Economic Devastation

[CoinCube]

 

You are hiding behind trade. Human trafficking is not voluntary prostitution. It is not trade but theft. Human trafficking implies violence, force, and coercion.

I have personal knowledge that females enter into these situations wilfully and even with determination! I have even begged some of them not to do it! And I am talking about ladies as old as 30, who know better.

You are conflating voluntary prostitution with human trafficking.

The State will always classify the former as the latter, unless it can license and tax the sex workers (e.g. indirectly by confiscating/expropriating the bar owners) to expropriate them.

You are building strawmen.

Just admit you hate nature.

...

Nature is a whole. You either ban it, or love it. I rationally chose the latter.

I don't hate nature when certain actors do heinous acts. I hate those actors. I accept nature as a beautiful system.

you are genuinely repulsed by human trafficking. Rather I see it as nature's way of competition and evolution, i.e. survival-of-the-fittest. I see it as a beautiful system of maximizing resilience. I think more like a native in this aspect, i.e. I want to live in harmony with nature.

Filipinos have it about perfectly in balance. Stop the heinous crime, but fuck the pedantic, agonizing rules.

Repugnant you look at the world through the prism of anarchy with a focus on the consequences of imposed rules and systems. I view the world through the opposing prism. Fundamentally this is probably why we argue so often. It is possible to expand ones natural viewpoint and glance through a different facet but it is never the default view.

I highlighted your writings in the original post because they helped me to glance through your prism of anarchy and see fundamental weakness in collectivism not previously observed. You are correct when you said I raved about it. I did so because the works exposed a deep truth that was previously hidden from me. It is a truth my natural strengths were not suited to easily discover.  

In our current age of excess your view is the most useful. We live an an age of collectivism not anarchism. Nevertheless, just as my prism naturally obscures the evils of collectivism. Yours blinds you equally to anarchism. This can be seen in your take it or leave it comments regarding nature and your insistence that opposing any natural outcome is equivalent to opposing them all. It is also apparent in your defense of violence and coercion.

When challenged on the morality of coercion it is you who are building a strawman when you attack the inefficiency in a collective remedy rather then responding on the merits. All collective action is by definition inefficient, and wasteful. It does not logically follow that all such actions are of negative utility.  

I wonder if you have fully examined the implication of praising coercion and violence as "a beautiful system of maximizing resilience" You claim to support punishing the most heinous crime, however, your acceptance of coercion as natural and good means that all crime is also natural and good. You commit yourself to the morals of might makes right in all things.

[mental_disease_sucks]

In an anarchism (libertarian) world where the people must protect themselves, those heinous crimes meet their fate at the hands of men, e.g. the vigilantes here in Davao City have nearly entirely eliminated drug dealing.

The State can't protect you against most crime, e.g. the police arrive too late to stop the murderer. Recently the police arrived 7 hours too late to stop the young guys who slashed my $200 diesel SUV tires (sidewall repair isn't really viable). The solution to that is talking to my local community about why they aren't scolding the young men about mutual respect, else moving from the community to one where the elders educate correctly the youth. This notion of the State disincentivizing crime with high levels of enforcement is proven to be false with the USA having 99% conviction rate and 7X higher incarceration rate than rest of the world, yet also having one of the highest crime rates. Some claim this is because of the negro population which has a 20X higher propensity to murder, but yet we see from Howard Katz's research that before 1940 and the New Deal, negros had the same unemployment rate as whites, and now it is double. The causal relationship between large government collectives and the opposite of the intended results is patently clear in all the statistics and history of mankind. The whites in the USA are doing a more subtle but much more harmful crime and it is called Marxism. Europeans argue they have suppressed crime since Hitler with their vast socialism, but this was just a bribe "to love each other" and when that debt illusion collapses, we will see the true hate in Europe explode with vengeance and the apathetic cows will once again be mowed into the dirt. Read my quotes of Howard Katz for the history that will soon repeat.

In short, I trust nature to deal with threats to nature. And the data on crime supports my view.

Collectivism is only beneficial and necessary where it was impossible to otherwise get economies-of-scale to accomplish necessary actions such as military protection and building roads.

If via technology we can eliminate the need for those economies-of-scale, then we no longer need large-scale collectivism.

Note I didn't say we won't have a multitude of leaders with smaller communities of top-down organization. Contrast this against large morass collectives that do nothing but destroy mankind. Don't equate this with warlords in the feudal middle age, because in the Knowledge Age the capital is held by the workers, not exclusively by the leaders. We no longer have this huge fixed capital inertias to sustain warlords. Workers can change affiliations on a whim if necessary and take all their knowledge capital with them.

We will always have communities within the scale of our Dunbar number limit, because humans thrive on social interaction. Knowledge is spawned from trade of ideas. I entirely agreed with your point about diversity of views and the ability for us to express our views with differing local communities that compete and trade with each other. This is mother nature at work. What a glorious system of justice and freedom to experiment and compete.

http://blog.mpettis.com/2015/02/when-do-we-decide-that-europe-must-restructure-much-of-its-debt/#comment-123054

...Innovation was just as valuable in the Industrial world as it is in the Post-Industrial...

I already refuted that. If you don’t understand that all by myself (where the cost of my computer and living expenses were insignificant), I generated roughly a $million in revenues when I programmed CoolPage, then you don’t understand the transformation underway. In the Industrial Age, I would have needed to build a factory to produce a product to sell. Now one only needs to send off a design to a 3D printer. Tangible costs are becoming irrelevant. It is all mental now costs now.

Suvy I am dumbfounded by your stubborn unwillingness to comprehend a simple concept.

In the Industrial Age, the fixed capital costs were the majority of the cost of production. In the Knowledge Age, innovation is the majority of the cost of production.

CoinCube, I want to work and I don't work when I am here writing. I am doing this because I genuinely want to see if I could change even just one Marxist to a libertarian (and I realize you think you are a libertarian but I don't think there are but a few westerners who actually libertarians, i.e. even Eric S Raymond appears to be a Marxist apologist with totalitarian outbursts masquerading as an anarchist, because it is what you feel in your heart about nature and tolerating discord, diversity, imperfection, and random shit that determines your true philosophical affiliation). I don't think I can do it, but you are my guinea pig. And because I really care about you and yours. I hope you can lead your family in direction of the Private wave. You've had a start to life which has thrust you deep in the dying Public wave. You have time to adjust and I hope you don't waste that scarce time.

I hope you support my efforts. As Howard Katz wrote, I know the justice of mother nature will bring humans great prosperity as it did when the Pilgrims learned to abandon their Marxism to survive starvation. And from that transformation all the greatness of the USA was spawned. I believe just maybe you can make this transformation. Maybe.

At a young age I resisted the indoctrination. Eventually this caused me to break free from the addictions to the deal with the pain that westerners are dealing with by being indoctrinated (mind programmed) that they must have perfect love and ideological nirvana. I ended up in the Philippines at age 26. And it was Herculean adjustment process, but it was my destiny. I arrived now at age 50 (recovering from a debilitating disease Multiple Sclerosis which robbed me of 9 years of my life (i.e. all of my 40s), and a blinding incident in 1999 which robbed me of my mid-30s) to be a different person than I was in the USA, but found the core values I was fighting for but didn't entirely understand with all the Marxist noise interfering with me while I was living in the West.

Note curing MS appears to be a long process (months?). My body wants to sleep all the time (and I want to force myself to work!), but when I do some sports I am functioning at a much higher energy level. And my fatigue is more on sleep instead of insomnia effect. My head has dull itchiness, dizziness, and sensations. Yeah the body is healing but it is not an instant transformation into perfect energy. I had one day which was absolutely phenomenal and I expect those days will become more frequent in the near future. My MS clearly worsened since I successfully got temporally cured from high dose vitamin D3 in 2012. Well I knew that, remember I was commenting how I felt like I was getting brain cancer, and I could clearly feel the decline had accelerated. When I couldn't jump off my left leg in basketball and my bench press faltered in past several months, I was starting to feel desperate.

Now I have a lot of catching up to do. Luckily nature blessed me with a resilient, athletic and youthful body. I get a nice ego high when a younger person says I am 28. Maybe it was because I looked like I was 16 when I was age 26 as shown below. I believe I only had to shave once every 2 weeks back then.

So maybe the only way to make the transition is to leave the comfort zone. I dunno.

Yeah sorry I think you need to entirely abandon that core value you are hanging on to. Specifically thinking that somethings just won't be fair or correct without doing something. That ideological itch has been planted in your brain and I don't think you can remove it.

OROBTC, I believe that Marxists such as I3352 talk too much about fear and self-help nonsense, and can't really get to pragmaticism because they are too mired down in feeling sorry for themselves and others. This again is this Marxist ideological disease that Katz wrote about where the medieval folks were unable to fight. Michael Jordan's "Just Do It" and "maybe you are making excuses", applies here.

http://www.coolpage.com/shelby/15.jpg

[OROBTC]

...

repugnant (m_d_s)

Thank you for your (long!) pieces by Howard Katz, I had not run into him before.  I took some time to read about a third of the excerpts you quoted, it will take more for me to finish.  So far, I think that his observations and analysis are most excellent.

His idea of "love societies" turning into murderous ones is a take I have not seen either.  I need to read more thoroughly before I can comment further, but thanks again for bringing Katz to our attention.

Correct re living with nature (life) as it is, not as how it should be.

I am glad that you are feeling better, those of us in our 50s need all the good news we can get.

CoinCube

I never did have you pegged as a Collectivist!  Marx, although he did uncover some analytical tools, is indeed to a great degree responsible for many hideous deaths.

In general, I go with whichever side of the argument at hand is most positive for personal liberty.  Lower taxes.  GTFO of my hair.  Fewer rules benefiting any "elite du jour".

And now look at the cops (USA).  Word comes in today of a cop who shot a guy in the back as he was running away.  I cannot remember (just my own observation) when the cops actually ever prevented a crime in my life (or a loved one's).  The cops/NSA/Police State are making me nervous...

l3552

Your comments here are very useful  Fear and resentment are much more destructive than most people know.

Control of one's own mind is much greater than I had realized until maybe a year or so ago.  You can beat fear (and other negative emotions) to a greater degree than almost everyone thinks.  It takes time and work, but it can be done.  

[mental_disease_sucks]

l3552

Your comments here are very useful  Fear and resentment are much more destructive than most people know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH8nTfxwByY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9ZaudNTSeQ

Feeding self-pity is counter-productive. If people who are mired in that see the successful people not wasting their time on them, then maybe they will come to realize what they need to do to be part of the success.

All through my illness, I didn't want pity (perhaps a bit of empathy at the lowest points from the people closest to me) and rather I wanted solutions or positive plans. I was always trying to focus myself on concrete plans and actions (with mitigated success because MS is so physically debilitating).

[OROBTC]

...

m_d_s

Self-pity is counter-productive, I have no quarrel with that.  You are also right that unproductive people who resent productive ones MAY (in time) understand that being productive is the key to success.

The point I was driving at is that fear and resentment are negative emotions that just make things worse.  Fear and resentment can be beaten to a degree much more so than most people imagine.

I try to avoid "the power of positive thinking" sorts of remarks, in that they may be viewed as trite or BS.  But, there is at least some truth to positive thinking.  Actually, it looks to me like you are a great example, you kept at it through difficult times in a positive manner, and did not wallow in self-pity nor become burdensome to others (a form of slavery).

*   *   *

DO let us know when your project comes to fruition.

[mental_disease_sucks]

There is one thing that could draw me back to the USA. Damn I miss where I was born and grew up. I was the white black kid. Right in there dancing with them totally colorblind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hWWVrEHaRA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHgJFutF5vs

The prior pic of me was 1991 in the French Quarter. Note I was sitting on a New Orleans Saints emblem.

You won't find that real New Orleans where the tourists are.

[mental_disease_sucks]

Self-Help Reality Infomercial

While we have been expending precious time on futility trying to elucidate the ideological bullshit, the liquidity collapse and radical increase in volatility on tap for a BIG BANG on Oct. 1 2015 is empirically proceeding exactly on schedule:

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/04/09/bank-portfolios-reflect-bubble-for-2015-75/

This steamroller ain't gonna wait for our ideological masturbation. CoinCube it appears to me that you (and many or most other Westerners) are afraid of living without a Big Brother to make everything perfect. I don't think it is unfactual to state that you have shown you are afraid (jealous? insatiable?) some criminal might not get punished. Westerners are so jealous of nature, i.e. they can't just let it be without doing something to "fix it" and "control it". They just don't trust an adhoc (spontaneous if necessary) "jury of (the criminal's) peers" to root out real threats in their local communities.

Getting angry at evil, breeds hatred which is evil. Without evil, we wouldn't be able to discern good. Thus evil is necessary if we want good to exist. This is why any attempt at perfect love will always devolve to extreme hatred and evil. It simply can't exist a world with only good, nor any other uniform distribution. Life requires diversity. I had explained the science behind this many times, but it just flies right over everyone's head.

Face it, life will be imperfect. Get over it. Be pragmatic. Life, love, laugh, rejoice, cry, smile, and make your mark in history.

As for I3352, I bet he will be still be playing with his lovely dovey fuzzy navel and reading Alcoholics Anonymous books to others when the SHTF. Ask the starved Pilgrims how complacency and idealism ("God will save us") worked out for them.

George Carlin explained "self important" Westerners (Marxists) well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Rlqjxst6xU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQdC-e82gmk#t=276

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWiBt-pqp0E

Hilarious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcr8dm9Prkk

[TPTB_need_war]

Unfortunately I had gotten confused by various tax protest theories and even though I had seen the following website in the past, I didn't pay careful enough attention.

This method appears to work (doesn't get charged with "frivolous return" or other failures) and the government can't possibly prosecute in court all of the filers. Successful cumulative refunds exceeded $1 million by 2005 and $11 million currently.

http://losthorizons.com/Documents/The16th.htm

MY FRIEND, ALL YOUR LIFE YOU’VE BEEN TOLD THAT THE 16TH AMENDMENT was a transformational event in the history of the United States Constitution by which an unapportioned direct federal tax on "all that comes in" was authorized. You’ve been told that the amendment reversed the preceding 137-year-old Constitutional tax structure prohibiting such taxes-- under which the American people had grown to be the freest, most prosperous, and most optimistic people in the history of the world-- in favor of a radically-different structure under which the scandal-ridden and deeply-distrusted denizens of Washington, DC were granted carte blanche to reach directly into every wallet, be it that of a Wall Street tycoon or that of the average working stiff.

The 16th Amendment says the Pollock court's conclusion was wrong (or, in any event, is overruled). The amendment provides that Congress can continue to apply the income tax to gains that qualify as "incomes" (that is, the subclass of receipts that had always been subject to the “income” excise due to being the product of an exercise of privilege) without being made to treat the tax as direct and needing apportionment when applied to dividends and rent by virtue of judicial consideration of the source:
 

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

The amendment doesn't transform the "income tax" into a direct tax, nor modify, repeal, revoke or affect the apportionment requirement for capitations and other direct taxes. It simply prohibits the courts from using the overruled reasoning of the Pollock decision to shield otherwise excisable dividends and rents from the tax. As Treasury Department legislative draftsman F. Morse Hubbard summarizes the amendment’s effect for Congress in hearing testimony in 1943:
 

"[T]he amendment made it possible to bring investment income within the scope of the general income-tax law, but did not change the character of the tax. It is still fundamentally an excise or duty..."

This isn’t Hubbard’s personal opinion. Almost immediately after the amendment was declared adopted in 1913, and the income tax was revived after its 18-year hiatus since the Pollock decision, the application of the tax was again challenged (in Brushaber v. Union Pacific RR Co., 240 U.S. 1 (1916)). Frank Brushaber, a New Yorker with investments in the Union Pacific Railroad Company, based his suit on a series of contentions about the 16th Amendment. The Supreme Court took the case with the intention of settling all issues regarding the purpose and meaning of the amendment and declaring the ongoing nature of the income tax as affected thereby.
 
The lengthy, detailed and unanimous ruling issued by the court declares that the amendment has no effect on what is and what is not subject to the income tax, and does nothing to limit or diminish the apportionment provisions in the Constitution concerning capitations or other direct taxes. Here are three more good summaries of the Brushaber ruling to add to F. Morse Hubbard’s:
 

"The Amendment, the [Supreme] court said, judged by the purpose for which it was passed, does not treat income taxes as direct taxes but simply removed the ground which led to their being considered as such in the Pollock case, namely, the source of the income. Therefore, they are again to be classified in the class of indirect taxes to which they by nature belong."
Cornell Law Quarterly, 1 Cornell L. Q. 298 (1915-16)
 
"In Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., Mr. C. J. White, upholding the income tax imposed by the Tariff Act of 1913, construed the Amendment as a declaration that an income tax is "indirect," rather than as making an exception to the rule that direct taxes must be apportioned."
Harvard Law Review, 29 Harv. L. Rev. 536 (1915-16)
 
"The Supreme Court, in a decision written by Chief Justice White, first noted that the Sixteenth Amendment did not authorize any new type of tax, nor did it repeal or revoke the tax clauses of Article I of the Constitution, quoted above.  Direct taxes were, notwithstanding the advent of the Sixteenth Amendment, still subject to the rule of apportionment…"
Legislative Attorney of the American Law Division of the Library of Congress Howard M. Zaritsky in his 1979 Report No. 80-19A, entitled 'Some Constitutional Questions Regarding the Federal Income Tax Laws'

So, the class of what qualifies as "income" subject to the tax remains the same after the amendment as it had been before it. The 16th Amendment eliminated the "source" argument, but didn't change the limits on what was subject to the tax. If something didn’t qualify as taxable without apportionment prior to Pollock and the amendment, it still doesn't qualify as taxable without apportionment. The Supreme Court reiterates this in ruling after ruling:
 

"The Sixteenth Amendment, although referred to in argument, has no real bearing and may be put out of view. As pointed out in recent decisions, it does not extend the taxing power to new or excepted subjects..."
U.S. Supreme Court, Peck v. Lowe, 247 U.S. 165 (1918)
 
"[T]he settled doctrine is that the Sixteenth Amendment confers no power upon Congress to define and tax as income without apportionment something which theretofore could not have been properly regarded as income."
U.S. Supreme Court, Taft v. Bowers, 278 US 470, 481 (1929)
 
"[T]he sole purpose of the Sixteenth Amendment was to remove the apportionment requirement for whichever incomes were otherwise taxable. 45 Cong. Rec. 2245-2246 (1910); id. at 2539; see also Brushaber v. Union Pacific R. Co., 240 U. S. 1, 240 U. S. 17-18 (1916)"
U.S. Supreme Court, So. Carolina v. Baker, 485 U.S. 505 (1988)

Summing it all up, the 16th Amendment comes down to this: The Pollock court had said, "Congress has laid a tax on a big class of excisable objects (which it calls "incomes"), and it's all good. But when the tax is applied to dividend and rent "incomes", it actually functions as a property tax on their sources and therefore, in regard to those two "incomes", the tax has to be apportioned."
 
The 16th Amendment simply says, "Nix to that last bit."

Here is the Supreme Court again declaring the ongoing vitality of the apportionment rule (the 16th Amendment notwithstanding), and specifically distinguishing the income tax as an excise and not a capitation:
 

"If [a] tax is a direct one, it shall be apportioned according to the census or enumeration. If it is a duty, impost, or excise, it shall be uniform throughout the United States. Together, these classes include every form of tax appropriate to sovereignty. Whether the [income] tax is to be classified as an "excise" is in truth not of critical importance [for this analysis]. If not that, it is an "impost", or a "duty". A capitation or other "direct" tax it certainly is not."
U.S. Supreme Court, Steward Machine Co. v. Collector of Internal Revenue, 301 U.S. 548 (1937) (Emphasis added; citations omitted.)

As the USA economy turns down, if more people begin to demand not to pay FICA and income taxes, the government is going to need to resort to martial law, suspension of elections, and suspension of the rule-of-law, in order to contain a popular revolt. You can see this fuming and closer to exploding:

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/04/09/abuse-of-contempt-of-court-far-more-common-than-people-realize/

http://pontiactribune.com/federal-ultimatum-land-innocent-michigan-woman-behind-bars/

Armstrong's political cycle models are pointing to a significant rise in 3rd party political support for 2016 national elections. TPTB are going to have to suspend elections at some point, as they've pushed about as far as they can using Boehmer to stymie the Tea Party:

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/03/19/the-man-destroying-the-republican-party/

Either Obama (2012) or Hillary Clinton (2016) will probably be the last duly elected POTUS:

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/03/25/state-department-covering-up-for-hillary/

[OROBTC]

...

TPTB_n_w

A real third party in 2016 pretty much (no one can be sure) means a President Hillary.  The third party, IMO, would likely be a Tea Party, especially if the R-Team chooses Jeb. 

And a President Hillary likely means moar war as well as Economic Devastation.

President Hillary?  Hey, TPTB_n_w, would you have a spare bedroom over there?   

[vvv8]

Self-Help Reality Infomercial

While we have been expending precious time on futility trying to elucidate the ideological bullshit, the liquidity collapse and radical increase in volatility on tap for a BIG BANG on Oct. 1 2015 is empirically proceeding exactly on schedule:

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/04/09/bank-portfolios-reflect-bubble-for-2015-75/

This steamroller ain't gonna wait for our ideological masturbation. CoinCube it appears to me that you (and many or most other Westerners) are afraid of living without a Big Brother to make everything perfect. I don't think it is unfactual to state that you have shown you are afraid (jealous? insatiable?) some criminal might not get punished. Westerners are so jealous of nature, i.e. they can't just let it be without doing something to "fix it" and "control it". They just don't trust an adhoc (spontaneous if necessary) "jury of (the criminal's) peers" to root out real threats in their local communities.

Getting angry at evil, breeds hatred which is evil. Without evil, we wouldn't be able to discern good. Thus evil is necessary if we want good to exist. This is why any attempt at perfect love will always devolve to extreme hatred and evil. It simply can't exist a world with only good, nor any other uniform distribution. Life requires diversity. I had explained the science behind this many times, but it just flies right over everyone's head.

Face it, life will be imperfect. Get over it. Be pragmatic. Life, love, laugh, rejoice, cry, smile, and make your mark in history.

As for I3352, I bet he will be still be playing with his lovely dovey fuzzy navel and reading Alcoholics Anonymous books to others when the SHTF. Ask the starved Pilgrims how complacency and idealism ("God will save us") worked out for them.

George Carlin explained "self important" Westerners (Marxists) well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Rlqjxst6xU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQdC-e82gmk#t=276

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWiBt-pqp0E

Hilarious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcr8dm9Prkk

You need to stay on these boards, no more going away. You bring about topics which are highly educational that I love reading, as i'm sure do others. You are a very intellectual man, i'm sure you can control your posting habits if you wanted to.

[vokain]

Stumbled into this article today, thought you all could appreciate it
http://fractalenlightenment.com/33998/life/five-unexpected-signs-you-may-be-an-anarchist

We're not alone!

There is one thing that could draw me back to the USA. Damn I miss where I was born and grew up. I was the white black kid. Right in there dancing with them totally colorblind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hWWVrEHaRA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHgJFutF5vs

The prior pic of me was 1991 in the French Quarter. Note I was sitting on a New Orleans Saints emblem.

You won't find that real New Orleans where the tourists are.

I think that is my favorite city in the US, for obvious reasons. I'll be back for my fourth time in a year for the first weekend of this year's Jazz Fest. Place touched my soul

If you ever come back...

[darlidada]

Yeah sorry I think you need to entirely abandon that core value you are hanging on to. Specifically thinking that somethings just won't be fair or correct without doing something. That ideological itch has been planted in your brain and I don't think you can remove it.

I've so many of these stupid core values. Whats tough is that I know they are wrong, but knowing is not enough. I'm empotionally attached to them. I dont know why. Its like they are a part of me, like a sick leg i'm too romantic to amputate. Maybe because I think they define the myself or the self I want to become/idolize. Its truly idiotic because in the end its working against me.

They are like a disease preventing us to become individuals. As long as we have them we dont differentiate that much from other people, we stay within group_think and group_action. The only purpose they serve is as a protection against tyrannical force because by conforming yourself you make yourself indistinct from the masses : you become a fungible human being.

Childish rant and rambling :

Why is the world so hostile? I want to become an individual but it seems so hard to me. Its like I have to fight the whole word and also myself. It's like I have to betray the whole world and also myself. Its like to kill the whole world and also myself. Becoming an individual feels like a sacrilege. Why isnt it easier if thats what enable us to bring our singularity to the world ? Well I'll stop there and go to bed as my brain seems apeased when it realized it was a sacrilege to the group and its rules but not to nature.

[CoinCube]

CoinCube, I want to work and I don't work when I am here writing. I am doing this because I genuinely want to see if I could change even just one Marxist to a libertarian (and I realize you think you are a libertarian but I don't think there are but a few westerners who actually libertarians, i.e. even Eric S Raymond appears to be a Marxist apologist with totalitarian outbursts masquerading as an anarchist, because it is what you feel in your heart about nature and tolerating discord, diversity, imperfection, and random shit that determines your true philosophical affiliation). I don't think I can do it, but you are my guinea pig.
...
In short, I trust nature to deal with threats to nature. And the data on crime supports my view.

Collectivism is only beneficial and necessary where it was impossible to otherwise get economies-of-scale to accomplish necessary actions such as military protection and building roads.

I agree this debate is starting to become something of a time sink so lets see if we can wind this down. This will be my last post on this particular issue. Any reply you choose to make will be a concluding one.

The purpose of my recent posts echo yours. At it's most extreme anarchism degrades into the the extremism and logical fallacies of egoism. You occasionally wander into these waters as you did with your recent defense of coercion. I want to see if I can pull you back into libertarianism

We agree that collectivism is only beneficial when it is impossible or inefficient to otherwise get economies-of-scale. During our prior debate we also agreed that some top down structure is necessary for convergence to optimal outcomes. We appear do disagree substantially over the extent and nature of that structure.

Our current dispute is very much related to the concept of justice.

When the people of a culture discover the concept of justice. they rise to greatness. There is a burst of energy. They make both intellectual and practical achievements. They astonish the world. If we examine the roots of our own culture and ask what has made the United States great over the past few centuries, we have to trace things back to the ideas of the Founding Fathers, which in turn are modeled on the ideas of John Locke. But Locke was a Calvinist. What the Calvinists did was to reinterpret the Christianity of that day in terms of the Old Testament and the concept of justice.

You asked why I used the words "somewhat repulsive" to describe anonymity. It is because true anonymity obscures justice. Anonymity allows for crime without recourse, darkness without light. In blinding government it also blinds justice.

Building roads and the military are not the only areas where economies of scale are achieved. These economies are also achieved in the establishment of systemic justice.
It is justice and recourse that allow untrusted strangers to efficiently transact and trade.

I hope you support my efforts. As Howard Katz wrote, I know the justice of mother nature will bring humans great prosperity as it did when the Pilgrims learned to abandon their Marxism to survive starvation. And from that transformation all the greatness of the USA was spawned. I believe just maybe you can make this transformation. Maybe.
...
If via technology we can eliminate the need for those economies-of-scale, then we no longer need large-scale collectivism.

You may be surprised to know that I completely support you in your goal of establishing a strong anonymous cryptocurrency.  

As I stated above I do not favor anonymity as an optimal solution. I believe distributed cryptocurrency with pseudonymity will lead to superior outcomes. However, breachable systems are inherently vulnerable to collectivism. A strong and anonymous alternative is useful as a sword of damocles hanging over the government ensuring good behavior. I suspect our current age of excess will eventually be self limiting, however, it is never a bad idea to hedge ones bets. If I am wrong I too will need an exit.  

  

[CoinCube]

Yeah sorry I think you need to entirely abandon that core value you are hanging on to. Specifically thinking that somethings just won't be fair or correct without doing something. That ideological itch has been planted in your brain and I don't think you can remove it.

I've so many of these stupid core values. Whats tough is that I know they are wrong, but knowing is not enough. I'm empotionally attached to them. I dont know why. Its like they are a part of me, like a sick leg i'm too romantic to amputate. Maybe because I think they define the myself or the self I want to become/idolize. Its truly idiotic because in the end its working against me.

This probably depends on your core value and how it is harming you. I just finished reading through the wall Howard Katz post on the last page. They are surprisingly good. This portion is relevant and good advice.

I reject the idea of sacrificing myself for my principles. My principles are to save me and make my life come out better, not to get me sacrificed. If your principles can’t do this for you, then what good are they? This is why I stick to my principles.

CoinCube

I never did have you pegged as a Collectivist!  Marx, although he did uncover some analytical tools, is indeed to a great degree responsible for many hideous deaths.

In general, I go with whichever side of the argument at hand is most positive for personal liberty.  Lower taxes.  GTFO of my hair.  Fewer rules benefiting any "elite du jour".

And now look at the cops (USA).  Word comes in today of a cop who shot a guy in the back as he was running away.  I cannot remember (just my own observation) when the cops actually ever prevented a crime in my life (or a loved one's).  The cops/NSA/Police State are making me nervous...

Anyone who supports any visage of local government, laws, or rules is to some degree a collectivist. I am pretty sure I would quickly be kicked out of any Communist/Marxist meeting in the country. In comparison to Anonymint, however, I will accept that label as I am certainly to the left of him. I have never claimed to be an anarchist.  

[TPTB_need_war]

This is principally relevant to the main topic of this thread, technological unemployment. Without your individuality, you can't compete in the Knowledge Age. It is precisely what you can add that is unique that is most valuable in the Knowledge Age.

The only purpose they serve is as a protection against tyrannical force because by conforming yourself you make yourself indistinct from the masses : you become a fungible human being.

Incorrect. It gives the tyrants their power. Individuality and non-fungibility is a friction which is the antithesis of the economies-of-scale the powers-that-be need to control us. Read my essay Rise of Knowledge linked from the opening post of this thread.

Why is the world so hostile? I want to become an individual but it seems so hard to me. Its like I have to fight the whole word and also myself. It's like I have to betray the whole world and also myself. Its like to kill the whole world and also myself. Becoming an individual feels like a sacrilege. Why isnt it easier if thats what enable us to bring our singularity to the world ? Well I'll stop there and go to bed as my brain seems apeased when it realized it was a sacrilege to the group and its rules but not to nature.

How sad the indoctrination has made you feel like breaking away from the herd is doing the herd more harm. They really programmed your mind in the western world. I don't know how I managed to escape that mind programming.

Thanks so much for sharing and being so open. You have exemplified a very important effect of indoctrination through culture, mass media, and state schools.

I rejected TV in my teens. I started to run off into the desert in my 20s, and by 26 I had taken off to Asia without even a hotel reservation. I guess I am just fearless. Must be my Cherokee blood. I find it nearly impossible to back down from a fight. I am like the Chihuahua that yaps ferociously at the Rottweiler never aware that I am smaller and should run away (and I blinded in one eye because of that trait or maybe it is because I hesitated lacking fierceness which gave them a moment to gang up on me). Normally I am very laid back and smiling. But put me into any competitive circumstance and the fierce eyebrows, scowl, and determination come out. I admire men who give me good competition, or who are great teammates; and I am very much into sharing camaraderie amongst my competitors and teammates.

Thus I would say it my extreme competitiveness that caused my independence.

In short, I love competition and challenges.

[TPTB_need_war]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Westerners mired in the Stockholm Syndrome
Date:    Fri, April 10, 2015 8:08 am
To:      "Armstrong Economics" <armstrongeconomics@gmail.com>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The only possible way they will wake up from collectivism is if a
Knowledge Age gives them irresistible individual empowerment, and this
jars them out of their emotional Stockholm Syndrome. Any way, we only need
the leaders to do this, then the herd follows into the goods and services
economy created.

This will be my last post on this particular issue.

I doubt it

Because I am going to give you a reason that you will feel compelled to reply.

At it's most extreme anarchism degrades into the the extremism and logical fallacies of egoism. You occasionally wander into these waters as you did with your recent defense of coercion. I want to see if I can pull you back into libertarianism

Stirner is correct. But the "might" part should be rephrased as whoever can manage with the most efficacy, i.e. knowledge capital in the Knowledge Age (it was stored monetary capital in the fixed investment Industrial Age).

Your mistake CoinCube, is that you conflate all outcomes which can be altruist with the notion that altruism only results from involuntary (i.e. coercion) collectivized resources (a.k.a. government). The great coercion is the State and the big capitalist owners' dick up our ass. And you believe their bullshit about us supporting them to end human trafficking when they are trafficking all of us every damn day!

In fact, the only true altruism never comes from collectives and only from local relationships, creating new efficiencies (i.e. innovation), and competition for who can manage resources with the most efficacy.

Don't you realize the collectivized governments have always been managed by the Industrial Age owners of capital. Stirner has always been correct about the reality. You are living in some emotional delusion that never existed in the history of mankind.

Your emotions have been polluted with Marxist indoctrination similar to darlidada. At least he can admit it. You are deep into the delusion because you are trying to defend the indefensible with a strawmen conflation.

I am trying to help you rid yourself of that mental disease. You may not appreciate it. Most collectivists don't.

Your support is not rational. It is all emotional.

Perhaps mankind turned to this delusion to deal with (obscure) the depressive reality that they've been owned by the capitalists.

Ah yes, I realize this is a form of indirect Stockholm Syndrome, or capture-bonding, wherein you've come to point of emotionally support the paradigms which empower those who enslave you, because we were all so hopelessly enslaved. You needed to have something to feel good about, because the reality of being enslaved is so depressing. So much better to adopt the emotional ideological (bullshit!) delusion they feed you and support them.

The West is going to crash and burn! The people are emotionally destroyed thus have no capacity to be rational.

I was always fighting. Always looking for ways to be independently powerful. That is why I adopted computers, because I noted from a very early age that they made me more powerful than guys with mansions, and I didn't need a lot of fixed capital investment.

We agree that collectivism is only beneficial when it is impossible or inefficient to otherwise get economies-of-scale. During our prior debate we also agreed that some top down structure is necessary for convergence to optimal outcomes. We appear do disagree substantially over the extent and nature of that structure.

Any collectivized resource above our actual Dunbar limit at the level of deep scrutiny (which means rougly a dozen or so people) will be corrupt. Thus the only altruistic goal is to eliminate all collectives larger than that.

We gather in cities currently because of the technological economies-of-scale do so, so we currently have no choice but to deal with collective issues of the city. But technology may free us from this concentration in the future, e.g. the internet enables virtual employment from a rural location. The Knowledge Age will radically change this further.

Most importantly, note that a plurality of managers of resources competing and trading is free market. And this converges because the most efficacious will aggregate resources until they are competed against by equivalently efficacious. The free market is self-annealing. You don't trust it because the capitalists in the Industrial Age were able to game the Iron Law of Political Economics, and thus you turned to a delusion to console yourself (but your delusion doesn't change the reality). The Knowledge Age gives us hope that the natural order of competition will advance knowledge faster and thus more prosperity for all. That is altruism. There is no other reality of altruism, only your delusional fantasies which have never existed even once.
 

You asked why I used the words "somewhat repulsive" to describe anonymity. It is because true anonymity obscures justice. Anonymity allows for crime without recourse, darkness without light. In blinding government it also blinds justice.

Oh my you have just proven how deep you in that delusional nonsense.

Justice that Katz was writing about is the justice that comes from individual empowerment. You've somehow conflated that in your mind that the State brings justice, when in fact in every instance the State bring oppression and fails horrifically on reducing crime.

In Europe the overt crime was subdued by bribing the people to steal from each other with socialized collectives (a.k.a. socialism, communism, fascism, Marxism, etc). Thus they just moved the human nature into a different form of crime.

The State doesn't help anything. Period.

You've fallen into an emotional delusion.

You may be surprised to know that I completely support you in your goal of establishing a strong anonymous cryptocurrency.  

I could never trust you, given your emotional delusion. One day you will snap and go against me. It is analogous as not being able to trust a woman (to be rational), because they are ruled by their unpredictable emotions.

As I stated above I do not favor anonymity as an optimal solution.

You see.

I am very astute at reading people. I knew from your Myers-Brigg result that I you were danger. And then when I saw you pandering to I3352, it made me realize that you have that same mental state.

 

[TPTB_need_war]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Leverage is good; central banking is bad (Armstrong's myopia)
Date:    Fri, April 10, 2015 9:47 am
To:      "Armstrong Economics" <armstrongeconomics@gmail.com>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


Here follows an example of why the autonomous free market can self-anneal (has a bidirectional feedback loop) but the top-down collective can't and must diverge into totalitarianism every damn time throughout 6000 years of recorded history of man.

Armstrong is writing about the merits of fractional reserve banking:

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/04/09/how-absurd-banks-should-not-lend-more-than-liquidating-value-of-an-asset/

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/04/10/thin-air-v-leverage/

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/04/10/fractional-banking-myth-giro-banking/

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/04/10/it-wont-be-the-first-time-they-hang-bankers/


Armstrong is correct that volatility is (non-linearly) proportionally related to leverage (but a complex relationship with other factors), and that there is nothing implicitly wrong (nor unnatural or corrupt) with leverage.

Armstrong's mistake is that the problem is the lack of transparency and the fact that any involuntary collective (i.e. government) will always devolve to corruption and lack of transparency.

You see with a voluntary free market that demands transparency, then the free market will move against corruption as happened in the 1800s when private banks often failed because there wasn't a central bank to backstop them.

But now we can improve upon that. With a crypto-currency, in theory[1] we have much greater transparency so that the banks can't hide how great their fractional reserves are (market won't accept it because it is too easy to provide the information digitally as contrasted against physical verification of gold on deposit in the 1800s), and the free market can anneal sooner so that banking crisises are less egregious (less volatile and more subdued impacts).

You see the Knowledge Age is advancing mankind. Armstrong is a dinosaur that wants to stay with the old system of a government regulating the banks' leverage. Nah fuck that! Let's move forward with the new technology of money.

[1] Serious problems haven't been resolved yet, such as reliable anonymity (i.e. Tor/I2P is probably a honeypot and Monero relies on either Tor or I2P to obscure your IP), decentralization of mining (Bitcoin being controlled by 1 - 4 pools), real-time transactions, fragmentation of the internet or power outages, etc..

[rpietila]

What's the optimal Myers-Briggs?

[vokain]

What's the optimal Myers-Briggs?

For what aim?

[TPTB_need_war]

What's the optimal Myers-Briggs?

Actually I expected that, and was surprised no one had called my bluff on that.

I was positing that possibly the Judging attribute of Myers-Briggs is correlated with the propensity to accept collectivism for its (false) promise of rendering (fair and effective) judgement on others (a form of Stockholm Syndrome) and not instead rail against with "Give me liberty or death!". Or just in general needing judgement to be rendered by some authority, e.g. even a business collective (you know who I am thinking of ). I am not sure if that theory of mine is true. I have only tested it anecdotally.

My hypothesis is that those who test towards Judging instead of Perception, have an emotional need for control. I surmise they feel life just couldn't be fair and meritorious if everyone didn't play by the same rules. What they miss is the fact that life is never going to be the same for any two individuals. Path dependencies of life are divergent and impossible to rationally judge any two paths by any fixed, involuntary common set of rules (one size can't fit all situations, which is why a jury of peers was the closest to "fair" (i.e. optimal outcomes) because they can weigh all the circumstances with more proximate but imperfect knowledge and understanding). What they miss on a deeper level of analysis is that life is inherently never one playing field and thus it is entirely a waste of time worrying about what others do. The goal of life is what you can do with your life. Your concerns about others should be in terms of your actual interactions with specific people, not some abstract rule or concept of people you will never meet and thus have insufficient understanding of and insufficient rationalized incentive for meddling.

I could write a book about this. I could expend a lot of time contemplating this subject matter. There is far too much to cover in forum posts...

...interesting topic.