True Law

[MoonShadow]

http://www.strike-the-root.com/discovering-true-laws

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[myrkul]

All I can say is: Yup.

[billyjoeallen]

good article. Well put.

[bitplane]

Wut? How is "the State should never have control of the money supply" not a "law" that is made up?

The laws of gravity are discovered. Political ideologies, no matter whether you are for them or against them are made up bullshit to do with humans interacting. How can anyone who uses the word "law" to mean anything other than a natural law or a piece of legislation be taken seriously?

Am I missing something here?

[myrkul]

Wut? How is "the State should never have control of the money supply" not a "law" that is made up?

True law is discovered.

State is given control of money.
Cock-up ensues.
State should NOT be given control of money ever again.

[billyjoeallen]

The statement logically flows from the premises. The State claims a monopoly of violence, a claim it cannot ultimately enforce without broad consent of the governed.  This consent diminishes when the populace is robbed of their purchasing power through money printing. Eventually, It is only through violence or threat of violence that people can be influenced to treat fiat scrip as money. Then consent evaporates entirely and the populace becomes ungovernable. 

Nobody can repeal the laws of economics by legislative fiat. At the margin, fear of death or harm by the state is simply not as compelling of an incentive as love of economic freedom. One might as well attempt to repeal the laws of electromagnetism.  Slavery is simply not economically viable unless you can convince the slaves to police themselves. The printing press and now the internet are making this increasingly difficult.

[bitplane]

Wut? How is "the State should never have control of the money supply" not a "law" that is made up?

True law is discovered.

State is given control of money.
Cock-up ensues.
State should NOT be given control of money ever again.

It's an opinion, maybe it's a strong opinion informed by evidence. Maybe even if you had seen many instances of states having control of the money supply and cocking it up, and others being in control of the money supply and not cocking it up, you'd have a working hypothesis. If that hypothesis had been formalized and tested many many times but never disproved, not once, and everyone accepted it as fact, THEN you could call it a law. But that statement would still be an opinion informed by a law, not a law in itself.

tl;dr You can't just pull opinion out of your ass and say it's a law, unless you've got absolutely no credibility or self-respect.

[myrkul]

It's an opinion, maybe it's a strong opinion informed by evidence. Maybe even if you had seen many instances of states having control of the money supply and cocking it up, and others being in control of the money supply and not cocking it up, you'd have a working hypothesis. If that hypothesis had been formalized and tested many many times but never disproved, not once, and everyone accepted it as fact, THEN you could call it a law. But that statement would still be an opinion informed by a law, not a law in itself.

tl;dr You can't just pull opinion out of your ass and say it's a law, unless you've got absolutely no credibility or self-respect.

Show me one, just one government that hasn't eventually cocked up its money supply, and I'll concede the point.

[bitplane]

Show me one, just one government that hasn't eventually cocked up its money supply, and I'll concede the point.

There's no need. My argument is about the use of the word "law" to describe an opinion. Newton's inverse square law describes how classical gravity works, there is no law of "you should keep heavy things that will fall on the ground" because that's an opinion.

See the difference? Laws don't describe how things ought to be, they describe how things are. Words mean things.

[billyjoeallen]

Show me one, just one government that hasn't eventually cocked up its money supply, and I'll concede the point.

There's no need. My argument is about the use of the word "law" to describe an opinion. Newton's inverse square law describes how classical gravity works, there is no law of "you should keep heavy things that will fall on the ground" because that's an opinion.

See the difference? Laws don't describe how things ought to be, they describe how things are. Words mean things.

It's not a law. It's the logical consequence of a law. Gravity is a law and falling when dropped is a consequence. All governments fail at monetary central planning for the same reason that governments always fail at every other form of central planning. The economic calculation problem. This is economic law as discovered by Hayek.

[NghtRppr]

Physical laws are not prescriptions of what must happen. Physical laws are descriptions of what does happen. There's not some magical and mysterious force controlling the universe. The universe is objectively random but certain patterns can and do emerge from that randomness. This is off-topic but it's a pet peeve of mine that most scientists still embrace religious and magical thinking when it comes to physical laws.

[myrkul]

Show me one, just one government that hasn't eventually cocked up its money supply, and I'll concede the point.

There's no need. My argument is about the use of the word "law" to describe an opinion. Newton's inverse square law describes how classical gravity works, there is no law of "you should keep heavy things that will fall on the ground" because that's an opinion.

See the difference? Laws don't describe how things ought to be, they describe how things are. Words mean things.

Very well. You're right. the law should be stated: States cock-up money supplies.

The advice based on that law is: Don't give States control of the money.

[bitplane]

Very well. You're right. the law should be stated: States cock-up money supplies.

The advice based on that law is: Don't give States control of the money.

Thank you. I have absolutely no problem with either of your statements, I can't vouch for how true they are (depends entirely on who they cock things up for!) but I still think that the linked article is incredibly hard to take seriously. Cultist tricks like the redefinition of the words "true" and "law" serve to add artificial authority to whatever opinion is being pushed; it's emotive, intellectually dishonest and only works in circle-jerks. People parading around claiming to be the Truth^TM, Light^TM or The One True Way^TM are not people you should be taking seriously, even if you share beliefs with them.

[naturallaw]

This sounds similar to the more widely-known term "natural law."  

[MoonShadow]

Very well. You're right. the law should be stated: States cock-up money supplies.

The advice based on that law is: Don't give States control of the money.

Thank you. I have absolutely no problem with either of your statements, I can't vouch for how true they are (depends entirely on who they cock things up for!) but I still think that the linked article is incredibly hard to take seriously. Cultist tricks like the redefinition of the words "true" and "law" serve to add artificial authority to whatever opinion is being pushed; it's emotive, intellectually dishonest and only works in circle-jerks. People parading around claiming to be the Truth^TM, Light^TM or The One True Way^TM are not people you should be taking seriously, even if you share beliefs with them.

If you don't like my circle jerk, stay out of the middle.

[FredericBastiat]

http://www.strike-the-root.com/discovering-true-laws

Perhaps I'm beating an already dead horse here. But what I wrote here would (also) be true law. But then you've probably already read it.

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=18489.msg351447#msg351447

By the way, it is a well written article. Truth, knowledge, and all laws are discovered not invented.