Tyler H

Hi Amos, thanks for sharing. Reminds me a lot of my journey. I don't have much to add to what Spenc said, but I wanted to note my agreement, and I also wanted to express my admiration for the actions you've taken so far to create a better life for yourself and your future children. Bravo my friend!

I thought of this picture I saw recently as I read this. Seems relevant. [coarse language] When dealing with statistics it's easy to forget that what they really are are the summation of individual decisions made by individual people for reasons that are not always easy to discern. Hitler could have never brought to bear the atrocities that took place without a mass of traumatized people either acting in concert or refraining from action altogether.

I also wanted to add that I think genocide is not an accurate description, I would accept eugenics though. If you disagree I'll certainly hear the case. Although, after the earth killing asteroid documentary I watched the other night to scare me into wanting the government to steal more money, I'm not sure I need anything else to keep me up at night, lol.

Yes, when I say government I am talking about the people of which it is constituted. Being under threat of violence doesn't mean you can go around using force against whomever you want. Advocating for any government program violates the agency of every tax payer, not just the ones who support the government and are therefore initiating force against you. It is also stealing from the unborn through national debt, tell me, how are you defending yourself against them? Doing anything through the government is by definition a violation of the NAP because the government imposes edicts involuntarily and through force, or the threat thereof, on the population inside its territory. I'll put aside the moral argument for a moment. I imagine if you're on this board that there aren't too many things you expect the government to do exceptionally well. Why do you want the government to be in charge of protecting us from genocide when just about every task they undertake either fails, or exacerbates the problem? The government in its essence is the idea that the initiation of force is acceptable if enough people say so, so how can you use the idea that it's ok to intitiate force to combat the idea that it's ok to initiate force?

I thought we already addressed it, scarcity and beauty. Yes, in England. However in the equatorial societies food is not as arduous to obtain and shelter less vital. It would also seem to me that the difficulty of providing one's basic necessities in the European societies would lend all the more value to something the few with excess wealth neither had the resources to procure for themselves nor the ability to procure it as cheaply as the Aztecs or Egyptians. Which in turn would make it more valuable to the Aztecs and Egyptians since now they know they can sell ol' pale face some shiny rocks. To answer your earlier question of why the obsession with gold: gold would signify resources in excess of need. If you could have gold it was like storing food that wouldn't rot. It was a way to prevent any excess you could produce from depreciating to nothing in a short period of time.

Love it! I started almost four years ago and I'm just about done! All the best stuff is back there. Definitely interested in the skype chat. A lot, lol. Listen on 1.5x.

But the government is always the first initiator. It's funded by coercion, so advocating for any government program is advocating for the violation of the NAP.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by this?

Hierarchy of needs. Once the basic necessities are taken care of then resources are freed up to satisfy non-survival based desires. They expend the resources in the pursuit of precious metals because they can be reasonably certain they will be able to bring them to market and trade for other goods which would have cost them far more to obtain naturally.

Because the government is NAP violation incarnate.

What solution is that?

Haha, nice! 'Tis a rabbit hole indeed.

Could you clarify what is wrong with this answer? The way I see it any widely perceived value of a stable, fungible medium prior to coercive imposition shows its possible application as a form of money. Whether or not this application materialized under the purview of the state I think is irrelevant to its source of value and efficacy as a medium of exchange. To dismiss it as a source of legitimate value because it was only employed for vanity would be to argue against the subjective theory of value, which I assume you agree with. To say the utilitarian uses for gold were not achievable at that point in time, therefore it has no intrinsic value, I think, is a mistake. We know that value is more than just utility, it represents human desire. People may desire something merely because it is difficult to attain, so they can count themselves among the few that own it or so they can have a trophy of their accomplishments. Add to that the durability and aesthetically pleasing appearance and I think there is a reasonable case to be made for gold's intrinsic value absent violence. Oh!-Almost forgot to mention probably the most important aspect of "shiny things" - they get you laid. It would be seen as a status symbol for resource gathering that would attract fertile women and allow your genes to continue. Perhaps there is an error in my thinking, and if so then I am curious why gold was chosen as the medium of exchange to be given artificial value through violence and not some other medium with aspects more conducive to ruler/state control.

I didn't say that evil could only refer to those atrocities, I merely asked why you left them out. Murder is on that list after all. If evil is synonymous with bad then there is no differentiation between the perpetrator of a genocide and some glutton eating too much cake. I wonder, whom does that serve? If your definition of evil is sin, then you are calling me evil. You're calling all philosophers evil, because any real philosopher following reason and evidence will reject the idea of a deity and that is a sin. If loving the truth, taking pride in achievements, and having fun are as evil as murder, theft, and rape.... well then now who's the real relativist?

The Egyptians used it for jewelry as far back as 5000 BC. Because it was rare and wouldn't corrode it was desired by rulers as a symbol of their power and immortality. I could see how this alone could give gold its value, and combined with its distinguishable and fungible characteristics it makes sense that it would emerge as a favored medium of exchange.

I could be obtuse, but I don't see a definition here.

What is your definition of evil and how does it apply to these things? And why did you not list the outrageous atrocities committed by warlords, governments, and religions (but I repeat myself)?

To me it looks like a tax bill masquerading as a bill to help underprivileged children.

Then they're doing it wrong.

Right. Isn't it the threat of force behind the currency that gives it "value"? I.e. You can avoid negative impositions by forking over a portion of the products of your labor. Even without taxation they force the populace to accept the paper as legal tender, so isn't it the coercion, not the specific function of taxation, that creates the "value"?

I thought I read that 90% of the new money replaces old bills and they print about 350B a year. So even with QE1-x it doesn't seem like enough to outweigh the multi-trillion dollar tax revenue... but I did forget about the interest rates and credit expansions, that could certainly explain it...

Free diva cups.

What do you mean? I thought they used it to pay the interest on the national debt. If they just used it to remove money from the system then wouldn't we have significant deflation?

I hate to break it to you, but the man doesn't give a fascist fart what that piece of paper says.

Take it with a grain of salt, but I would caution you when using this definition. The accepted definition of the political spectrum is not about government control but about egalitarianism and social justice - that's why they stick fascism over on the right (which always perplexed me until I learned this). If you use a different definition without explicitly clarifying it at the start then you'll have a hard time convincing someone that a philosophy right of nazism is a good thing. In my opinion it's best to steer clear of the left/right paradigm when arguing for a stateless society. It's a metric that displays under what circumstances we should point guns at people to realize our agenda. It goes worse government-bad government-worse government and I don't think voluntarists should touch it with a ten foot pole.