Fetish

Is a political fetish one that is not in some way deduced from first principles?

A fetish might be, for example, worship of the military. Do they really keep us safe? Are they to thank for our freedoms?

Maybe one could think of a fetish as a statement that isn't back up by anything and that is used by people to determine "who is on their side." See the above example.

Another one that comes to mind is Teachers. We have to worship teachers because they are the ones we rely on to achieve future greatness. Well, is that true? Does this view of the noble teacher really stand up in light of their organized union activities?

I don't really know the answers here. I just want to record the fact that I find this an interesting topic to delve into some day with more depth...

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We are an empire.
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/24/why_cant_we_say_empire/
He claims that Empire is a neutral term. I disagree.

Reponse to Occupy Wall Street supporter

The below is my response to a friend posting this video on facebook: http://front.moveon.org/this-powerful-clip-is-exactly-why-we-support-occupywallstreet/#.TqbvKhuY9mc.facebook

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Glass Steagal was only partially repealed. The two repealed provisions wouldn't not have stopped the banks from doing what they did had the provisions stayed on the books (See Woods, Rollback, p57).

Not only that, the video makes NO mention of Nixon's closing the gold window in the 70s. After that and now free of almost all restraint, the government printed money to its heart's content, precipitating such stated crises as Savings and Loan. People really ought to read some Austrian Business Cycle theory (http://mises.org/daily/606) if they want to stop being taken advantage of by bankers and politicians peddling their snake oil.

Yes, Audit the Fed. There should not be a government monopoly that powerful.

And what's with that anti-business stuff at the end? There's only two ways for a firm to be successful. The first is to secure monopoly privilege for themselves under the guise of regulation and plunder the citizenry.(case in point: Glass-Steagal was a move by the Rockefeller ambit to hobble Morgan interests [p.315:http://mises.org/books/historyofmoney.pdf. Or better yet, look to the New Left historians like Gabriel Kolko if you'd rather trust them) This is to be condemned and corrected by removing their monopoly privilege (ie. the Fed) but NOT by imposing more so-called regulation (after all, it's the financial industry who's going to write that regulation).

That's the one way to make money. The other way is to engage in voluntary, peaceful exchanges with people, in which both parties are made better off. How do we know they're better off? Because they wouldn't have made the exchange if they had believed ex-ante that the trade would make them worse off.

Synopsis: yes, hating the bankers is good. They've been ripping us off for a century. But banking and business are good, as long as they don't use government to rip us, the 99%, off.

Peace

Memory of the Day

Today I listened to a podcast of a Tom Woods lecture from 1998 on Teddy Roosevelt. A crazy man, that one. (Teddy, I mean)

Anyway, it just reminded me of being at the dentist when I was little (maybe 10-ish?). The dentist said I had nice big teeth like Teddy Roosevelt. I was horrified, because that man had HUGE teeth!! My parents said it was no big deal, and I don't find my teeth so big these days, but I was a little out of sorts for a couple days back then!

current song: Jillian (by Within Temptation)

Penmanship

Developing good penmanship is really not that easy. Ever since going back to school a year ago and having to take a ton of notes as a result, I've been going through a lot of ink. Contrast this to four years of working in industry where one barely ever picks up a pen.

Anyway, a year ago this time I was watching a bunch of how-to's on youtube, trying to figure out how to improve. I don't remember any of them being incredibly helpful, but it did get me thinking on the basics: posture, grip, rhythm, etc.

To this day I have bouts of great penmanship, and days where I just can't seem to get it past high school quality. On those on-days, I really feel the rhythm in my writing. You can see it too.

Learning has been similar to my learning process on the bass guitar: long periods of wood shedding on the current paradigm, broken up by quantum leaps forward.

Anywho. My lessons learned:

• Posture: support the elbow, but don't lean on it. Corollary: The wrist also lightly rests on the table.
• keep the hand straight in line with the arm. None of this pained, contorted wrist action I see all over the place. To move the pen to the right during writing, the whole arm moves. The wrist stays straight the whole time. 
• Hold the pen with index, thumb, and middle finger just like Momma always said, but DON'T hold it in some death grip as she insisted (or as I remember her insisting. Maybe the years have tainted my memory)
• Finally, my biggest Eureka momemt: guide the pen with the index finger, which should also be applying pressure to the pen onto the paper.

I'm still no expert, but hey. Practice, practice, practice. I know someone who still practices writing the first letter of her first name after some 40 years!

The Guilty Party?

I want to thank my Mother, with whom I talked about this subject a few days ago. She often provides me with clarity, tempers my harsher, judgmental side, and is perhaps the best Muse I have in my life. The following ramblings, however, represent my viewpoint alone. Any mistakes I make are my own.

My question of the day is the following: Who is at fault for a particular government bungle? Clearly the government at least sometimes does things which are not "in the best interest of the people." Take Social Security, to which my generation is certainly holding the short end of the stick. Or Medicare: same story. What about Greece's failure? War in Iraq, or the War on Terror, for that matter? What if the Euro implodes - who's at fault there?

The list of suspects:

• Politicians
• Bankers
• Ignorant voters
• Well informed voters
• Do-gooders
• Selfish people
• The economically illiterate
• Myself

So let's look first at Greece.

I tend to view politicians with what I consider to be a healthy dose of scepticism and distrust sadly lacking in most of my fellow man. These are the men who are best able to demagogue their way to the top. There are exceptions to every rule, but it usually takes a cynical person comfortable with bending the truth and compromising

The climb to the top almost always requires the bending of the truth and the sacrifice of morals and ethics to the point at which the only goal is to retain power or gain even more of it. I find it interesting that most people take Lord Acton's statement that "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absoutely" to be basically true, but then don't extrapolate the indications of it or apply it to their own political class. Regardless, one of the tried and true methods of staying in power is to concede just enough goodies (as in Bismarck's case in Imperial Germany) or give as many goodies as at all possible (today's method) in order to will political allies so one can stay in power. To do this the politician needs money, which must come from the productive citizenry. This can take the form of explicit taxes or implicit taxes. This latter form includes rolling over the state credit card debt at the central bank. All European governments  as well as the United States does this. The citizenry doesn't like explicit taxes because here the expropriation is staring them in the face. Implicit taxation is must more conducive to politics. It enables the politician to take from the citizenry without them noticing, then give the money back to them, appearing to all as Lord and Savior. This is why central banks are so dangerous. It allows the growth of government while hardly anyone notices.

This is why Greece is in trouble. The Eurozone allowed them to continue rolling over their credit card debt. In the process, the funds Greece obtained in order to play Santa Klaus came in large part not from their own citizens but from all of Europe. Now with borrowers less willing to take on that new debt, Greece may not be able to roll over that debt anymore, thereby sticking it to those who lent to the Greek state in the expectation that they would get their money back with interest. Greek politicians certainly carry a large part of the blame here.

But what of the citizens who elected them? Here's where I haven't made my mind up yet. On the one hand, they have been living high on the hog for a long time at the expence of the rest of Europe and they deserve what's coming to them. They wanted the policies that their politicians were more than willing to offer. The voters of yesterday voted themselves goodies and debt, sticking today's and tomorrow's voters with the bill. This intergenerational theft is occuring in every western nation, the US being no exception. It is abhorant and I believe my generation is become more aware of it with every passing year. A part of me despises that Baby Boom generation for taking from ME to make THEIR lives peachy. What right did they have to sell me into bondage? For that is what has essentially happened. Parents bought social security, medical care, a military state, and lots more on the credit card, then popped some kids out, handed them the bill. I can't help hearing Mitch Hedberg's voice at the end of his complicated payments skit: "Good luck, F***ker!" There has been a minority of people for years pointing out this inevitable train wreck. Were they not heard or listened to, or simply not heeded? People have heard talk of social security unavoidably becoming in solvent in the future. The topic even comes up during elections. Yet the political process cannot solve the problem. it's much easier to put it off until the day come when it cannot be put off any more.

On the other hand, most people are utterly ignorant of economics and the political process. The Greeks are no different. They are unaware that the Government takes unseen with one hand only to give it back with the other. They have also been brought up in a society that at least implicitly (when not outright explicitly) informs them since birth that there are wise overlords in government who will look after them. In trying to express to someone the gravity of a given problem with state and government, the question that I almost certainly get goes along the following lines: "Surely if the problem was as dire as you're claiming, someone would have done something about it." It's the typical belief that government if fundamentally good that leads the average person to accept this. Well it seems to me that if government was fundamentally good, "it" would do something about the oncoming crisis. The state would not have allowed the Greek credit crisis to occur. It would not 3 wars at one time as our State is currently doing. And even if it did these things, they would be an anomoly, which the following administration would correct. But that isn't the case. It just goes on and on.

Do I share some of the guilt for the Iraq War? Surely some. I did support it, as did most Americans. "But," it might be offered, "regardless of whether you had voted for Bush or not, there's nothing you can do to stop him from pursuing the wrong policies. He's already in office." I disagree. If I had been more critical and less childlike in my absolute belief and trust in my Führer, and if every one of my countrymen had done the same and demanded that we not go to war, I do not believe Bush would have gone to war. See my previous comments on the politician's desire to maintain and gain power. With so few exceptions as to be negligable, a politician will not commit himself to a policy that alienates his entire electorate. And so in this way, I contributed to our committed war against Iraq, a country that had previously been our ally and who never aggressed against us, yet us against it twice.

But I was ignorant. I didn't have the fortune back then of even once in my life being exposed to the ideas of real liberty and sound economics, ala the Austrian School and Rothbardian Libertarianism. If I am to hate or despise my fellow man who likewise has never been exposed to these ideas, can I really blame him? Most of us just aren't creative or imaginative enough to simply arrive at conclusions of liberty on their own, especially when we've been indoctrinated our entire lives into believing that the state looks after our well being. Hitler understood what many a demagogue and modern politician also understands: The Big Lie. If the lie you tell if big enough, people will automatically assume it to be the truth, because "surely no one could tell that big a lie, right?" 

In conclusion, I will say with certainty that I do despise the majority of the ruling class. For there is no excuse to be in the position of power and knowledge, as they are, and not to fix the glaring problems of the day in exchange for another term in office. What I cannot say with certainty if how much blame I afix to the every-day man. For although he may not realize what he is doing (and that is highly debatable in this context), can he truly be fully innocent in his support for murder and plunder? Here's a starting point for beginning to answer the question: If I were to have a respectful and reasonable discourse with someone regarding, say, the morallity of our military involvements, and if at the end, when there was nothing left to say without repeated oneself for the n-th time, the person was still fully convinced that our foreign wars are Right and Good, then perhaps he is as guilty as my initial intuition led me to believe. For he has at the point been exposed to those moral arguments and still holds to his evil beliefs.

I'm no Church Scholar, so perhaps someone more familiar with the subject could correct me if I err in the following paragraph. I do imagine that the above is similar to back in the day when Christianity was still a new thing. God's judgment of a given individual's breaking of any one of the Ten Commandments would depend on whether the perpetrator was already Christian or still pagan. The pagan, I imagine, would be given more leeway, because the Gospel was not yet revealed to him. Yet the Christian, who ought to know better, would certainly be more guilty in God's eyes. 

"The Free Market" vs. "markets"

Language can sometimes blind us to reality. Sometimes this can be used as a weapon to deceive people. I think of the word "liberal" as currently used in America today. When one is liberal, this means one believes in liberty. The word liberal still has that meaning in Europe today. European-type liberals are called libertarians in America nowadays. But let's jump to a word that causes lots of confusion and damage to the cause of liberty: Market.

When libertarians talk about The Market or The Free Market, or The Voluntary Market, we're talking about the network of voluntary interactions between all human beings. This is everything from buying a fruit at the grocery store to buying shares of stock in a company to lending my neighbor a ladder so he can work on his roof.

Our understanding of human nature and human action leads us to believe that two people engaging in exchange only do so because they believe it will make them better off. How do we know this? Well, if it were the case that one or both parties didn't believe they would be made better off, they wouldn't have entered into the exchange in the first place. That is the essence of The Free Market.

Well what about Health Care? That's a market, too, isn't it? Same goes for the carbon credit market, right? Well, no. Though indeed it is a market, i.e., there's buying and selling going on, it's anything but a Free Market. All that amounts to is a highly regulated sector of the economy where the government uses the mechanics of a market to acheive a certain outcome. When this system fails, or has poor results, people then blame "markets," which leads people into thinking that The Free Market is also a failure.

Political Compass

My roommate from last year sent me this link today:
http://www.politicalcompass.org/index


One answers a list of perhaps 60 questions with either 1) Strongly Disagree, 2) Disagree, 3) Agree, or 4) Strongly Agree.


One is then placed on a typical two-dimensional chart. Mine is below:

The problem with many questions, however, is that they ask about things that have nothing to do with what I think government's involvement in my life should be. For example:

1. People are ultimately divided more by class than by nationality.
2. "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is a fundamentally good idea.
3. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
4. Schools should not make classroom attendance compulsory.
5. All people have their rights, but it is better for all of us that different sorts of people should keep to their own kind.
6. Good parents sometimes have to spank their children.
7. It's natural for children to keep some secrets from their parents.
8. The prime function of schooling should be to equip the future generation to find jobs.
9. The most important thing for children to learn is to accept discipline.
10. There are no savage and civilised peoples; there are only different cultures.
11. Those who are able to work, and refuse the opportunity, should not expect society's support.
12. When you are troubled, it's better not to think about it, but to keep busy with more cheerful things.
13. First-generation immigrants can never be fully integrated within their new country.
14. In a civilised society, one must always have people above to be obeyed and people below to be commanded.
15. Abstract art that doesn't represent anything shouldn't be considered art at all.
16. The businessperson and the manufacturer are more important than the writer and the artist.
17. Mothers may have careers, but their first duty is to be homemakers.
18. Making peace with the establishment is an important aspect of maturity.
19. Astrology accurately explains many things.
20. You cannot be moral without being religious.
21. Some people are naturally unlucky.
22. It is important that my child's school instills religious values.
23. Sex outside marriage is usually immoral.No one can feel naturally homosexual.
24. These days openness about sex has gone too far.

...And I'm sure there's a few I missed. So out of 60-some questions (62 if I counted correctly), some 24 or 30 of them are simply personal preferences that have absolutely nothing to do with the state. And this is supposed to determine where I am on the political scale? Please. Now, I'm not going to take the time to do the experiment, but I'm sure if I answered the above questions in a wholely different manner, my political results would also be quite different. This wouldn't make sense however, as one's political beliefs are simply  of which areas of human interaction the state has the right to insert itself. The people who put this little survey together really are statists who just don't understand what libertarianism is all about.