Garrett

Faking evidence? Are you serious? Of what crime?

I'm sure you've thought of these things, so maybe you can explain a few questions that seem to pop out of the mental chute right away. Wouldn't things like natural geographical resources, weather patterns and such things have either a direct or chaotic effect on census data? And wouldn't databases related to those be at least as large as the census data? If so, wouldn't that put a limit on compression using social causation theory?

My main criteria for choosing to watch a movie is: Will I be a better/happier person after watching it? Unfortunately for most movies the answer is no. I suspect "It" is no exception.

No. A free market is a market with no coercion. Not just a lack of a monopoly of force. Some markets have more coercion than others. I don't know of any truly free market anywhere, except maybe in very limited settings and scope. Not every international market is free of coercion. I'd be surprised if you find any at all. Just ask Saddam Hussein if he was free to sell oil for gold, or Qaddafi if he was free to create a north African currency that was gold backed, or Syria if they're free to build a pipeline wherever they like through their own country.

You seem to be confusing the directors of a voluntary peaceful organization like a corporation or a forum like this with the non-voluntary violent coercive organization like a government. Not all organizations are governments. Only governments are governments, by virtue of the non-voluntary attribute, and violently stopping any competing organization. I suggest you get your thoughts a little more untangled before wanting to debate someone like Stefan. Frankly if he were to debate you and publish the podcast, I might listen to a few minutes of it and just get bored from all the shallow sophistry.

I LOL with maximum smugness, until I trip over my shoelaces.

Did Berkeley move to Canada without notifying me? Or did we get some threads confused? Or maybe I missed the connection between Berkeley and Canada???

You've probably heard our hero "big chatty forehead" say that the government doesn't exist because it's just an intellectual concept and has no basis in physical reality. Alternatively, he claims that "cars" and "clouds" exist. People might form a group that is collectively identified as the concept of "government." Hmmmm.... Isn't a car also just a concept? Some molecules might come together in any number of configurations to be collectively identified by the concept of "car." Similarly a bunch of water molecules (with some other molecule types to act as condensation anchors) might come together to be collectively identified as a "cloud." But aren't they also just concepts? How about "person?" A colony of biological cells which have come together to form what we conceptually call "human being?" Those cells don't even all share the same DNA. *Kilograms* of you are symbiotes in your gut, and their DNA isn't even in the same genetic ballpark with your homo sapien DNA. And the symbiote portion of the "person" colony can vary drastically from one person to the next. So how does a "person" become something that exists in reality, and not just a concept? Would it be a collection of molecules that have a crisply defined configuration? "Person" and "car" are pretty difficult to get a hard definition. "Cloud" might be extremely hard. I was then tempted to say, "OK, only atoms, molecules and photons exist in reality." But then ugh, quantum physics says, "not so fast genius boy!" OK, Fine! Only wave functions exist in reality, then! The wave functions sometimes collapse into photons, electrons, muons, quarks, etc. But what about string theory?? Dark matter? Dark energy. AAARRRGH! Forget it! I give up. Nothing exists in reality!! I've become a radical relativist. Maybe I should be kicked off the board. OK, maybe I'll hold off going completely crazy. Maybe my FDR family will save me from the abyss! Save me all you rationalists!! Just kidding about the relativist thing. A little humorous drama is what every dry philosophical question needs, right?

Actually I don't think machines are responsible for the overuse of dangerous chemicals in farming or ranching, depletion of the soil, and the general crop malpractice that produces nutritionally depleted food. Farmers and the violent practices of GMO seed companies are. How did machines get all mixed in with this? If anything, all the farmer malpractice has motivated us to learn more for growing our own crops. So if somehow machines are co-conspirators here, they have actually provoked thought in our case.

Wow, I really do hope karma comes to collect on them as you suggest. Of course in the 60's it was known as a trouble maker campus also. It didn't slow them down much then. I know this is a bit different, but maybe in the 60's it wasn't perceived so differently than now. Personally I wouldn't get my hopes up for such karmic justice, because people so easily bury their cognitive dissonance.

Sorry for quoting a socialist web site concerning the news of Irish violence. I guess I should have searched for a arnarchist news portal instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_War_of_Independence This war for independence started with the assassination of 2 British-backed police (RIC) by the IRA (not the retirement account), escalated to "Bloody Sunday" which included the assassination of 14 more British agents. The brits retaliated by killing a bunch of civilians at a football match later that day. The war bled over (sorry for the pun) into sectarian violence, and many bombings between catholics and protestants took place. Thousands died in what amounted to a guerrilla war. The body count is small compared to other things, but the insidious part is that the violence will just not go away. And guess what. The violence continues to this day. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/09/irel-s07.html I think the lesson is that violence, especially the assassination and terror type that inevitably crops up in asymmetric tactical situations, tends to get a life of its own, and is really hard to truly leave behind. Afghanistan is another example of guerrillas that started almost a 1/4 of a millennium ago are still fighting, both the empires that want to tame them (USA just being the latest in a long line) and among themselves.

Chile was fortunate to have been influenced by the great Friedman, which is why it's the most prosperous economy in all of SA. And also fortunately the welfare structures are sparse at best. I suspect it will turn out better than in Canada for that reason. Participate in the economy or be very hungry. The police down here are also not to be trifled with. Unfortunately Friedman's influence was small, and is fading with time. The collectivists are gaining ground all the time. The centerpiece F's influence was the retirement system here. Mandatory and personally segregated retirement savings, with investments somewhat under your direction. Nice idea. Not moral since it still involves force, but better than most. The problem that's come is that the "free market" of retirement savings turned into mercantilism of the rich and powerful. Chileans have only a few choices of companies to manage their savings, and the companies have a regulatory monopolistic strangle hold, owned by only a few of the bankster families down here, and now they're using the savings to suck the life blood out of people. So even though people have been putting away a lot of savings, it's turned out to not be much when it comes to retirement because they only get to choose among a few high load mutual funds that suck socks. So now the collectivists have stepped in, fanned the flames and are trying to talk people into a government run ponzi scheme similar to SS in the Estados Unidos. And of course the sheep go all in for that. So sad.

Since we're sort of out of land that isn't under tyranny to some degree, some people have gone into the concept of sea-steading. These are a pretty serious group of people with pretty specific building plans now. https://www.seasteading.org/

Last time I asked, the post office swears it doesn't get a dime of tax money, and that it operates financially independently of the government. I wouldn't be surprised to find they got a direct cash infusion bailout somewhere along the line, under the radar or not. But at least in concept it is independent of the government.

That's a real nice poem Griz! I like it! Let us know if you write more.

I suggest waiting until they so much lack power that you can brush them off your porch kind of like a yapping little dog. To introduce more violence is something difficult to stop once it starts. Look at the history of Ireland. They turned to violence to attempt an overthrow of british rule. America had the advantage of a great big ocean, making the british supply chain of violence untenable in length. So America could fight a more direct military conflict. Ireland being more directly under the boot heal of the empire had to turn it into asymmetric warfare (terror and assassination). To this day their culture is still suffering from the horror. Do you really want a super-bloody conflict because you don't have the patience and foresight to let them die off on their own? Sure, a little self defense here and there is great. But you were talking nuclear weapons. Are you kidding me??? The difficult part with the path I suggest is for K selected individuals to allow the R selected hordes to die a death natural to their own consequences. This has proven historically difficult. Even now the more K selected are breathlessly trying to save the life of every R selected African, having no idea the horror that will and even now sometimes does ensue if/when they were actually successful. A low IQ, R selected population in a low resource region must cull itself one way or another. When the virtue signalling westerners succeed too much in saving too many babies' lives, their population explodes, and then they naturally turns to genocide and civil war in their own horrific manner of culling population. Hey west! Stop that!

I highly doubt you would be sent to jail for posting anit-Islam messages on social media. The reason? It's highly ineffective. You don't really sway anybody. Liberals will profess their love to Islam until they are beheaded. Republicans will play the avoidance game, hoping nobody notices them. People posting on SM will simply be ignored, except by people like many on this board, but you're not changing any opinions. Sure, it might help here and there. I think it might work in the real case of someone willing to listen to their conscience, but haven't yet formed an opinion of Islam. This is a rare case, but might be worthwhile, especially if you have like a 1000 pseudo-friends on SM, whom you don't know well, and may be in a discovery process. Effective communicators are often put in jail, but never (in most western countries) directly for their speech. What happens is the powers that be decide they don't like the effective message of somebody, and then they turn their lives upside down to find some violation of some law somewhere. Dinesh D'Souza is an example of this. But I think it was a mistake for them. His imprisonment made him more well known and more powerful I think. I suspect he was very grateful they did that, because they inadvertently did him a big favor. In summary: No worries. Knock yourself out. If you are jailed at some point, it means you're doing great, and it will be a great favor to you.

Oh, this is not good. Haitians are in the process of flooding my current country of residence, Chile. Apparently they didn't consult Quebec on their experience with them. Or, worse, perhaps they did.

Good points all. Perhaps our favorite villain B Obama summed it up the most succinctly when he said, "You didn't build that!"

I'm pretty sure we can't get directly from here to anarchy through strictly military means and out-reproducing all the R selected population. Once violent force becomes the mode of transition, historically the violence begins a life of its own and begins to consume souls of both the victims and the perpetrators. I simply don't see how a free society can be primarily born of violence. At most violence may come in the form of a small minority of people fighting for the last gasps of state power, and free people defending themselves. Any more than that and you've got a problem of the mentality of violence in the culture, which is inherently self defeating to a free people. Rather it will have to come through most people desiring anarchy, and simply ignoring the demands of the extraction class. That will never happen when R selected people dominate, so there will have to be a natural dying off, unfortunately. When K selected people become dominant, and good philosophy is more pervasive, then we have a chance. I would be very surprised if that happens in our natural life times. That leaves us with the onerous task of building a philosophy that we will only be able to enjoy on the personal level, and not the societal level. Take heart, if you had to pick one, freedom on the personal level is much better.

Obviously I voted with my feet for Chile. Unfortunately I'm not sure I would recommend it anymore to people. I think Chile is currently pretty true to its stats. However, with the current low IQ population immigration and the problems that are bound to result from that, the prognosis is not as good. Further, the collectivists are gaining more ground, easily manipulating the already low IQ population, soon to be lower still. They are even in the process of re-writing the constitution because it protects so much against the collectivists. And the local population is like, "OK, whatever. Above my pay grade to comment." (If they even read the news).

Perhaps I misunderstood you. I think when most people evaluate the education quality of a region, they are doing so for consideration of the education of their own children. Maybe you mean to measure the education level of the local population?

How much does public education matter? Are free people really interested in public schools, which are geared toward making children un-free? Personally I think the best education can be found online and in internships. Some argue that travel provides an excellent education. Having traveled a lot, I'm not so sure about that. Maybe I did it wrong. One criterion that would be important in my opinion is that of property rights. How free is one to make, purchase, protect and exercise ownership of property. Sub-criteria would be: * Real estate ownership and tax laws. * Tort system under control. * Rights of self protection -- especially gun and concealed carry laws. * Civil asset forfeiture laws * Banking laws (are bail-ins legal? How active is the central bank? Do they give FATCA the big middle finger?) * Anything else I forgot? I moved to Chile from the "Land of the Free." Being a mere immigrant without permanent residency, I have almost 0 economic freedom here. My application is coming up on a year in limbo because the immigration system here is overwhelmed with the 50 million Hatians that came here on "visitors visa's" and (shocking!) didn't leave! The communist debris left over from the 70's is now back in power and pulling the same immigration tricks that Europe is. At least these immigrants aren't insisting people should speak with a French colonist accent or die, but still the prognosis for Chile is not looking good.

What would a child of a peaceful, loving parent have to rebel about? Say a child starts on a path of self-destructive behavior, like drug dependence, or excessive piercing and tattooing. Is that not a sign of mental duress? Bad parenting. How about bullying others or damaging property? Where did they learn that? From parents? Obvious bad parenting. From poorly chosen friends? Did the parents not teach a child how to choose good friends? Bad parenting. That's not to say great parenting is easy. I had a boss once who would point out that all less-than-perfect outcomes are due to insufficient planning. No matter how impossible a situation seemed to be, there would always be something he could point out in hind sight that you could have done differently for a better outcome. He was infuriating, but infuriatingly correct. I would point out that one would need near omniscience to have been able to see such and such coming. Well, that still didn't change the fact that it was due to poor planning. On the other hand, he never really held much against me. The point was not to place blame and denigrate anyone. The point was to simply learn from the experience, no matter how small or narrow the lesson. So coming back to "bad parenting," well it's hard to blame parents for not being perfect, and I can't imagine even our hero Stef has parented perfectly. So what? If we are truly doing our best to know as much as we can about good parenting (not the lame excuse version of "I did my best"), and learning from our mistakes, all is as well as can be in our non-god-like state.