Stormtrooper, in my opinion the best way to lower the birth rate without imposing draconian birth laws on people (like China does) would be to raise standards of living significantly as it has been shown that higher standards of living decrease birth rates.  The best way to raise standards of living, of course, is through capitalism. 

[This is when Father McGruder shows up to argue with me.]

^^  This. 

I voted an-cap, because I think that is what a anarchy founded on the NAP will end up being.

FTFY

It cracks me up how the legend of Satoshi Nakamoto grows.  First he was some Japanese dude with a really good idea.  Then he can't possibly be Japanese and is a mysterious libertarian benefactor who wants to change the world.  Now he's a woman and is hoarding her coins in order to benevolently "protect" the bitcoin market from instability.  I can just see people in the future commenting on price fluctuations: "Looks like ol' Satoshi is at it again, God bless 'im!"

^^ This is funny.  I get this mental picture of Mises and Hayek storming the Fed in ninja gear.  I award you +1 internets. 


What if I add "within a specific geographic location"?  Can you think of any entities that have a monopoly on coercion and compulsion within a specific geographic location?

Oh yes?  And what would that be?

Depends on what you are looking for.  If you have strong Libertarian views as do many on this forum then New Hampshire is a much better choice.  If you don't care about politics and don't mind the cold weather than Alaska is not a bad place to live.  The people tend to be very courteous and friendly on the whole, and personal freedoms are still fairly well respected. 

Hear, hear!  Very well put.

To me that just says you are capable of rationally reviewing facts and changing your mind when you find new data to convince you.  You would be surprised how many people cling stubbornly to beliefs that they cannot back up. 

Anyway, welcome, brother.

Is your name a reference to the C.S. Lewis book?  (or totally unrelated?)

Does he owe you your life?  Is it your right to demand others make sure you stay alive?

This is such fucking bullshit.  I can barely believe it. 

Moby Rick

I love the "Free Shipping" notice below the price.   

I doubt it.  His writing syntax doesn't seem to be Russian to me, but I could be wrong.  Perhaps I'll go through the forum to find all Satoshi's writings and do a comprehensive analysis on them to attempt to identify the most-likely native country of his.

"It is true that economics is a theoretical science and as such abstains from any judgement of value.  It is not its task to tell people what ends they should aim at.  It is a science of the means to be applied for the attainment of ends chosen, not, to be sure, a science of the choosing of ends.  Ultimate decisions, the valuations and the choosing of ends are beyond the scope of any science.  Science never tells a man how he should act; it merely shows how a man must act if he wants to attain definite ends."  --Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, pg 10

In the tradition of the Austrian school I consider economics to be a sub-category of the more general theory of praxeology, the general science of human action.  As such, it is intrinsically a valueless science.  To be sure, the different men who study it have their own biases and judgements of values, which cannot entirely be discarded.  Both Mises and Hazlitt held classical liberal (what now would probably be called "libertarian") views and did not seek to hide it.   However, their study of economics was an attempt to reveal the truths behind economic law and how one must act in order to achieve specific goals. 


The lesson that Hazlitt tries to teach in this book is:

"The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups." (pg 5)

You are right that there isn't a "correct" answer regarding positions of value judgements.  However, often, policy makers enact policies that contradict their stated aims.  The goal of that book is to show how certain seemingly innocuous policies and acts are actually harmful to large portions of the population or, at least, contradict the goals they were supposed to achieve.  I feel that Hazlitt dealt with it in a very thorough, logical and even-handed manner.  You should consider reading the work in its entirety.  It is short and a fairly easy read.


Man is a product of his social and political environment--I will not deny it.  I would like to point out however, that Mises, for example, was writing at a time when socialism was the most popular socio-political movement of the age and when his free-market laissez faire views were in the extreme minority.  Mises had first-hand experience with the authoritarian statist policies of the day, fleeing his homeland of Austria because of the Nazis.  He wasn't writing for the money-interests of crony capitalism, the rampant corporatism we see today.  Also, I will not deny that no man is 100% objective and that no science is perfect, but as Mises says

"[it] is customary for people to blame economics for being backward.  Now it is quite obvious that our economic theory is not perfect.  There is no such thing as perfection in human knowledge, nor for that matter in any other human achievement.  Omniscience is denied to man.  The most elaborate theory that seems to satisfy completely our thirst for knowledge may one day be amended or supplanted by a new theory.  Science does not give us absolute and final certainty.  It only gives us assurance within the limits  of our mental abilities and the prevailing state of scientific thought.  A scientific system is but one station in an endlessly progressing search for knowledge.  It is necessarily affected by the insufficiency inherent in every human effort.  But to acknowledge these facts does not mean that present-day economics is backward.  It merely means that economics is a living thing--and to live implies both imperfection and change."

And that is what Mises and the other Austrians attempt to do.  That is, within the limits of their own imperfection as humans, to discover the immutable laws of economics as derived logically through a priori reasoning.  You can know things apodictically: if two parties engage in uncoerced exchange, then they do so because they are both expecting to receive something of greater value than what they are giving up.  Axiomatic propositions such as these do not need to be verified through empirical studies, but can be known logically to be true.  This is the Austrian science of economics.

Maneulgar,  this is a really interesting point.  I'm not sure I can disagree with you at this point.  I want to think and read about this for a while and then will post my thoughts back on here.  It would have been impossible for Mises to predict the emergence of a scare money source out of non-scarce items (bitcoins which are based on electrons, or digital ones and zeros) so does his Regression Theorem fail?  Food for thought. 

Marijuana isn't exactly legal, only for medical use and less than 1 oz for personal use.

http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/marijuana-laws-and-penalties/alaska.htm

We're a weird state because there are a lot of "independent" minded people ande a fair amount of personal freedoms but the State is heavily dependent on the Federal Governement and that shows up in other ways.

Cool, but should be in Off-Topic, no? 

Atlas, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

You're getting to be as bad as Kiba.   ;-)

Read through this forum.  Plenty of guys get emotional about posts on the internet.  In fact, John Doe, I could probably dig up some posts by you that could be considered "emotional" responses.  People get pissed off and upset about posts all the time, regardless of gender.