The Idiocy of Politics

October 31, 2010 · Posted in Government · Comment

“To participate in this process is an act of shameful self subjugation.”

True that!

And one more:

True Gross Domestic Product Q3 2010

October 31, 2010 · Posted in General Economics · Comment

The true gross domestic product has declined by another 3.63 percent to 10,010 million (= about 10 billion) gold ounces in Q3 2010.

The important ratio of consumer vs production goods has declined to now 93.16 percent.

Tags: q3 2010, true gross domestic product

Austrian vs Keynesian/Monetarist/Neoclassical Economics

October 30, 2010 · Posted in General Economics · 1 Comment

Great lecture by Austrian economist Robert Murphy (who by the way has invited Paul Krugman to debate him about the business cycle theory):

Tags: austrian economics

This Election Make a Statement – Don’t Vote!

October 29, 2010 · Posted in Government · 2 Comments

Political action is the deliberate participation in the process of electing people who will join the government, an organization that gives everyone the kind choice of handing over their money or being kidnapped by people in blue costumes, thrown into a prison cell, and getting their property seized.

Whether it be on the federal, state, or on the local level, this is always and everywhere what it comes down to. You can sugar coat it, deny it, play dumb, ignore it, or call it voluntary (in which case the word voluntary has just lost the meaning you usually ascribe to it and you would need to invent a new term for an action you perform without the threat of aggression). You can get aggravated or irritated about the fact that I am telling it in clear unambiguous words. But you can’t change reality.

The government will not work for you. Never in a million years. The government will always work against you while telling you all about how much it cares. It skillfully appeals to people’s narcissism. It will dangle polished carrots of kindly speeches and immediate bribes before your face with one hand, while robbing you and making your future its collateral with the other.

It has always been the same old process, for thousands of years of recorded history. One armed gang starts small by assuming the task of protecting people for coerced protection money, then asserts its monopoly on this protection, assuming more and more monopolies on other activities, receiving investments along with orders from rich and powerful people to be paid back from future loot and contracts, growing larger and larger in the process, all the while keeping the hapless and exploited majority at bay by letting them vote for puppets who are power- AND incentive-less. At some point it is unable to honor the commitments entered into on behalf of the taxpayer, self destructs, and gets replaced by another gang that starts small by assuming the task of protecting people for coerced protection money, then asserts its monopoly on this protection, assuming more and more … oh well, you get the point I would hope :)

A small number of people each individually have a huge marginal interest in the growth of specific programs, while the majority of people who fund this growth, each of them at a marginally small percentage, have very little vested interest in the elimination of particular individual programs. This creates a mismatch in incentives that brings about the inevitable.

When very few people have such asymptotically higher incentives in a single program than the majority, then every single one of them will be fighting tooth and nails and with ferocious tenacity for his money, while everyone out of those in the majority who is, at the threat of imprisonment or violent seizure of property, forced to pay for this particular program has little to no to even negative incentive (time, opportunity cost, etc.) to do something about it.

People who continue to participate in this process, in spite of virtually eternal contrary evidence, and without any specific ideas of how they will change this process by joining it, are genuinely difficult for me to take serious on this particular matter. I was once an avid supporter of political action and I changed my opinion once presented with reasoned logic and empirical evidence.

And still, I would always be open to reasoned arguments. I would be glad to receive new and interesting facts to prove me wrong. On the issue of political action, I have been looking for those in vain.

It’s always been the same old song. “By not participating you are making it WORSE!”, “You’re just being lazy!”, “How can you be so disrespectful of this great system bequeathed to us by our heroic forefathers?!”, “Do you know how many people DIED for your right to vote?!”, “But we have to do SOMETHING!!” … and so on and so on.

These are of course not arguments against the truth content of the facts presented. They are emotional knee jerk reactions that stem from childhood scar tissue.

Yes, we absolutely should “do something”!! And participating in the process of voting is the exact opposite of that. It is, consciously or subconsciously, sanctioning a system that is coercive, brutal, murderous, immoral and ugly to the core.

The proper way of dealing with such immorality and insanity is to abstain from the charade where you can. Don’t try to oppose the gun pointed at your face. Don’t resist the taxation and regulations they are imposing upon you. Comply. Pay these disgusting and filthy leeches off so they get to live their boring, false, and empty lives. At least they’ll leave you alone in your own lives.

Barack Obama will not give you “change”, in fact he has always promised you more of the same. Nor will the Republicans who will win this coming election as I predicted almost two years ago.

The government will not grow or shrink or exist because you voted for it. You voted because there is a government. The government will not grow and wage wars or shrink and get out of wars because you ask it to. The government grows as long as it can borrow from people and tax you. It will shrink once the interest payments on its debt eat up everything else it can still afford and people are too broke to get taxed. And luckily, what I’m saying here is testable. Observe events moving forward and watch what happens. I would gladly stand corrected if objective evidence proves me wrong! :)

The proper way of working toward change is precisely NOT to pretend that you have the ability to voluntarily affect anything in this machinery. The proper way of working toward change is not to condone this apparatus, but is to live with integrity in regards to objective morality and reason, is to be free in your own lives by making sure that at least your own relationships are free of coercion and unchosen obligations, is to live freedom, instead of just talking about it.

It is this that will turn you into a shining beacon of virtue and integrity that can be seen by people near and far, it is this that will count more than a million votes, and it is is this that will bring about true and lasting change that you will always be able to stand behind 100%.

Tags: election, voting

Human Action, Ethics, Praxeology, Economics, and History

October 29, 2010 · Posted in General Economics, Philosophy · 2 Comments

I recently spent some time integrating different concepts I read about into one coherent framework.

In particular I borrowed from Stefan Molyneux’ Universally Preferable Behavior and from Mises’ Human Action. The flowchart below is the result.

It enables you to (at least that’s the idea) categorize any theory someone proposes about Human Action into a proper sub-category.

Human Action, Ethics, Praxeology, Economics, and History

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE!

Examples of Theories About Human Action

Aesthetics: You should prefer truth to falsehood.
Morality: You should not initiate violence.
Personal Preference: I would prefer if you wore red rather than gray.
Economics: When one prefers 1 gold coin over good A, then he will be willing to surrender ownership of A in exchange for the coin.
Other Praxeology: A human who gets attacked will avoid the attack or defend himself.
Economic History: The average price of houses in the US declined from 2006 through 2010.
Other History: On October 29th Nima wrote this blog post on his laptop.

Determining True from False Theories About Human Action

As with any other science, the criterion for determining the truth or falsehood of a theory about Human Action, is logical validation and empirical accuracy.

Gray Areas

One issue that seems to worry people is that of gray areas. Most people are worried that if we allow for gray areas in the field of Ethics, it ceases to be a science. Others say that since there are gray areas in Ethics it doesn’t qualify as a science. Such assertions make little sense.

First of all, science is a process, not an absolute immutable law. It is the ongoing process of pursuing knowledge. It is true that the objective of science is the examination of truth versus falsehood in every field of human knowledge. But that doesn’t mean that there are no gray areas. There are certainly things that can without a doubt be confirmed as true or dismissed as false. Simple mathematical theories come to mind, for example. Then there are cases where the line becomes more blurred.

For example, biology teaches us that a bird has two wings, but once every so often a bird with one wing is born. Does this mean we are absolutely incapable of classifying the creature as a bird? Furthermore, does it completely detonate the science of biology?

Of course it doesn’t. It is thus the same way with Ethics. For example, sometimes the line between Aesthetics and Morality becomes blurry. To what extent can something be considered “considerable effort”?

Is it considerable effort if I’m a 3rd grader and I have to avoid walking by the 4th graders’ lockers because sometimes there is a bully who (rather pathetically) punches my shoulder? Maybe, but probably not as much as, say, having to move to another country. Is the bully’s action immensely evil? Probably not, at least not as evil as, say, waging a genocidal war that murders and/or dislocates millions of innocents.

Thus such gray areas actually help us explain why we condemn certain acts as enormous evils, while others can be considered minor evils, or even borderline aesthetically negative, rather than plain immoral.

Lifeboat Scenarios

Then there are those who like to put us to the test by confronting us with incredibly ridiculous horror scenarios or lifeboat situations which are supposed to invalidate the concept of objective Ethics: “What if a creature from another planet were to destroy the planet unless I raped a 29 year old prostitute using a condom? Surely THEN rape is moral, huh, huh??”

Such scenarios are not even remote arguments against the conceptual validity of Universally Preferable Behavior. Whether a space alien asks me to rape another person to save the world or not, it remains a true statement that rape cannot be universally preferable because the statement creates a logical contradiction. This would be akin to saying “Would you agree with the Grand Xenu that 1+1=3 if he threatened to destroy the whole world otherwise?” Heck, sure I would … does that mean that the theory 1+1 = 3 is true ??

Conformity with theories about Universally Preferable Behavior is optional. People are free to believe in false theories and act upon them. This doesn’t make the truth or falsehood of the theories ambiguous.

That having been said, I would like to encourage people to focus on solving the obvious problems we are facing in today’s world. Human Action, and Ethics in particular, is a science that is of course ultimately supposed to help us all live better and more peaceful lives. It is a science about rationally choosing and acting humans (where rational does NOT mean flawless, but rather non-instinctive action).

It is not a science about an imaginary society where all food has run out, all water is gone, all means of production have ceased functioning, all land has disappeared, and everyone is trapped in a giant ship that is sinking with only 3 lifeboats left to occupy. In such a world, human action ceases to exist and gives way to the instinctive and immediate whims of starving brutes fighting for survival. The relevance of Human Action and Ethics shrinks into irrelevant nothingness.

A medical doctor, well versed in the sciences of medicine and human biology, would be at a loss when tasked with saving an individual who suffers from tuberculosis, cancer, broken arms, and chopped off legs while having a heart attack and a brain aneurysm after having been hit by a train. Does this detonate the science of medicine?

The conceptual existence of gray areas and the conjuring up of lifeboat scenarios don’t make a dent in the concept of objective Ethics as defined by us here.

Tags: ethics, General Economics, History, human action, Praxeology

Maine Madness – Government Retirees Receive 17:1 On The Dollar Contributed

October 27, 2010 · Posted in Government · Comment

MainePolicy.org reports Taxpayer-Funded Government Pensions to Turn Thousands of Retirees into Millionaires:

The 25,000-plus individuals currently enrolled in the Maine Public Employees Retirement System will received a combined $15,383,315,649—an amount equivalent to $11,834 for every man, woman and child in Maine. Of that nearly $15.4 billion total, retirees have paid in a combined $882,274,785—less than six percent of the total pension cost.

On average, for every $1.00 withheld for their paycheck while working, government retirees will get back $17.00 in lifetime pension benefits. For some government retirees, for every $1.00 paid into the retirement system, they will get back more than $300.00.

2,101 – number of government retirees set to receive lifetime pension benefits of $1 million or more

• 9,193 – number of government retirees set to receive lifetime pension benefit of $500,000 or more

• 50 percent – percent of current government retirees who worked for government 25 years or less

There are 25,000 people, 8% of which are about to be millionaires, 36% of which are going to retire with 500k+. There are about 1.3 million residents of Maine.

This is one of the core and insoluble problems of the concept of government, right before your eyes :)

I have explained it before:

When very few people have such asymptotically higher incentives in a single program than the majority, then every single one of them will be fighting tooth and nails and with ferocious tenacity for his money, while everyone out of those in the majority who is, at the threat of imprisonment or violent seizure of property, forced to pay for this particular program has little to no to even negative incentive (time, opportunity cost, etc.) to do something about it.

Tags: Government, maine, pensions, public pensions

“Sudden and Dramatic Drop in U.S. Home Prices” – Clear Capital

October 27, 2010 · Posted in General Economics · Comment

A Clear Capital press release that I recently came across confirms our grim expectations on the housing front:

“Clear Capital’s latest data shows even more pronounced price declines than our most recent HDI market report released two weeks ago,” said Dr. Alex Villacorta, senior statistician, Clear Capital. “At the national level, home prices are clearly experiencing a dramatic drop from the tax credit-induced highs, effectively wiping out all of the gains obtained during the flurry of activity just preceding the tax credit expiration.”

This special Clear Capital Home Data Index (HDI) alert shows that national home prices have declined 5.9% in just two months and are now at the same level as in mid April 2010, two weeks prior to the expiration of the recent federal homebuyer tax credit. This significant drop in prices, in advance of the typical winter housing market slowdowns, paints an ominous picture that will likely show up in other home data indices in the coming months.

Clear Capital HDI Index and S&P/Case-Shiller 20-City Composite HPI

Tags: housing market

Praxeology and History

October 26, 2010 · Posted in General Economics · 7 Comments

Some people assert that a shortcoming of praxeology is that it denies the relevance of empirical evidence. This assertion suffers from a misunderstanding of the purpose and scope of praxeology.

It is true that praxeology is fundamentally axiomatic, meaning it builds all its theories upon the irrefutable axiom that humans consciously aim at chosen objectives and employ chosen means in order to attain those objectives.

But that axiom in itself is of course empirical. It is derived from a simple observation of human action. It is, like any other proposition, derived from objective facts of observable reality. Someone must at some point have made that observation in order to formulate the axiom.

Just as logic is nothing but a derivative of the consistency of all reality, praxeology in particular is a derivative of the occurrence of human choice and action in reality. If reality wasn’t consistent, there would be no logic. If no purposefully acting and choosing beings existed in the universe, then praxeology would not exist.

What praxeology does say is that at the very least any proposition about human action naturally needs to be in complicance with irrefutable axioms about human action in order for it to be potentially valid. Praxeology has never claimed to be helpful in the process of gathering evidence for the actual occurence of an event. This is, in fact, the task of history and outside the scope of praxeology.

If a proposition can’t even pass that most basic test, there is no need to look for historical evidence in its support. This doesn’t mean that historical evidence is meaningless to the overall science of Human Action.

Nor is praxeology itself stubborn toward the evidence of history. If someone were to make a complete and isolated historical observation that contradicts praxeologically established concepts, then he is free to disprove the validity of the praxeological concept on logical grounds. But if he cannot do that, then there is something he is missing in his observation; maybe a variable or two, maybe the measurement was off, maybe his eyesight is skewed etc.

In the same way, if someone were to make an empirical mathematical observation, claiming that he put two red balls and two blue balls into a box, and then suddenly had 5 balls, would you be convinced that the mathematical concept of 2+2 = 4 is invalid? Isn’t it rather possible that there was already a 5th ball in the box, or that someone threw it in from somewhere else, or that the observer had a martini too many? And furthermore, if all these things are not the case, then all we would need is for the person to provide logically deductive proof that 2 + 2 = 4 is a false statement.

Mises was most definitely not ignorant to the evidence of history. I would even go so far as to saying that he is one of the greatest historians of the 20th century. He himself actually subdivided the science of Human Action into praxeology and (you guessed it) … history!

The purpose of history is the gathering of convincing and sufficient evidence to prove that certain events did in fact occur.

History says “The price of house X fell from 2007 through 2010.” while praxeology (or economics in particular) says “Ceteris paribus, the price of a good with rising supply and falling demand will fall.”

History is a helpful tool in finding evidence that further corroborates propositions that already conform with praxeological axioms. Historical evidence in support of any proposition regarding human action is necessary, not sufficient. History without praxeology would be nothing but the observation of seemingly random limb movements of fleshy/bony objects in space.

As it is with history, more than in any other science, social events are always immensely complex, unisolated, and almost impossible to reproduce without introducing new variables. Historical statistics and data can very easily be prepared and falsified to support one view or another.

Thus what Mises rejected was the method of historicism, that is solely gathering historical evidence in order to prove theorems that don’t even pass the very first hurdles of praxeology.

In short: History deals with specific instances of human action, while praxeology explains general, immutable, and irrefutable attributes of human action. The narrow concepts of history and praxeology are to human action what the broader concepts of empiricism and logic are to all of science, respectively.

Tags: History, Praxeology

Iraq War Crimes Surface; Probably Greatest War-Leak in Military History

October 22, 2010 · Posted in Foreign Policy · Comment

Well, war is always a crime, so the headline wouldn’t really surprise anybody at this point I’m sure. I love this tweet on wikileaks’ twitter page:

Pentagon says it expects ‘nothing new’ in next Wikileaks dump. ‘Nothing new’ to THEM goes without saying.

So true!

Here’s the site:

At 5pm EST Friday 22nd October 2010 WikiLeaks released the largest classified military leak in history. The 391,832 reports (’The Iraq War Logs’), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army. Each is a ‘SIGACT’ or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout.

The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 ‘civilians’; 23,984 ‘enemy’ (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 ‘host nation’ (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 ‘friendly’ (coalition forces). The majority of the deaths (66,000, over 60%) of these are civilian deaths.That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six year period. For comparison, the ‘Afghan War Diaries’, previously released by WikiLeaks, covering the same period, detail the deaths of some 20,000 people. Iraq during the same period, was five times as lethal with equivallent population size.

Please donate to WikiLeaks at https://donations.datacell.com/ to defend this information.

Here’s the Democracy Now clip:

“Blood on the hands of Wikileaks” … says a military general. Excuse me, but YOU HAVE GOT TO BE F*****G KIDDING.

Tags: war, wikileaks

The Global Warming Information Extravaganza

October 21, 2010 · Posted in Environment · Comment

I thought I’d just compile all the interesting clips that I have seen about global warming and environmental scares & policies in general into one post. Most of these clips use strong reference to scientific facts, that’s why I appreciate their content so much and I hope you will as well :)