rkbabang

I suppose not. Democracy is the system based on the theory "there are more of us than there are of you, so do what we say or else". The political manifestation of might makes right. Yes there are more people who think like you than who think like me, and yes the threat of violence from the majority is what keeps me paying my taxes. Force is additive while things like intelligence, empathy, and morality are not. It is the tragedy of the human condition. You are stronger so for now you win.

I never understood the whole "count yourself lucky" line of thinking. Unless you live in the worse society imaginable, it could always be worse. So anyone, in any place, in almost any time in history could have counted themselves lucky that it wasn't worse. Yes, I am glad that I live in modern America rather than medieval Europe or Soviet Russia, but that doesn't mean there is no room for improvement. In fact I think there is quite a bit of room. The whole join the mob and change it from the inside line of thinking is ridiculous when the whole system is based on violence. All I'm asking is to be allowed to opt out.

Cause obviously you have tons of real world examples of your libertarian nirvana working in practice. Not. You don't have a single one since it does not exist. And hundreds of years of progress in a mixed free market and government regulated economies can be written off as " legitimizing theft and violence by paying protection money to thugs" Nice. I'm sorry, but words mean things. Taxation is the taking of wealth from one person by another. That is also called "theft". I'm not writing it off, I'm calling it what it is. And it is immoral, regardless of what the thieves do with the money. Also so I don't have to write it all over again, read my post at the link which I just posted for a more thorough explanation of my views on the subject. When a society had never existed without slavery, it didn't make slavery just. Oh hell I'll just cut and paste: ---------------------------------------- I don’t think you can go from a massive state which has millions of people depending on it for their livelihood on a daily basis to an anarchistic society overnight. It would have to be more evolutionary rather than revolutionary. If the state disappeared tomorrow into thin air in the U.S. or Canada it WOULD be chaos. Millions would be out of work, social security and other entitlements would just stop coming, many people would not know what to do with themselves. Hell, even people in the private sector who have jobs would look at the very money they use and say “what is backing this now?” If the state is to be dismantled it has to be because of a cultural change in the population that wants it to be dismantled. Not because they are stereotypical "bomb throwing anarchists" who love chaos, but because they realize that the state does more harm than good in a civilized society and that violence begets more violence, so violence shouldn't be an accepted device used to solve societal problems. This is Somalia's problem, they have no state, but they do not have a culture of freedom either. Yet, do some research on Somalia, they are clearly better off than they were in the 1980’s and they are better off than some of the societies that surround them. All things being equal in their society as it stands culturally they are arguably better off without a state, than with one. The culture needs some evolution to create a peaceful and prosperous society, but that would be true whether or not they have a government. If Somalia forms a government tomorrow, who will control it? Most likly one of the warlord groups that are causing so much chaos in stateless Somalia today. This will not bring peace and order, it will most likely bring corruption and widespread persecution of other competing groups. All of this is also true in many of the countries in that part of the world. You could not go back in time to medieval Europe, for instance, kill the kings and all of the other royalty, tell the serfs that they are now free and expect life to immediately improve. People get used to a certain way of life and do not handle quick structural changes well. These things take time. Over the course of human history our culture has been evolving towards more distributed less concentrated power and towards more civilized, less barbarous and violent societies. Of course sometimes we take 2 steps forward and 1 step back, but that has been the general direction. Someday there will be no state, and historians will look back at our society and think of how primitive our culture was to still cling to our tribal leaders marked off by boundaries on a map even though we had relatively easy global trade, global transportation, and global communication (even if crude by the standards of the future of those things). The same way we look back at god-kings and think “how primitive”. There we're no biological differences between the humans under the god-kings and us. The only things that have evolved since then, the only difference between them and us, is our technology and our culture. Both will continue to evolve, each of us has the choice of either helping the process along or stand in its way. How much more speedily and bloodlessly would slavery have been gotten rid of if there were more abolitionists and less people who thought "slavery has always been part of human society and we couldn't function as a society without it"? As far as crime goes I think you give the state way too much credit in that area. Many murders are never solved and the vast majority of property crimes go unsolved. If your house gets broken into you will almost certainly never get your stuff back. The police will make a report, place it in a file, and that will be the extent of it. Then your insurance company will pay your claim. This is very similar to how it would work in a free market as well. You will contract with a protection agency or maybe this will be run by your insurance company. You will call them to file a claim, they will investigate and pay your claim. If you call 911 because you have an intruder tonight, I hope you have some way to keep yourself alive in the 10-15minutes it may take for the police to get there. Again, this will be the same in a free society with the exception that if you aren’t happy with your protection services company you can do business with someone else instead. Walk around your average mid-to-large city and chances are you don’t see a cop anywhere or at least not very often. The reason the people around you aren’t robbing you is because they are civilized, not because they are afraid of the government. Will there always be crime? Of course there will, it is how we deal with it that is under discussion. Only statists think that there is some magic in words on paper called “law” that “solves” crime. It just isn’t so. These laws, and the institutions that evolve to enforce them, are much more concerned with politically motivated “crimes” and fighting the "culture war" which the politicians use to get votes rather than really protecting people from violence. Most people in jail are not murderers and rapists, they are minorities who are there for violating drug laws. Middle class whites are simply not arrested and thrown in jail for these “crimes” even though they do drugs at a rate similar to poorer minorities. And since nothing will hold down your earnings potential like a criminal record, the “justice” system is used to keep the underclass in its place. It is a sick, disgusting and thoroughly broken system that needs to be done away with if our society is going to move forward and prosper. There are many books written about how crime could be handled in a free society. Milton Freidman’s son David Friedman who is a professor of economics and law at the Santa Clara University Law School wrote an excellent book called “The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism” which I highly recommend. Also some good and quick reads (and free) which deal with the subject, are Stefan Molyneux’s “Everyday Anarchy” and “Practical Anarchy”. These books are excellent. The free versions are in PDF, HTML, and the audiobook in MP3. You have to buy and pay for the print versions if you prefer paper. Other excellent books if you’ve read the above and would like to delve deeper into the subject is “The Conscience of an Anarchist: Why It's Time to Say Good-Bye to the State and Build a Free Society” by Gary Chartier “Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty”, by Gary Chartier And the classic: “For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto”, Murray N. Rothbard. This book is a good introduction to a free society and how it might work. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Some of the same things could be said about not having a king or dictator. Show me an example in all the thousands of years in human history where a society has successfully gotten rid of its monarchs for any length of time? Even our recent few hundred years of Republican government isn’t much proof, the Roman Republic lasted longer than ours yet still deteriorated to dictatorship in the end. Looking only at history you could make a good case that human society needs to be organized as a dictatorship. Remember that even a relatively short time ago in human history you could have said. “Show me one modern agricultural society that has ever functioned without slavery. None has ever existed. Please explain how we could feed our population in a world without slavery. How could a labor intensive product like say, cotton, ever be grown, harvested, and brought to market profitably without the institution of slavery? And what would these slaves all do if you set them free? They have no education, no idea what it is like to live on their own and be responsible for themselves. They have no idea what it is like to be a productive and civilized member of society? How to you integrate such people into a modern society without causing all kinds of problems?” These questions (and many more like them) where asked many times. The answer of course is that it doesn’t matter. Slavery is wrong and whatever the consequences, we will either find solutions to these problems or we won’t, but it simply isn’t morally acceptable to treat human beings like animals. And of course in the end once it was clear that slavery would come to an end, labor saving devices were invented and cotton and other crops were successfully farmed (who would bother trying to invent such devices if slavery was not outlawed). And it was sometimes a little rocky, but the former slaves were integrated into society. I would say the same things about the state. It simply isn’t acceptable to take by force from people to educate children, help the poor, build the roads, and protect us from crime. Will people come up with innovative ways of solving these problems when the state is on its way out? I think they will. There is a huge market for all of these things, because almost everyone wants all of those things. I can’t tell you how these problems will be solved any more than someone in the 18th century could have predicted tractors and the cotton gin. If human beings are good at anything it is problem solving, especially when there is a profit motive behind it. Some people have come up with ideas on how many of these problems would be solved (read some of the books I linked to in my last post), some of them sound plausible, but those are just that, plausible sounding ideas. As Yogi Berra said “Prediction is very hard, especially about the future”. No one will know for sure until it is hammered out on the forge of the marketplace.

Here's an older post of mine on the topic: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/a-couple-more-dictators-taken-down-a-peg!/msg71111/#msg71111

Just out of curiousity, in your libertarian Nirvana, what happens when someone takes something they don't own, poisons a river they don't own, or takes a human life they don't own? What's the alternative to society agreeing to beat such a person with a big stick? Thanks, Richard First tell me what happens in your government controlled Nirvana, when large corporations are allowed to poison a river and given limited or even no liability for their actions? What happens in your government controlled Nirvana when someone wishes to take a drug your government doesn't approve? And why are there millions imprisoned for non-violent "crimes" when 40% of murders go unsolved? Who is unrealistic? The person who thinks that some problems aren't easily solved, but the free market (in law) is the best humans can do, or the person who thinks all of mankind's' problems can be solved simply by writing things down on paper and giving people the magic power to turn the mere scribbles into "LAW"? Then allowing these people to steal as much as they want from you (through taxes and inflation), using the money to spend 12 years programming your children, and using the stolen funds to buy as many weapons as they wish. Sorry, but I'm not looking for Nirvana or easily solved problems (which cause more problems then they solve). Tell me how your government controlled Nirvana will "solve" the problem of crime, it's had 7000 years or so to do it and it hasn't yet. I have some ideas about how these things could be solved with competing private systems, but I'm not going to write a book on a web forum. I also know what doesn't work, legitimizing theft and violence by paying protection money to thugs.

Something which Snowden, Assange and Manning also only know too well. Btw my compliments for bringing this up rkabang. Takes some guts to voice this opinion on a board where potentially no-one will agree and just think you're crazy. Thanks. I've held basically the same political opinions as I do now since the mid '90s. I'm used to people thinking I'm crazy and I'm long past caring.

If this bubble is anything like Canadian housing then who knows how long it will last. People have been talking about the Canadian housing bubble for a long time now. http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/not-going-to-end-well!/ http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/canadian-housing-prices/ http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/canadian-housing-correction-coming/ http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/canadian-housing-bubble/ http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/merrill-warns-of-canadian-housing-bubble/ http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/shorting-the-housing-bubble-in-canada/ http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/canada-housing-sentiment/ http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/canadas-housing-boom-among-longest-in-western-world/ I'm sure I didn't find all of the threads, these were just the first to come up in a quick search. You could still be talking about this bubble or the social media bubble in five+ years.

I agree. Especially when the government backs it up with guns.

Some excellent quotes from him can be found here. Collected Quotations Of The Dread Pirate Roberts, Founder Of Underground Drug Site Silk Road And Radical Libertarian Here are the first two: “Silk Road was founded on libertarian principles and continues to be operated on them. It is a great idea and a great practical system…It is not a utopia. It is regulated by market forces, not a central power (even I am subject to market forces by my competition. No one is forced to be here). The same principles that have allowed Silk Road to flourish can and do work anywhere human beings come together. The only difference is that the State is unable to get its thieving murderous mitts on it.” [10/1/2012] “Silk Road has already made an impact on the war on drugs. The effect of the war is to limit people’s access to controlled substances. Silk Road has expanded people’s access. The great thing about agorism is that it is a victory from a thousand battles. Every single transaction that takes place outside the nexus of state control is a victory for those individuals taking part in the transaction. So there are thousands of victories here each week and each one makes a difference, strengthens the agora, and weakens the state.” [9/23/2012]

For one he took drug dealing off the streets and made it safe and reliable. There was a rating system where people could build trust in their "brand". For the first time you actually had a safe and easy way to purchase products for which the government doesn't approve and could be reasonably sure about the quality of what you'd receive. How many lives did this save? Probably thousands. The government (or anyone else) does not have any right to push products it doesn't like underground without the protections of the above-ground marketplace (trust/brand/product liability/etc). He did a heroic thing despite knowing what would happen to him if he were ever caught, which unfortunately he was. It is dangerous to be right when your government is wrong. I'd never have to guts to do what he did. Nor would most people, which makes him a hero.

He is. He is aa freedom fighter and martyr on par with Mandela. Future generations will curse the USA for their cruwelty. And about the murder for hires: those were CIA agents pretending to blackmail him for huge amounts via one username and offering to take out the blackmailers via another. It's quite obvious why they dropped this from the charges. It was done not to charge him, but for propaganda/character assassination purposes. It worked.

Extremely sad. Tragic. The man is a hero and hopefully will someday be widely recognized as such.

Disagree with this idea. The profit bitcoin generates is earned by miners. Bitcoin holders don't have any share of that profit. I continue to think Bitcoin should be valued based on comparing overall system costs per transaction with alternatives including Western Union, MoneyGram, Paypal, credit cards, bank transfers, etc. That will give you a floor price, anything on top of that is speculative. I disagree with both valuation methods. You can't value something by how much it costs, otherwise a bridge to nowhere would have value and a diamond you found in the sand at the beach wouldn't. We know the supply of bitcoin has an absolute limit, so its value will vary entirely with its demand. If a billion people use it as a medium of trade and depend on it for exchange, then its value will be enormous. If not, then it doesn't matter how much it costs per transaction, its value will be 0.

I agree $200k isn't much. But $27M is. And Helion received over $3M. I try to keep up with this, but it is hard to know what to believe. The PR out of all these companies make it sound like they are close, but who knows? They've been 'close' for two decades. I'll believe when I see it. :-) Well they are even closer now. :)

I agree $200k isn't much. But $27M is. And Helion received over $3M. I try to keep up with this, but it is hard to know what to believe. The PR out of all these companies make it sound like they are close, but who knows?

I've heard the story before, but I didn't realize it had become a holiday. Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day

It looks like some of the Fusion companies have been finding some funding lately. The Malaysian government invested ($27M) in General Fusion, the largest fusion energy program in Canada. Abell Foundation Invests Additional $200,000 in LPPFusion Nuclear Fusion Company Helion Energy and others have received ARPA-E funding

Sure. Generally, if someone tells me to do something, it's probably not going to happen. I don't appreciate people acting as though they have any say in how my life works. If they ask me, I may do it to be helpful, but it depends on my own priorities as well. A big part of this is standing up for yourself. At a previous job I once got in trouble over a perceived HR violation and was sent to lunch with an HR employee, who was aiming to get me to apologize. I explained my situation to him and told him that if I was asked to apologize, I'd just quit. He actually ended up agreeing with me, and I never had an HR issue again. A lot of times you just have to throw off the notion that people that people have power over you. Because no one really does, so long as you're willing to adjust your expectations in life based on any potential consequences. One thing I'll add to your excellent answer is that in the case of family. Once you are an adult, no one in your family has a claim on you. The saying "blood is thicker than water" is bullshit. Ask yourself "if this person wasn't related to me, would I choose to spend my time with him/her? Would I choose to be friends with this person?" And really think about the answer. Someone who takes advantage of a "family" relationship to get something out of you or force you to do things you do not want to do is not treating you very well, thus you should not feel any guilt about telling them to go to hell (in so many words) or just simply start saying no.

This analysis is egregious. From the paper: They include ridiculous negative externalities like: "externalities associated with the use of road fuels in vehicles, such as traffic congestion and accidents (most important)". Are electric cars not going to crash or cause congestion on the roads? Is it really right to attribute this stuff to fossil fuels? It's clear that they make every effort possible to attribute costs to fossil fuels. I didn't look into it but I'd venture to guess that the estimated 'costs' of CO2 emissions- a necessarily rough estimate- aren't conservative. Where do they account for hidden benefits? The value of driving your spouse to the emergency room is supposedly equal to the $3.00 paid for a gallon of gas. What about the incalculable number of positive externalities that result from living in a society where everyone has access to cheap, reliable energy? Stern says fossil fuel use "damages economies, particularly in poorer countries." The very reason poorer countries are particularly affected by climate is because they are not industrialized- they don't have access to the cheap reliable energy fossil fuels provide. These sorts of 'studies' do not attempt to look at the cost/benefit analysis of fossil fuels in totality. They are almost all focused solely on the negative aspects of fossil fuels. IMO, the widespread nature of this bias (and a few others) is indicative of an ideological phenomenon. I agree, these things are impossible to calculate anyway. This is why direct government subsidies should be ended, as well as any government restrictions. Level the playing field and just let the market decide what each form of energy costs.

Why the hate for Samsung? You weren't asking me, but I'll chime in. I hate Samsung because of the front loading washer and dryer we got about 1-2 years ago. The timer will say 45 minutes and 90 minutes later it is still going. About the same time we bought our daughter a Whirlpool front loading stacked washer and dryer for her condo. We actually like using her washer and dryer when we visit, probably because we hate our Samsung units. Oh, there was our 50" Samsung TV we got back when we got it for a deal at $3,500. After about 6 months it developed this intermittent problem with the picture. Every time someone would come out to look at it the picture was fine. We have bought our last Samsung products. It isn't just you, I bought a Samsung dryer and it lasted less than 2 years, the plastic tub developed a crack which got worse and worse until it would no longer spin. POS, it was cheaper than Maytag or Whirlpool, but sometimes you get what you pay for. So I ended up buying a Whirlpool to replace it. I'd never buy another Samsung appliance.

+1. I never did get around to reading 3001. I've read a lot of his books though.

I assume you don't own a car? Because if you own one you must think the value it provides outweighs the lifetime cost (including depreciation). Even if you don't own one, I'm sure you can imagine other people with different life circumstances who get enough value from their car to justify ownership. Hating specific cars or car companies is fine but hating all cars because they depreciate seems... weird. They are a necessity (if you live outside of a major city), but that doesn't mean you have to like them. When the day comes that you can summon a robotic flying car on your personal communication device (embedded in your brain) and have it arrive to pick you up in 30 seconds and quickly bring you where ever you want to go, car ownership as we know it today will seem as ludicrous as owning and taking care of horses for transportation does to us now. I hate car ownership, although I own 2, I hate airline travel although I do it when I have to. You can certainly hate something even if it is the best that is available at the current time. Car ownership is expensive and car travel is extremely dangerous, there is a lot to dislike.

LOVE: Amazon Prime, Netflix, iPad, Linux, XEmacs, Kerrygold butter, http://grasslandbeef.com/ HATE: Microsoft Windows. Anything done by, heavily protected by, or subsidized by government. Some Examples: Comcast, Taxi cab companies, the medical industry, the military industrial complex (Halliburton, Raytheon, et al.), Big-Food (Monsanto, et al.), Public schools/transportation/radio/....

Why are they so long?! ;D ;D Gio You know it is a good book when you finish a thousand page book and wish it didn't have to end so soon.

Thanks. I used to read a lot of fiction, but now I pretty much only read non-fiction. I need to free up more time to be able to do both :) I try to read both, although I used to read more fiction than I do now. I used to read every new book by Stephen King, Dean Koontz, John Grisham, Ken Follett, and many others, but there are only a few fiction authors I rush out to buy every new book now. Neal Stephenson is definitely one of those, F. Paul Wilson is another.