, even if there might be some violence and pecking order within the tribe. So if I'd propose something as ambitious as a new socio-economic system, I'd try to do it more thoroughly, firstly securing people from the natural dangers. I think that natural dangers may motivate people to commit violence against other people. Not just that a hungry person may steal, but businessmen may try to lower wages in winter, if the cold makes less likely that the workers would leave. (just a simple example) The workers would of course be unhappy against this and this would lead to stress, alcohol consumption and even direct acts of violence. This is similar to what many Zeitgeisters call "structural violence". Some anarcho-capitalists don't approve of this term, but I have heard Stefan talk in a very socially aware way and I believe he de facto understands structural violence very well and its effects too.Secondly, does any definition say on what to do to solve, prevent or punish the initiation of violence? Trust me, I have listened to many a talk on this topic by Stefan and I have had my lessons of Austrian economy and Coase theorem. However, settling things via monetary means and arbiter agencies exchanging lawsuits and contracts seems just bizarre to me. I could oppose this on many grounds, even aesthetic. Sure it is better than locking people up, but it sounds so... much like petty squabbles. Also, the idea of solving everything through money and fines seems as sinister to me as submitting to the judgement of one large almost self-aware computer would be to you.As I said, it's better than state prisons, but after I had understood The Venus Project, I can be satisfied with nothing less. Shortly said, TVP works with a design of environment in such a way, that a rational human action is preserved as in Capitalism, but some kinds of actions just don't make sense. For example when you're on a cruise at an ocean liner, the suppliers have data and methods on supplying the ship x days x passenger numbers, so that they are able to provide regular tables full of food. Passengers eat when they want and on such an ocean liner stealing food and stashing it in a cabin would be seen as completely irrational and practically would not occur. Technically, the act of food theft would cease to exist, it would not be legally classifiable. This is what I see as elegant.It seems to me that anarcho-capitalism is more of a bottoms-up approach to society, while TVP is, I don't want to brag, but it is both top-down and bottoms-up, it is basically fractal, each part is related to the whole and one change may affect the whole society at once. TVP is a very changeable system.The tricky thing to understand is, that TVP is very liberty-based, thus bottoms-up like ancap, but it is always an educated, scientific liberty. Science is there to resolve disputes, not money. I admire money as a great natural force, but I am also wary of them because of their dangers and side effects. For example, money are like government, in the sense that they do not produce goods and services, money are a passive, inert thing. Government does not produce anything, it steals by taxes. And even when the government prints money, it does not make us richer. But when scientists encounter a problem of shortage and use science to develop a substitute or a more streamlined solution, the whole planet is richer, the whole planet can replicate the process and provide more goods and services. Thus you can understand TVP as educated anarchism, I think that definition has a great deal to it.

Yes, you're right about logic. It is a basis of all reason and discussion. If we don't think logically, there's no way we can communicate at all.My problem is not with logic itself, but what gets used as an input and output of logical arguments. Logic is a function, which means, its output is totally input-dependent. It is like a gun, it doesn't say who should be shot. Who will be shot, that depends on who holds the gun.Your description of human action coincides with Max Weber's concept of instrumental rationality. Weber is known for his studies on Capitalism and individualistic model of society. As leftist and collectivist as sociologists are, even most Germans, he was quite an exception together with Simmel.As you see from the name, instrumental rationality is an instrument. It chooses the most rational way towards an end. But what is this end, how do we choose it? How do we know there are any other, better ends? There has been much criticism of instrumental rationality, especially from the side of Frankfurt school, with which I sympathize.Logic is input-dependent, or more precisely, logic makes sure that the output is input-dependent. Which means we can choose an end goal as an output and then we can use reasoning to choose the best scenario, the "best" defined as leading most probably to our chosen output.So my problem is not really with human action, but what goes on before and after, the action choosing of one's ends. Over the course of history, people chose both good, evil, harmless and mediocre ends and pursued them with greatest rationality and efficiency.I agree with you on the instrumental rationality, especially about its effectiveness, but I wonder about the choice or motivation that steers it. As far as I know Mises, he seems to take an approach that anything goes, as long as it's non-violent. Non-violence is a good beginning, but it seems too much open-ended. A negative statement isn't a positive answer. How do we choose a goal?

That's not the conversation you were having. Do you think I meant that "brain cell is an absolutely perfect model of a human being and we don't actually need to consider real human beings"? If that's what you think, then we really can't have conversation, because you don't grant me a shred of intelligence, good will and benefit of doubt. I use many models to understand an aspect of reality, not a whole reality as such, no model can do that. But sometimes just an aspect will do. I use various models for various aspects. I think you're unsettled by my usage of models, because you have no idea which aspect of model or reality I mean, you think I reduce all reality to a model, which is not true. What is unsettling to me, is that you pick the most disturbing interpretation possible. If what you see sounds stupid, the thing we usually do is asking if we understood it right. But "human action", that is a good thing to start. How would you defined it for me? I know Ludwig von Mises wrote Human Action, should I look at any chapters or will you define the concept for me, precisely as you understand it? Alternatively, can you tell me why would be the work of a 20th century Capitalist economist relevant for a system of 21st century? I'd rather prefer behavioral psychology that studies human action directly, not through the Capitalistic instruments.

I understand that, I just don't think that is a reason enough to give up! OK, people respond to supply with demand. Wonderful. So what kind of supply produces what kind of demand? Can demand be manipulated with supply? I'd look at it a different way. What if human needs remain always the same, only abstract? And we seek concrete fulfillment of abstract needs in external objects and we can be fooled into believing that something will fulfill these needs. These needs met are pseudo-satisfiers, they satisfy only for a while and then we feel the need again, for something else, something same, whatever. Much of these preferences are caused by advertising that is designed by brain measurements to cause the greatest neurological response. Even that is OK by capitalistic theory, Economy 101 does not distinguish between a natural and brain-hacked preference... What if we don't need infinite resources, just a better philosophy? The Venus Project does not use the preferences theory of Austrian school. Here, have a look at these links. You are actually entering a discussion that has been going for a while. And Brandy Hume already addressed some of these arguments. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_human_needs I'm sorry for using disturbing metaphors, people in TZM are distinguished by having very vivid imagination. A brain cell is to be compared to let's say a muscle cell, not to a person. For the purpose of model, that comparison is close enough. If that reassures you, each brain cell is unique and has literally thousands of preferences (synapses). I have a method which allows people to understand and solve human problems. This method is based on learning a new "language" of how to think about economy. I learned three, the Economy 101 and the Austrian school economy, and then RBE. Each is a different way to think and by their comparison I learned a lot. The words are still English, but the meanings under these words are different than an anarcho-capitalist means when using the word. This language opens a new way to think, to see old problems in a new light, by capturing meanings that your current language can not capture. If you have ever done translation jobs, then you know that some foreign words just don't have an exact equivalent in English. It's just like that with Stefan and TZM, they both speak English, but the set of goalposts behind their speech is different. So for now I just say we need to work out communication protocols. I need to know what counts as an argument in your book or what do you mean by the words you use. But first I'd like you to tell me what do you think about the Brandy Hume's video. Maybe you'll derive from the context and from the Wikipedia page what does she really mean when she says this or that. Try not to assume she means the same thing that you hear. Especially if you don't like what she says, try to imagine the very best and wisest thing she might possibly really mean by the words she uses. Take it as an exercise

I must completely disagree with most things you say in this video and I have legitimate reasons for that. You clearly know Capitalism very well, that's why you take such effort to explain it, but that's not the thing that's wrong with people who disagree with you. Their understand your point very well, the problem is, you don't understand their point at all. That is because they have a whole different set of goalposts which you don't know about, because they didn't bother to tell you. Why? Because as American founding fathers, "we hold these truths to be self-evident." If you have defined scarcity as ever-present and abundance, its opposite, as infinite resources, then obviously there is no way we can have abundance. But is that a honest argument? Who right in their mind would argue there are infinite resources on Earth? No, what the Zeitgeisters mean is rather that human needs are not infinite and so all we need is finite, yet sustainably recyclable resources. We may of course expand the economy, but not infinitely. Who said that human needs are infinite? Was it some psychologist or neurologist? Show me his name, credentials and peer-review! That is sure a big claim to make. I already addressed the Economy 101 thing, it's not necessary to repeat. But all I see in Capitalism, I see a system that has some vital functions, like spreading information (to coordinate the economy) and you think that is the only way a system can work. However, I see many working systems around. One such system is a human body, it's an integrated system and it does not compete with itself. The intestine does not compete with stomach, it does not seek for better competing providers of food. The blood is a network that provides resources freely and all the cells are programmed to take only as much resources as they need or release them when they get a signal. There is a central computer which controls all the body directly and through a set of endocrine glands that secrete hormones and so on. All the organs are pretty much automatic, there is only one general purpose organ in human body and that is the brain. The brain cells are a nice metaphor for people in RBE, they do not sow, do not reap, and yet they live and have this wonderful conversation right now. So I'd say Capitalism is not the only possible, viable and efficient system and if we try to mimic the nature and its design of organisms, we may come up with a whole better design than Capitalism and still have free will, freedom and so on. If you want some argument from the video addressed specifically, just tell me. I disagree with them nearly all, so I don't know which one do you want to talk about the most.

I listened to the show again, to get to the final part, there's some good stuff on family, parenting and parents which I think I'll need soon Thanks Stef, that's gonna be useful. Very, very useful. I think my dad wants to play some power games and I'll see what some honesty and responsibility will do with him. That being said, when the lady which mentioned RBE called, I facepalmed much again, but nonetheless I got some insights out of it. Stef said, that Zeitgeisters are shifting the goal posts. I think that is a very important point. Language is a set of goal posts, so is ideology... All that Stef is doing is putting the goal posts in such places that will help people see some things that they couldn't see before, because they didn't see them as legitimate or possible questions. That's what he does with his philosophy, he names things by their true names and thus makes them impossible to avoid. Great job, Stef! I wonder if I can borrow that ability like that Sylar guy from heroes, I think that will involve a minute with me and you and your brain... Well, nevermind, I meant, Zeitgeisters don't do anything different. They just have a whole different set of goalposts which they use to capture an aspect of reality which they're not happy about, so that they can do something about it. Only it feels bad when you try to talk to them and discover just how many words do they mean differently and then you think they're shifting goalposts. OK, another thing, Stef commented on me and apparently, he thought that I was attacking him or trying to make him insecure. I mean, WTF? Stef was most definitely making the shit insecure out of me and I didn't accuse him of anything. I'm no Christian, but the biblical passage about having a plank in one's eye, how do you pull it out? The Bible doesn't say how. But if I try to tell that to Stefan, he thinks I'm attacking him? I mean, does that sound secure to you? Does that resemble someone who has his inner game figured out? Why didn't he say, "Well, what makes you think that? Is there something I missed?" I mean, I care about Stef, I really do, as much as you can care for someone who you do allow to talk, yammer and rant into your ears for hours and hours and hours and who you agree with on almost everything. If it was your mom on the phone, you'd hung up on her long ago. And that talk about algorithm, I mean, if someone's still reading this, what algorithm does market use? Write it for me, be that kind. Because if a market can have an algorithm, then so can RBE. If a market does not have an algorithm, then why do you assume that RBE has to have one? And please, those who have claimed that not you all here are Stefan's obedient followers are free to come and answer some of these questions. Because from where I stand, I see quite a well-connected hive mind, everyone so disciplined to avoid the questions or leave a negative rep at most.

Nobody is right-brained or left-brained, science says the parts of brain we use are all over...yadda yadda yadda... Libation to science paid, I think anarchists are terribly left-brained, if you know what I mean, extremely so. Because we're here on the net, typing stuff, instead of having "fun" out there, getting drunk, laid, sore of sports and talking about nonsense, getting our joy from the verbal tennis of small talk. That being said, the result was 50/50.

By the way, I have gone past the point where I see the negative rep points as something negative, they're more of an evidence that someone bothered to read something that doesn't validate their worldview as all believers do since the beginning of history.

http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_2545_Sunday_Show_1_Dec_2013.mp3 I think you can hear me around 40 minutes. But it's just painful to hear, my English pronunciation is really very rusty and it always takes a few days of English practice to speak as smoothly as I write. And I was extremely nervous, of course. Here I deal with two Stefan's misconceptions, one that RBE is just another market scheme that can be just implemented on top of current economy (it's not market! Just as anarchism is not a government!), and secondly, that there are children and adults and adults absolutely must have rights and duties and children don't have rights and duties. As I said, that is not a necessary combination. We are all children in some aspects. Even a professor of something may be absolutely incompetent in most other things, while a child may be more competent in them. And there is no reason why basic rights (which system is meant to provide) should be dependent on one's seniority or competence. And there is no reason why any system should provide elaborate market of rights and privileges for sale while not guaranteeing the basic ones. And here I deal with Stefan's misunderstanding on a role of internal economy of a company or family, that is in fact resource-based, not monetary. RBE sees no distinction between mechanics and economy. Mechanics needs an information what goes where. Outside of the company this coordinating information is provided by prices, but this is a very inefficient system. This is why no company actually uses it inside. Here I show how would it look like if a company used the market system internally. Market system does not resolve a simple mechanical question of warehouse logistics, what to put where. We use other modes of communication for that. The basic irony of this comic strip is, that a price tag on a shelf helps you with deciding which shelf to buy, so that resolves the question of where to put the stuff, but once you own them, the price tags do not concern you anymore, so there is no market way to allocate things. You have to use warehouse logistics, which you could use to begin with and don't bother with this nonsense. The price system is still there, but only because that a company is connected and dependent on the market system and price information in it. But nobody is so silly as to have a market in their own warehouse. Except Korean companies in Europe, they get tax breaks and they find it profitable to outsource everything on 3 or 4 levels.

What this guy describes is a big straw man argument, based on not understanding RBE at all. He assumes that without money, there is no motivation, coordination, communication, infrastructure either... A common problem. He has the functions that money do so much associated with money, that he can not imagine them implemented by any other mechanism than green rectangular papers with numbers and dead presidents on them. His argument against the new system is... sociopaths might hack it! Well, when did we ever allow sociopaths stand in the way of development? Never, We actually put them in charge of our financial and political institutions. I don't think it can get any worse than that. He uses professional companies as argument against open-source, not realizing that today open-source sucks because the companies employ the best programmers. Do the dead president papers create professionals?

What is the actual meaning of the word "Jihad"? One I have heard was reputedly, that it meant something like quest, effort or endeavor. There were supposed to be many kinds of jihad, a jihad to get out of poverty, a jihad to get to a university, a jihad to find a better job... The holy Jihad of killing some people was just one kind of Jihad. And for a Jihad it was necessary to have a mother's permission. I kid you not, that's what people claimed to me. So obviously if mothers are oppressed by the USA, they give permission to their sons to go and blow themselves up. I know it's simplistic, it sounds too good to be true and maybe it's not true anymore, not under these Wahabist rich Saudi Arabians. But was there ever anything about it?

Thanks! I studied Law & Economy with a Libertarian schoolmaster and it seemed to me he skipped this point of view. I just see it as inconsistent, we draw this line between humans and nature, on one side there is a "natural law" and ownership and on the other side there is just nature to take from, no laws until people come along and claim it. Yet we are affected by natural ecosystem dynamics regardless of such arbitrary lines. We are like passengers on a big spaceship, hacking away at the life support systems. Only this spaceship does not travel in space, it travels in time into the future, 60 minutes per hour. I'll have to listen to the video too. This reminds me of Hegel's dialectics. I don't read Hegel, but what he basically said, the history has a way of repeating itself in 3-fold cycles, thesis, antithesis and synthesis. I'd interpret it that thesis is some tendency, let's say it's a simple primitive existence. Then comes antithesis, which is exact opposite, an extremely sophisticated hi-tech civilization with elaborate culture. And then this civilization fails and along comes synthesis. Synthesis is a repeating of the thesis, but on a whole different level, which has also integrated the best of what antithesis achieved. Which would be in my interpretation the technology itself, that allows us to utilize these amazing graphene sheets. We may have a really simple life style ahead of us, a life where simplicity is as valued as wealth is today, where material possessions are seen as hindrance. In that goal, technology and miniaturization will be our greatest ally. We will again live as a great tribe, but this time micro-electronics and global network will help to be parts of a global village. Our riches will be in "heaven", where nobody may steal them, because they're open-source. Primitive means "similar to ancestors" but that does not mean we have to be exactly like ancestors One of things I like about The Venus Project is, that it lets people live inside relatively small and compact cities, connected by high-speed traffic, maglev capsules on stilts, quiet and solar-powered. And all the space between circular cities is a free range wilderness. A park where nature may grow, but which people can also modify and restore the ecology where the old cities once stood.

As for OP, you've got a point. Capitalists who are most proud of making things on their own and living off their own work and property... depend on getting all freebie from the nature. When I point that out, they respond, that Earth is not a person, Earth has no ownership. I think that's a pretty lame argument, it's legalism. America was stolen from the Indians and then Americans made valid laws against stealing American resources. Laws are made and there is nothing wrong about making laws for Earth. If people believe laws exist naturally and only for homo sapiens, then returning America to native Americans is the only logical thing. And Bolivia already defined Earth as a legal person with rights. OK, taking things from nature may be a hard work. But if something is a hard work, that doesn't mean it's legal or good! If stealing something was difficult, does that mean I can keep it? What does it matter? It matters, because capitalists who steal property from Earth then claim ownership on this property and sell it to other people as if it was theirs. That's just unfair. If Earth was a real person, how could we trade with her? We could borrow some million barrels of oil, but how would we pay them back, with a fair interest? We have nowhere else to get barrels of oil and Earth doesn't accept our money. Which are made of Earth's materials again. And if we are really supposed to live off our own labor, then why don't people reject heritages from rich dying relatives? Why don't children usually pay back the costs of their own upbringing? Why is charity seen as a normal, humane thing? Are we really more social and non-profit species than we thought? So is there any honorable way to get out of this? Well, first thing we have to realize, is that we are all parasites on Earth and often on each other. Parasitism and freeloading is natural. So if they are inevitable, we may as well get good at it. We may become the best behaved parasites, take as little as possible, live as sustainably as possible. And we should not place any exclusive claim on Earth's resources. All the resources must be declared a common human heritage, we can not place an exclusive ownership on them. They must all serve the whole human race, or we'll end up back in capitalism. Well, but if you know the history of economy, resources alone are useless, they must be traded and exchanged somehow, globally if possible. The only way to do that is either a monetary system, or a resource-based economy. Living primitively is perhaps sustainable in some areas like tropical islands, but even there people used to commit suicide out of toothache. Not speaking of plagues. In some areas climate is so harsh, that we need advanced technology to make them livable. We've become one hell of a big humanity and the only way to increase the carrying capacity on square kilometer is through technology. Technology is not good or bad, it's people who use it. Technology caused a lot of natural devastation, but that's because it was a primitive technology. Brown coal power-plants are just terrible, even worse than nuclear. And the so-called ecological solar panels contain some very poisonous rare earth elements, which wash out and the panels have a rather short lived time. I believe a better technology and more technology is the key. If you watch the latest developments, there is a lot of development of super-advanced stuff out of the simplest and cleanest materials - like carbon sheets of graphene. This wondrous material is not poisonous, it's common as graphite and it can supply the modern civilization. Computers out of silicene or stannene sheets may get much more ecologic than they are today. And look what graphene can do, that's absolutely amazing: http://www.ted.com/talks/justin_hall_tipping_freeing_energy_from_the_grid.html (and the night vision is pretty cool, he he) You're right about primitivism, in the sense that we need a much simpler civilization and life style. We need a culture that will allow us to live happily without Hollywood, McDonald, U.S. Army, Monsanto and so on. We do not really need these companies and their products. I vehemently disagree with market fundamentalism who say everything we are offered is a free choice and that without them we would not be happy. I believe in Socrates or Aristotle or some guy like that, who believed that happiness is in virtue. And what is better for virtue than internet? I come from a farm house in a village and I assure you, the farmwork and housework are just dull stupid activities, that make us no more intelligent, virtuous and happier. Unless of course you listen to some Stefan Molyneux or Jacque Fresco podcasts while you rake the hay or cut the wood. And I also believe in super-efficient atom sheet processors that consume so little energy, that they allow to live a modern digital life without huge power plants - so that it looks like we're all natural, while our clothes and houses are swarming with electronics.