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By Alan's explanation, these are higher order goods: Handgun (used to produce the lower order good of personal security). Rifle (used to produce the lower order goods of venison / hides). Washing machine (used to produce lower order good of clean clothing). Toaster (okay, boring now) Down with mean toaster-owning capitalist pigs!

Now if the owner(s) of the roads and parking spaces had used gates and armed guards to deny entry to the city, to anyone who did not sign up to the contract which specifies that the parking-space user either pays before use, or pays a penalty if caught in breach of that agreement, then that is capitalism. Road owners are not compelled to let you drive on their roads, so they can set conditions, and if you don't accept the conditions, don't drive on their roads.

I like the "should have", as an exploration of principles for action which is both practical and makes moral sense. Some of the "should have"s below may have been "did have"s to some extent. The natives should have had philosophers who told them what is moral, and futurists to predict likely results from the choices within moral behaviour. Before strangers even show up, natives should have had peaceful parenting, voluntary association within and among clans and nations, should have had good information about which individuals prefer to do evil, and territorially separated the evildoers, chasing them out of their civilized territories. Natives should have had treaties allocating territory clearly between clans (and within clans, if desired). When newcomers show up, natives inform them of the territorial boundaries (per treaties), and to the extent that newcomers wish to be on this clan's or that clan's side of a boundary and claim some territory, the natives should have clearly negotiated that and made treaties, with newcomer territory clearly bounded as per treaty. The natives should have demonstrated to newcomers how territorial disputes are avoided, and if the newcomers were really obtuse about it, they should have chased them into ships to sail away again.

I'm delighted that I'm not the only person making posts on freedomainradio, whilst living in South Africa. Now I am asking myself how much else you and I have in common, besides geography, freedomainradio and friends who have trouble with rational thought.

I can argue that all preferences include the preference for being alive to enjoy the preference, therefore the preference for being alive is the one and only special case of preference (no-one can have rational preference of anything and not also prefer to be alive).

However, the truth value of "there exists more than one person with a preference for being alive" is an objective fact (which you accept if you personally have that preference and you see at least one other person showing you sufficient evidence of that preference). It does not seem simple to prove this fact to a person who does not have that preference, or to a person who would insist that make-you-stay-alive-to-suffer demons are controlling the behaviours which would (otherwise) be evidence of this preference for being alive. However, the evidence supports the objective truth of: "there exists more than one person with a preference for being alive". I get it. "Only the Sith speak in absolutes", said the non-Sith Jedi master. Making a special case of the preference for being alive is rational (justified, valid) when one considers that if the contrary/alternate preference could be known, then we would know someone prefers death and can thus be excluded from any trade of behaviour for behaviour. This person can be excluded from moral consideration. This has nothing to do with popularity. If there were only two [people] in the set of life-preferring, behaviour-trade-capable [people], then those are the [people] to whom the objective standard of behaviour is objectively applicable. Trading "I'll do w and refrain from x, and you'll do y and refrain from z" cannot be relied on to yield the benefit of w unless x includes murder, assault, fraud and theft. Similarly it cannot be relied on to yield the benefit of y unless z includes murder, assault, fraud and theft. Murder, assault, fraud and theft are names of patterns of behaviours that fall in the set of behaviour which objectively is evil. No-one has to trade behaviour-for behaviour, but if one person performs his part of such a trade without assurance that evil is inhibited, he does so without the benefit of the trade (to him). If there were zero assurance, he'd be crazy to bother. I'm not talking about flourishing, I'm asking in what conditions can I personally survive (it's within a condition of at least some inhibiting pressure against evil as defined by the objective measurement I have outlined).

The preference for being alive is key to morality. If you concede that there are many [people] who have the preference for being alive, and have the capacity for co-ordinating action by communication (I am not attempting to prove that here, either concede it or say you don't), then I expect you to concede that these [people] could trade behaviour for behaviour. Now there could exist some pattern within the set of bahaviours, some pattern of behaviour which would negate the benefit (to a person with a preference for being alive) of trading with the other [people] (as opposed to say: killing them all). If such a pattern of behaviour can be identified, it could be given a name (say: evil {with euphemistic synonym: not good}). I contend that such a pattern has been identified, and it's sub-patterns have been given names such as murder, assault and theft. All of these (if done by you) negate the benefit (to me) of me trading with you: behaviour-for-behaviour. This references no external authority, but references an internal preference which you may agree is widely shared.

Can I take you through my workings, short step, by short step, using my tea-and-lunch breaks over a few days? If so, please start by saying if you prefer being alive, to being dead?

I have a tip: When you speak, speak loudly (and slowly enough to make the words clear). The process of speaking that way conveys confidence and builds the confidence inside you. I'm saying don't allow yourself to mumble or rush through what you say. No need to say more than you were planning to say, just make loud and clear what you do say. Start from when you are introduced or when you introduce yourself, then the first impression is built. Repeat the name of the person you meet, say your own name clearly (yes, my good friend/manager/cousin Linda is of course right, I am Jonathan Doestoevsky). I speak loudly because a grandfather of mine had severe hearing loss, so that is just how I speak, trained from early years.

A private road owner would have each driver's reputation from a reputation agency, and keep dangerous drivers off his roads, to boost the revenue from advertising to the larger number of safe drivers on the road (accidents are bad for business, because competitors may offer a quicker, safer commute), and advertisers pay more to be seen by more eyes.

Actually, I was in that mindset before, so an answer came to mind : " think I am a link in the chain of command between God and some of his creation". I think that the teacher assessed that it was expected of him to "maintain discipline". I used the passive form there, because his peers, headmaster, wife, friends and even the learners who are feeling some desire or pressure to learn or produce good marks, will be expecting that of the teacher (because they have that model for their expectations).

A nephew, in a facebook conversation about spanking, said that at age 11, he asked a teacher: Who [the hell] do you think you are? He was caned and cried. I'm curious. Who did the teacher think he was? Caning has been outlawed and teachers renamed educators (without much real adjustment of approach).

Okay, negotiate a rate with your insurer, for insurance against creating a child whilst using a set of birth control methods. Alternately, you could neglect or be unable to insure against that, refuse to acnowledge that by default you are your own insurer, and rob me to pay for the consequences if you need to make the insurance claim. If you and I happened to be born in one particular territory run by one particular government, is it rational that each of us must automatically be the insurer of the other? If for example, the 'dying of thirst' man had insurance for that desert expedition, when he dies, his insurer will sue the vendor for causing them a loss, and the vendor will have trouble from his own insurers who won't like what he does to their industry. UPB references the preference for being alive, so if the 'dying of thirst' man pulls his weapon and threatens the life of another, to save his own, then he is implementing the preference on which UPB is based. Oh he lost his weapon? Was he insured for the consequences of not having a potentially life-saving weapon?

If you fly to Tokyo today and sit in a tall building there, and it collapses on you in an earthquake: do you have zero responsibility for what happened to you, or enough responsibility that you could acknowledge some responsibility for your decisions prior to the event?

Hi As one who has made really bad choices and let go of a wife ... Think about calling Stef before you decide, especially if you can persuade her that Stef would help each of you enjoy the family experience more than you do now, and get her on the call. I heard Stef before, asking a caller if he really was susceptible to reason and evidence, in repeatedly telling his wife's relatives what he understands about government (which they show no sign of understanding). My hazy memory of that call has Stef asking the caller to weigh up how much he wants a great relationship with the children, versus how much he wants spend time failing to convince people. I now have a delightful girlfriend, and I spend no time at all telling her there is no god / are no gods, because I wouldn't know how to convince her. My current self would probably teach my former self from 20 years ago, how to keep a statist christian wife and have fun holding on to her. [My situation then is not your situation now, and my remark is about me, me, with adult children who are strangers to me, on the other side of the planet (not that I am sad for me {I'm having fun}, just that I could have made their childhoods so much more fun for them)].

Hi As one who has made really bad choices and let go of a wife ... Think about calling Stef before you decide, especially if you can persuade her that Stef would help each of you enjoy the family experience more than you do now, and get her on the call. I heard Stef before, advising a caller to pay more attention to keeping the family on board, even if it meant the caller quit telling his wife's relatives what he understands about government (which they show no sign of understanding).

I've predicted the consequence to me, if I were to cease to assign blame/responsibility/causality to other living organisms for what appears to me, to be their actions. I predict that that decision would harm my ability to predict, so I won't make that decision. If I say that Ug the caveman tosses up a microwave oven and attempts to header it like a soccer ball, then I predict that your mind will do some predictive imagination of the consequence to Ug's head. I have some confidence in the correctness of my prediction and in the correctness of your predictions. Now if the people with whom my senses tell me I am interacting, were to give me very disparate predictions in the many, many instances of predictive thinking that I seem to encounter each day, then I might quit having confidence in my predictive abilities. Similarly, if I had memories of my own wrong predictions and did not have explanations to explain my past errors, my confidence would likely be less. I'm here absorbing data that helps me to predict. Throw me words which assist me to refine my predictive capacity, or throw me words which actually reduce my confidence in my predictions - what words I get, I will adjust to. I don't have to know that the universe does obey immutable physical laws, I only need to estimate that my memory record indicates that when I have used physical laws in the prediction process, my predictions have been successful wrt the use of the laws. Those memories will prompt me to continue the usage. This explains why an absence of knowledge of the actual existence of, immutability of, and source of the laws: does not affect my confidence in my predictions.

Anyone who has zero confidence in his predictions can either be my controlled robot, or just stay out of my way - as long as he has no confidence in his predictions, he isn't going to tell me he knows my predictions are wrong, so I will try give him orders, and alternately just ignore him. Sorry, yes, in respect of. It is those who tell me how an omnipotent being is going to respond to my decisions (and think their prediction is on target), that I choose to debunk here. I have confidence in my brain's predictive ability based on my memory of past successes and failures in prediction. I'm going to predict anyway, and I will make the reasonable assumption that the really poorly-predictive brains were de-selected by evolution. [from now on I'll use wrt, not iro] Yes, an omnipotent god could make billions of people feel very confident about what god would or would not do, and then that omnipotent god could do something else. Billions of people re-assuring each other about the intentions of Loki who is wearing the father-god mask.

When someone makes a prediction, he is implying that he is an atheist iro omnipotent deities. I expect most philosophers will have heard of René Descartes Evil demon. I don't care what Descartes thought about the concept. I only know to ascribe the idea to him because I was previously using the concept in my argument iro omnipotence, and someone informed me. The remark that he did not ascribe omnipotence to his version of the demon is also irrelevant (argue if you disagree). If there is an omnipotent being, then none can know anything, and none can predict anything. The earth has orbited the sun once per year for the past 10 years. How do I know? Well, if there is an omnipotent being, I don't. The earth will complete another orbit of the sun in the coming year. How can I be confident of that? Well, if there is an omnipotent being, I should have a confidence level of 0. The omnipotent being will treat me in an ethical manner. How can I be confident of that? Well, if there is an omnipotent being, I should have a confidence level of 0. All of this is because omnipotence includes the ability to manufacture the appearance of evidence in the absence of actual events matching the evident events, and the ability to re-structure reality so that coming events are not as one may predict from past events whether actual or fake. Non-omnipotent deities are functionally equivalent to space aliens, they exist (or don't) within an independent reality. Independent reality is incompatible with omnipotent being, omnipotent being implies omnipotent-being-dependent-reality-within-which-no-one-can-predict-anything. I never said I am atheist iro space aliens, that is a whole other discussion.

A deity is either omnipotent or not. If not, what is the difference between saying "space alien" and saying "deity"? I am not atheistic iro space aliens. If omnipotent, then I am in the universe of René Descartes Evil demon - and therefore for me to claim to know anything is just nonsense. So, when someone makes a claim or a prediction, he is directly implying his atheism iro omnipotent deities. You can choose. You can say you know nothing and can predict nothing, or, you can admit atheism. If you claim to know something or have some prediction and also claim to be subject to an omnipotent being, you are confused, sort it out. See my new topic

Managing other people is what governments do. When there are no governments, I want dangerous people managed (not killed outright, for various reasons). I estimate that locking dangerous people up is problematic in many ways, including efficiency (on which point I may have a wrong estimate). If dangerous people are caught and then released (either because we just can't get enough evidence to prove wrongdoing to an excessively high standard), or because they did their time without becoming any less dangerous, then my odds of dying due to physical aggression, are higher. No, I estimate that the feeble measures of the local police, plus my own measures to avoid being murdered, will allow me to make it to 2063 if my body does not give in earlier. It is only if I get nanomeds to extend my personal healthy life beyond that, that I will be around to care. It is, though, an interesting exercise to estimate what method is the most effective for dealing with whoever is still dangerous (when parenting is better and that proportion of dangerous people is smaller).

I am interested. I am thinking to get my own DNA sequenced, before exploring the business idea further. Would you recommend 23andme.com, or should I search for alternate websites? My primary interest is in extending my life, because I have no problem enjoying my life. Outliving other people born in 1962, will be my success. I have a diploma in Datametrics, with distinction, from years ago when I was coding computer programs. I quit coding computer programs (after 20 years of that) and I now sell packaging equipment imported from China, into South Africa, where I live (in Johannesburg).

I discuss nanotechnology with the friends I have around me, and have with friends and family at times in the past (yes, starting 20 years ago). I am pretty sure not one of them has attempted to spread the hope that we could live longer. Not one person has reacted to say, "hey, that's cool, I'm going to talk about this with everyone, because I also want extra years of life". I expect you can imagine what reactions I have had. I expect the excitement will start when there is video and additional proof of a person of 130years, with the physique of an 18-year-old, doing star jumps of something. I expect people will go ho-hum until they suddenly go "hey, I'm jealous".

Will happily elaborate. I am fine for now. That is to say, that as things stand, I am unlikely to be murdered, and likely to die in about 2063 at age of 100, of pneumonia which my (by then) degenerated body cannot fight off. I cycle the streets of Johannesburg, South Africa, every morning and evening between work and home. In my years so far, I have only fought off about 5 muggings, all far off from my current route which is short and relatively safe. The walls around each home in the suburbs I cycle through, and the heavy bars over each window of each house, remind me what I know: without that, the stuff inside the house has an over 50% chance of being burgled sometime in the next 5 years. Here, there are significant odds of being murdered during a housebreaking. Statist police, plus private armed patrols through the neighbourhood, plus all that physical security barrier, is inefficient compared to just keeping dangerous people out of the small territory I commute in daily. It is also ineffective, being reactive more than protective. This won't be really important (to me), if I can't extend my life. If I can, though, with each decade of extra life expectancy, I add some chance of my life ending in murder. Eventually the odds of being murdered get close to 1:1.

Okay, yes, I can conclude from the behaviour of the thief that he either thinks he is special (which thought I am free to deny or apply in reverse as my own special permission to take from him), or I'm left with the alternate conclusion that his morality allows both his theft from me and mine (from him). My interest firstly comes from my hope that I personally might get nanomeds and survive into a future very different (in social order) from the present. This leaves me interested in knowing the most safe social order I could live in, so I would have the option of really minimising my odds of death (from accident, and from unethical actions not limited to murder). I did not intend to imply that anyone needs to sign the NAP, I see it as a practicality that I need dangerous people to be away from me, and spied on by people I can trust. I expect other people will come around to this perspective, eventually, and that will be the shape of the future (just that I may suffer if it takes too long for others to come around to the best prediction of choice and consequence, that is why I push for early adoption). I see it as a key part of the process of assessment of a person's level of threat to me, that I offer him a pact which holds us each to standards to which I am willing to commit, and am willing to follow-through on my commitment. If he refuses to sign, then I know to take 2 armed bodyguards with me when I walk past him. If he signs up, I need a background check on him, to decide if I can do the trade of my ethical behaviour for his (alternately choose mutual distrust and spying as the better option for me). If we aren't signed up with each other, I don't want him within his best missile shot of my suburb, and I want to subscribe to armed forces who will keep him away, spy on him, and destroy his missiles. I would value your comment, because I am planning my future (even though I may die of old age and not see what I have planned). Better suggestions (for keeping me safe), I would welcome.