Curiouser and Curiouser! on libertarianism

Learning the fundamentals

Sun, 15 Feb 2004 00:11:12 +0000

Does anyone have a recommendation for where I can get a copy of Murray Rothbards: Man, Economy, and State in London? Ordering it from Amazon.com at $35.00+shipping isn't attractive.

Getting golden conduct out of leaden instincts

Tue, 30 Mar 2004 13:37:55 +0100

Great article by Butler Shafer Utopia and Reality:

If you seek perfection, my advice is to study mathematics. Otherwise, as the study of economics suggests, learn to evaluate options on the basis of comparative advantages. But, in doing so, be certain you are considering all the costs and benefits of your actions; the long-term as well as the short-term; the psychological and spiritual as well as the material. Do you endorse political programs because you truly consider them more beneficial than non-political ones, or have you simply failed to account for many of the costs of such programs, costs which their authors prefer to keep hidden from your calculations?

...

The diamond may serve as a useful metaphor for the design of social systems grounded in the connected, horizontally-based strength of their members, rather than in vertical power structures. The Amish who have no coercive political organization and who embrace the private ownership of property know what we have long since forgotten: politics divides us and, in so doing, weakens our social connectedness. Political systems set group against group, engendering a distrust of everyone except, of course, political leaders. By such means, the networks that would otherwise connect us to one another as we pursue our various self-interests, become cleaved.

...

Those who persist in trying to breathe life into dead horses are the real utopians. The political structuring of society has long been grounded in pie-in-the-sky fantasies that power-hungry men and women can make us better than we are; that ever-more sophisticated weapons of death and destruction can bring peace to the world; and that, in the words of Herbert Spencer, there is a "political alchemy by which you can get golden conduct out of leaden instincts." As our formal world continues to disintegrate before us, it is time that we abandon the utopian fictions in which we are conditioned and face the stark reality that whatever future we have will be decided by the content of our thinking. Because only you and I are in control of and, thus, responsible for our thinking, only you and I are capable of bringing order to our world.

The dossier of private information is the badge of the totalitarian state

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 13:44:35 +0100

ID cards to use 'key database' of personal info. Blunkett blanket trawl By John Lettice . [The Register]

This whole "biometic-ID cards will save our asses" stuff thing is a lot of old hooey.

Organized criminals will, as they always have, use their financial muscle and, where necessary, blackmail, to get valid ID's or insert phoney data into the system. If anything happens to go wrong with your data you, the ordinary blighted citizen, will be screwed since the government will argue that nothing can go wrong.

In this age of decentralization the governments big idea is to put all the data into one big centralized database? I think it's amazing, amazingly stupid that is.

And let's just consider for a second how responsible we think they'll be with this new toy:

"Of course the state should have, on occasions, the right to information about individuals," he says. "But what safety measures have been put in place? This is not paranoia about being found out. It's a reasonable concern in a democratic society. This government has proved as bad as any other in terms of protecting rights of privacy." [The Guardian]

and:

As long ago as 1990, Sir Nicholas, then a senior high court judge, now a law lord, warned: "If the information obtained by the police, the Inland Revenue, the social security services, the health service and other agencies were to be gathered together in one file, the freedom of the individual would be gravely at risk. The dossier of private information is the badge of the totalitarian state." [The Guardian]

Giving the government more powers doesn't work. Haven't we learned that yet? They keep telling us how with a little more power they can fix the problem... they've been telling me that for the last 32 years. Has it worked? I think it's time for a change and it starts with saying no to Blunketts latest stupidity.

What kind of crummy Marxism is this?

Sat, 01 May 2004 10:08:04 +0100

Can you imagine this? Here are a bunch of commies who are offering sweetheart tax breaks to Western companies. Low taxes benefit business. Arent commies supposed to be anti-business? I mean, what kind of crummy Marxism is this?

Other executives complained bitterly that the Department of Homeland Security is making it so hard for legitimate foreigners to get visas to study or work in America that many have given up the age-old dream of coming here. Instead, they are studying in England and other Western European nations, and even China. This is leading to a twofold disaster.

First, one of Americas greatest assets its ability to skim the cream off the first-round intellectual draft choices from around the world and bring them to our shores to innovate will be diminished, and that in turn will shrink our talent pool. And second, we could lose a whole generation of foreigners who would normally come here to study, and then would take American ideas and American relationships back home. In a decade we will feel that loss in Americas standing around the world.

Still others pointed out that the percentage of Americans graduating with bachelors degrees in science and engineering is less than half of the comparable percentage in China and Japan, and that U.S. government investments are flagging in basic research in physics, chemistry and engineering. Anyone who thinks that all the Indian and Chinese techies are doing is answering call-center phones or solving tech problems for Dell customers is sadly mistaken. U.S. firms are moving serious research and development to India and China.

Friedman concludes: "We have got to get our focus back in balance, not to mention our budget. We cant wage war on income taxes and terrorism and a war for innovation at the same time." Call this "the education of Thomas Friedman." Who knows? Maybe this perspective will actually have some influence on the editorial page of the New York Times. But dont bet your pension money on this possibility. [Gary North via LewRockwell.com]

A snippet from Gary North's latest piece on the developing relationship between Eastern and Western economies. I usually enjoy his perspectives as well as his prose.

More and more my view is that our conservative governments are a millstone around our necks. They don't understand the flow of events around them and yet they seek to control them, grabbing whatever powers they need to do it. In the process they are damaging us all and we are letting them.

You don't have to look to hard to see the consequences.

Turbulence

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 10:37:45 +0100

In the language of “chaos” theory, America – if not all of Western civilization – is in a state of turbulence of such intensity that efforts to restore order by recourse to traditional systems and policies will be to no avail. On the contrary, it is our insistence upon established practices that has led us to our plight; and only a fundamental, creative change in our thinking and behavior can extricate us from the destructive consequences of our prior assumptions. -- Via Butler Shafer

I started getting interested in complex systems by listening to David Snowden describe his work. The first time was almost 3 years ago to the day. I heard him again almost a year later and it reinforced his ideas and concepts.

Dave introduced me to the idea that some spaces are complex and in such spaces cause & effect is a retrospective coincidence so that the tools and techniques that used to yield results may cause unpredictable future effects. The challenge of complex spaces is that, when you're in them, they don't necessarily look any different to the knowable spaces we are comfortable with. (Dave also introduced me to the exploits of the incomparable Mulla Nasrudin for which I am very grateful).

From that point onwards I got very interested in sense-making and, given my background and my fascination for blogging, I became very interested in topics and topic maps as a tool for understanding and representing things of interest. In a sense my topic map defines my world, or at least the subset of my world I choose to make public. What has always tripped me up is how poor are the tools we have to work with. My own efforts in addressing this situation, small as they were, have stumbled and failed.

Originally my interest in these things was purely theoretical but over the last 3 years my interest in politics and the nature of the world around me has blossomed and my interests in complexity, systems, sense-making, and reasoning have seemed more practical. I have gone from being an unthinking socialist to a thinking... for want of a better word libertarian. I hesitate when I use the term because I still understand so little of the philosophical underpinnings that define it.

What I do know is that many people who hear me talk about politics and life these days appear to think I am, at best, misguided and, at worst, delusional. I'm treating that as a good sign. For people who believe they are in an ordered space where the old answers remain true then anyone who acts like they believe they are in a complex space may appear to be out-of-step or irrational. Of course I cannot utterly dismiss the possibility that I am misguided or delusional but I see no way to address that other than to keep asking questions.

Recently (although not so recently as I would like) I started studying psychology. I found it to be a fascinating subject both from the perspective of personal discovery but also as a source of tools for thinking about human problems. Social psychology has many interesting things to teach us. From a political perspective one need only consider GroupThink and then look around.

Lately I have been thinking about my future and what I would like to do, if finances and personal situation permit. I am a generalist and aspire to be a PolyMath. I believe that much of interest lies at the interstices of the sciences and arts. I have expressed an interest in doing research and am looking for the right opportunity.

In the meantime I continue to self-educate as best I can. Right now I am honing up my logical argument skills and beginning to read about the very interesting area of Systems Theory. Systems Theory seems to be the ultimate polymath science that seeks always to unify, it's exciting.

The goal of all this effort, like most of my goal, is not yet directed to any specific purpose (not even a political one) but to providing myself, and hopefully others, with better tools to master life. In Gregory Benfords fantastic novels about human future (e.g. Great Sky River) he describes how humans have an enhanced sensorium and access to the aspects of the wisdom of their dead.

I see the shearing forces that act on our society, like the evolution of technology outstripping the pace of social change, and the increasing uncertainty and turbulence we face and cannot but believe that we need new and better tools if we are to survive. Right now I believe that my lifes work is in researching, developing, and using such tools.

Phew... This post went somwhere other than I where I was expecting and, despite being something of a ramble, wanted to be written. I think that reflects my growing uncertainties about my present and my future: my own personal turbulence.

The Master Key

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 08:51:15 +0100

Robert Higgs shows why you can't be a pro-war Libertarian:

My claim is that those who give a free hand to the government in its foreign and defense policy-making will ultimately discover that they have handed their rulers the key that opens all doors, including the doors that obstruct the government's invasion of our most cherished rights to life, liberty, and property. The war-making key is, so to speak, the master key for any government, because when critical tradeoffs must be made, war will override all other concerns and, as an ancient maxim aptly informs us, inter armas silent leges. Anyone who has looked into the actions of the U.S. Supreme Court, for example, knows that during wartime the justices have placed themselves on the casualty list by effectively rolling over and playing dead. Without at least a semblance of the rule of law and an independent judiciary, all hopes for the maintenance of a free society are in vain.