12StringSamurai

Thank you so much! I really appreciate that! I'm working really hard to help spread this kind of information. I hope I see you in the comment section!

What is the "mainstream media," anyway? How did a nation with freedom of the press enshrined in its founding documents end up with bootlicking, establishment toadies for journalists? After months of research, I created a free documentary that explains the unsettling history of "professional journalism." Let me know what you think! Trailer Full doc You may also enjoy my hilarious, comprehensive and fully sourced stumping of Barack Obama.

Check out my new song parody, John Lennon's Imagine, reimagined for Anarcho-Capitalists. You may also enjoy watching me stump John Oliver and Van Jones, if you're into that kind of thing. I guess I'm kind of like Jon Stewart crossed with Weird Al.

That's a fine idea, that would be handy for those of us who like to dig through the research a little bit. Edit: fixed typo.

In "Why people love and hate Donald Trump," Stefan and Vox Day had a fascinating little tangential conversation about how the same patterns of behavior and ideas seem to pop up independently of each other in different times and places in human history. That got me to thinking about memetics, which is the relatively new science of studying human thought and behavior as a replicating system that's subject to Darwinian Natural Selection. The only concept from this field of study that seems to be in the public consciousness is the word "meme," usually used to describe silly internet images and videos. There is a lot more to it, and after applying some concepts from memetics to the r/K selection problems Stefan has raised I actually came up with some outside the box ideas for how we might be able to improve this situation. There's a lot to it, so I made a video explaining the basics of memetics and some of my thoughts on how it applies to the observed r and K reproductive strategies in human demographics. I'm presenting it here for discussion, and I'm planning on making some follow up videos expanding on these ideas for anyone who might be interested. Thanks for reading!

In the free market no one gets everything they want, that's part of what makes it work. Human desires are infinite but resources and time are finite. You have to pick and choose, and negotiate with others to find solutions that are mutually beneficial. We don't have a free market right now, but if we can make it more free, or prevent it from becoming less free, that's a win for now. Then next time we try to get more. If you've redefined compromise as a "lose-lose" arrangement, and you're unwilling to negotiate to get some of what you want and accept that as a partial victory, then I don't believe that a productive dialog between the two of us is possible. You've got a Plutonic ideal of morally pure anarchism and you won't accept anything less. Ok, fair enough. But I will engage with the real world and try to accomplish what I can to make the world a better place incrementally. I think following that strategy will be more productive than not participating in the process at all. I encourage others reading to make their own decision.

Eh, it was just a quick and dirty metaphor to try to illustrate the idea that, when you find yourself in an unwinnable situation, you have to try to lose as little as possible. It wasn't meant to be examined that closely. But just for fun, let's say the villagers don't bind together to overthrow Snerg because they've been propagandized to believe they can't.

Yes, but politicians don't act randomly and they don't do the exact opposite of what they promise. They act in what they judge to be in their own best interest, like everyone else. Hillary Clinton is on the verge of expanding her base of voters by the tens of millions. And the Republican Establishment wants amnesty too because they are happy being a minority party as long as they can still sell favors to their donors, and their donors want that sweat, sweat cheap labor. It's a very real threat. The political class has been trying to get amnesty for a while now. "Political Correctness isn't picking the pocket of my unborn child. Perceived legitimacy is the lifeblood of the State. President X and voting at all contributes to this perceived legitimacy." Actually, it is, because people are afraid to attack the utility and morality of the welfare state and other government programs because they're scared of being emotionally bullied by social justice warriors. "Compromise is lose-lose" Um, it's also win-win if the compromise gets everyone some of what they want instead of nothing or worse than nothing. Read my responses to Tyler H above for my definition of worse than nothing. (Short answer: indefinite civil war). "There is no positive way to enhance a thief/batterer/rapist/murderer." Let's say we live in a small isolated village with just a hundred people or so living there, and we don't have access to modern technology like guns and bombs. Bear with me, this is going somewhere. A man named Snerg lives up the road. By a genetic accident he's a foot taller, 15mph faster and twice as strong as everyone else. Once every day, he walks out of his house and picks out the first woman he sees as he's walking down the street. In public, he then brutally beats, rapes, tortures and strangles her. When he's done he throws her off a cliff. Every day. Many, many men have died trying to stop Snerg, to avenge a lover or sister, or just out of a sense of justice. All have failed and died horribly at his hands. He is beyond the ability of the village to imprison or kill. A few people have tried to travel to other villages, but they all came back. The other villages all have some version of Snerg too, and most of them are worse. Some of them are FAR worse. Now let's say one morning I sit down and buy Snerg a beer. I get to chatting with him, and I manage to convince him through some rhetorical contrivance that he will from that day forward only torture, rape and strangle one woman per month instead of one every day. I just enhanced a rapist and murderer in a positive way. It's not an ideal situation, but it's better than things used to be. I reduced the amount of violence going on. The Republican Party used to be willing to use the violence of the State to oppress homosexuals who want to get married. Now they cheer a gay man who loudly proclaims it at their convention. It's a step in the right direction. In other words, take what you can get today and come back and try to get more tomorrow. That's how the minimalist state described in the Constitution was destroyed. The statists took a little piece each and every time they could get one.

Thanks for the response! I like a good discussion. I'll address your points as follows: "I care that the initiation of force is evil and the state is immoral - and voting lends my support to that system." and "We cannot know the outcome so why diverge from our principles?" I think the disagreement between us here is subjective and this will be like arguing about if a comedy is funny or not. But we just can't resist it, can we? lt's like arguing over wether or not to quit smoking. I can lay out all the studies that show that it's very much more likely that you will have serious health problems if you continue to smoke. And you can shrug and say "I might get hit by a car tomorrow, so why bother?" I know that you'll say that it's not as straightforward as that, and it's not, but I think the analogy holds some water because of what I will explain in my next response. "Clinton may be the best move to advance a no-state agenda." A collapse of the system doesn't advance a no-state agenda. Can you name a state that collapsed and birthed a Voluntaryist anarchic free market when the dust settled? It hasn't happened because the state only exists because most people believe in the necessity of its existence and some people get a highly addictive endorphin rush from exercising power over others. In other words, there is a DEMAND for a state and so the market creates one. When a state collapses I'm only aware of two outcomes. 1.) The relatively peaceful establishment of a new state or states, like what happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union 2.) A period of violent conflict until a new state or states are established. Sometimes the civil wars last indefinitely, until the people are too traumatized and dysfunctional to even establish a civil society, like in parts of Africa. So if I could press a button and make the state as it exists right now disappear, I wouldn't press it. Even if the transition of power happens peacefully, it's very likely that the new state established to replace the existing one will be as bad or worse than the one we have now. And I think we can hazard to guess that we won't have much luck using reason and evidence to convince people not to establish as state with bombs raining down on us and bullets whizzing past our ears. The only way to get to a stateless society is by removing the demand for the state, and it seems to me that the only way to do that is within a relatively peaceful civil society. The way I see it, preserving the civil society so we can use reason and evidence to spread our ideas is the better move than waiting for the system to collapse on its own. Especially considering my next point: "I don't think the outcome you express will happen because there is not that much remaining for the left to pillage without destroying the source of their income" The Left might actually want to collapse the current system, because they would be in place to mold the new system built to replace it. It's a strategy that Leftist intellectuals have openly discussed in the circles that Obama and Clinton ran in. Seeing how eager they are to bring third world migrants who will very likely end up as part of a permanent and violently discontent underclass in the US, I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that this is what they have in mind. This article is an example of what I mean: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy "You might be interested in posting this in the Vote/Don't Vote thread. This topic is the focus there." I might just do that, thanks for the suggestion.

At the moment I'm with Stef. Voting for Trump is the best move to advance a small-state agenda as best I can tell with the information we have. Here's my arguments for why: 1.) Hillary Clinton will grant amnesty to illegals within days of becoming president. I know that free travel is a libertarian principle, but look at what happened to California. The Demographic shift caused by Reagan's amnesty transformed California into the bluest of blue states. An amnesty today would have the same effect across much of the South. The Republican Party sucks too, but if they are never able to win national office again, the Left will run the federal government indefinitely and the remaining economic freedoms we have will be destroyed. Also, the violence caused by the inability of many migrants from third world countries to assimilate into Western culture is used by the Left to justify suppression of civil liberties even further. The Republican voter base has been trying to get its leadership to address this issue for decades, but they were too afraid of political correctness. Which brings me to my next point. 2.) A Trump victory is a major defeat for Political Correctness. PC is essentially the use of social pressure to make people afraid to speak out against the expansion of state power. Because of his views on immigration, Trump has brought the wrath of the entire PC memeplex down upon himself. He is being shamed and mocked with every insult the Left can throw at him, Racist, Bigot, Xenophobe, Hitler, etc, and it's rolling right off his back. If Trump wins, PC will very possibly go away forever, because it will have been proven ineffective at full blast. Honestly, this might be the most compelling reason to support Trump. We can't solve problems if we can't even discuss them. 3.) I'm willing to compromise with him on his views on trade because what's going on right now has been proven to be destructive to our civil society. The anti-NAFTA crowd has been vindicated by history. The manufacturing base of the US has indeed been gutted and largely transferred to the third world. A free market could deal with these kinds of pressures, but we don't have a free market. It would be impossible to fix every problem with our free market in one or two election cycles. No one can realistically get rid of the fiat money system, all the regulations inflicted on business, labor laws, union collusion with the state, etc. Are the tariffs really going to be more destructive than having every company with the means to do so flee the country so they can hire workers in China and pay taxes in Ireland? I don't believe so. And in a related note, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, while technically making the market more free in a sense, was enormously destructive because the FDIC and consumer ignorance has removed all downward market pressure on banks. What the state and the big corporations have tried to do is use regulations to crush their small business competitors and nationalize their loses while keeping their profits private, and remove barriers to the expansion of their own power. What have been sold to the public as "Free Trade deals" have actually been tools to that end. I genuinely think Trump will try to roll this back. It's not perfect, but I'll take a mixed back over a bag that has been proven to be filled with rabid wolverines. We have to make practical decisions based on what we can accomplish in the real world. 4.) Trump has already reformed the Republican Party in a positive way. Would you have guessed that a man would get a standing ovation for declaring himself to be a proud gay Republican 4 years ago? Hell, six months ago? And Trump got the evangelical vote in spite of this. The Social Conservatism has been dragging the Republican Party down for decades. They waste time and political capital fight gay marriage and weed. A Trump victory will solidify this. By this alone, Trump has managed to move the Party in a libertarian direction more than anyone else in recent memory. He also has broken the Party Establishment, which had basically turned the Republicans into Democrat Lite. 5.)There are many potential dangers in a Trump presidency. But the press hates him and is adversarial with him at all times. That is better, because they will hold his feet to the fire. Meanwhile, they actively run interference for Hillary in truly shocking and terrifying ways. I'm actually researching and writing a video essay for my own You Tube channel on this topic, and I will have more to say, but this is the gist of it. I'd love to hear rebuttals of these points so I can shore up my arguments (or change my position if there's better arguments). I can not over emphasize that we have to make practical decisions based on what we can accomplish in the real world. Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good.

The memes are too strong for her. Hillary Clinton should just drop out.

Where does your 8,000 number come from? The ratio of law abiding to criminal gun owners is a helpful persuasive tool, and a source would help. Thanks!

"Is it righteous for one person to be in control of the money everybody's forced to use?" Of course not, but I think this is a situation where the perfect is the enemy of the good. I dont want to elect anybody, but Anarchy isn't on the ballot. If this were a typical election with a Republican Establishment candidate I probably wouldn't even bother to vote, but Trump seems like he might be a genuine outsider who sees how the oligarchs are destroying Western Civilization. If he manages to survive and win, he might buy us some time to convince people of the true nature of state power before everything goes completely sideways. It's an opportunity to maybe stop or at least slow the Left's attempt to import more of their permanent underclass voting block. There are times to stand on principle and there's times where you just fight to stay alive a little longer. "Can anyone help?" Can you be specific? What policies are you having trouble defending? I'll try to help.

Looks great, thanks!

Hi, just wanted to give you a heads up. On the mobile version of the Freedomain Radio site in the "Free Books" section, all of the images are broken for every book. I'm attaching a screenshot of what it looks like. I checked the desktop site and I checked on an iPad, and everything works on those platforms. I'm seeing this only when I access the site on my phone, a Samsung Galaxy S6 running the mobile Chrome browser. Hope this helps. Also, any chance of getting an eBook version of God of Atheists? I'd really like to read it. Thanks for everything you guys do!