Levels… With Steps… Like Ancient Egypt

Consider a system, such as a painting or a car engine. A painting consists of a large number of colored lines and points. If you look at it very closely, all you’ll see are these things. But look at it from afar, and you’ll see the painting as a whole and may be struck by its beauty. You will no longer notice the individual components of the painting. The variety of component parts is complemented by a unity of the whole. Just as the unity can be of form, so it can be of function. A car engine is also built out of numerous parts. Each part alone is non-functional, but put them together, and again look at it from afar, and you see something that works marvelously by moving the car.

An electron is simple as an elementary point particle. Its inner complexity and unity are zero. God is both infinitely complex and perfectly unified. When beholding God, one cannot comprehend him due to this complexity and infinity of “parts” (possible worlds?) but the parts fit together so seamlessly as to produce one thing, in which it is impossible to detect any distinctions.

Whether you look at God from near or afar, you see both the infinite complexity and simple unity.

Remember that Rationals excel at making masterful plans and need autonomy; Artisans excel at masterful execution of actions and need freedom. Now Artisans live in the moment and enjoy life to the fullest. But enjoyment of an action requires its mastery. And achieving mastery takes a large amount of practice. The end is pleasure in action; the means is practice. For any temperament, there is motion from what is, such as incompetence, to what ought to be, such as mastery. But here, the means, practice, is simply performance of action when it is not yet fully mastered. Thus, at the beginning, practice is painful, because the Artisan often fails. He is clumsy, unartistic, awkward. But as he progresses, even practice becomes pleasurable, insofar as it comes to resemble fully perfected skill.

Thus, for Artisans, the distinction between means and ends does not exist; means morph ends smoothly and imperceptibly.

If tax-supported law enforcement (though not at all arbitration and not fully law-making), may be a workable solution for some communities (and as always, when I speak of a community I imagine local self-government), then we must ask what the most just way of financing the police would be. It is obvious to all that when a person buys something at the store, he almost never experiences significant price discrimination: a lamp costs the same whether the buyer is rich or poor. The question is, Why should there be price discrimination in the form of a progressive or even flat tax for the services of the police?

Now the function of the police should be two-fold. First, to enforce judicial verdicts, those that are actually issued and delivered to the police, and those that the police assume will be made, such as when they ticket people for speeding. It is not at all obvious that rich people sue others more than poor people do, requiring more attention from the police in securing their rights.

Secondly, the police deter crime in general, on the margin, of course. It is true that a rich person has more property to protect and is a bigger target for thieves and similar miscreants. But police are not to provide actual security guarding. Their deterrence power permeates the entire community; so our rich guy is likely to invest more into personal security, all the way to hiring bodyguards and bullet-proofing his car. Again, it is not self-evident that the police will expend more resources on deterring those who would without such deterrence prey on the rich rather than the poor. People have been known to kill for $5.

Given the reasoning above, the answer is apparent: the tax most in accord with justice is a head tax, wherein everyone pays the same amount regardless of his income or wealth. It also has the advantage of being easily enforced, non-intrusive, and perhaps even neutral (empirical economists correct me if I am wrong). I fully agree with Rothbard that the ability to pay principle of the progressive / flat tax is the procedure of a highwayman who robs his victims as much as they “are able to pay.” But still the head tax may be a genuine hardship for some to comply with. What to do? Let’s combine the benefits of the head tax with those of the flat tax as follows: Everyone pays 2% of his income to the city government until his total tax reaches, say, $1,000. Then he pays no more. As I pondered this scheme, I remembered that economist Steven Landsburg suggested something similar in his book Fair Play. In his stirring words, “My own gut preference is that nobody should ever be required to pay more than five times the average tax bill. … [This] criterion proclaims the virtue of liberty… It embodies the principle that there is some limit to our social responsibilities. Whatever duties we may owe our fellow citizens, we should be able to fulfill those duties and then move on.” (107) Amen, brother.

Note also how this arrangement permits taxpayers to keep their privacy. If the law orders them to pay 2% of income or $1,000, whichever is less, then one can simply pay $1,000 and not file any tax return at all. The city government will not have any access to his financial data, because he is paying the maximum tax, anyway. On the other hand, those unwilling to buy privacy in this manner can submit their information to justify paying the 2%.

Isolationism means desiring to stop communication, travel, immigration, and trade between citizens of nations. Ron Paul wants to increase those. It means blockading countries and imposing sanctions. Ron Paul will not do either. The two paradigmatic isolationist countries were the Soviet Union and North Korea. In the USSR, for example, isolationism was called the Iron Curtain. They even tried to dampen radio broadcasts from abroad, in an effort to prevent people from being influenced by “anti-Soviet propaganda.”

What Ron Paul is, in fact, is a man of peace. He does not want to start wars and kill people. If Smith bullies Jones, does Smith by that very fact show himself to be “open” to others and not at all isolationist? Does internationalism, i.e., the opposite of isolationism, mean beating people up? How come the only non-isolationist relationship that is respected by conservatives is something like “America rapes Iraq”?

1. Abolish legal tender laws. This will quickly convert fiat money into commodity-based money.
2. Enforce 100%-reserve banking for all demand deposits. This will eliminate credit money.

That is it! There is no need specifically to monetize gold and silver; or for the government to do anything other than (1) enable the market’s good money (whatever it will turn out to be) to drive out the government’s bad and (2) protect property rights of banks’ own customers.

Either Ron gets nominated, or you deserve to lose. Lose to the buffoon and embarrassment Obama. Lose big. If you don’t nominate him, then you need to eat crow. You will show yourselves to be worthless. I swear, I’ll vote for Obama myself, in a tiny effort to humiliate you for failing to produce out of the mass of “conservatives” anybody of any value.

The greater of the two evils will be enabling conservatives to persist in standing only for the status quo and to hate every new idea, good or bad, that comes their way.

In Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet the criminal, Jefferson Hope, is an avenger of his wife’s death who offers his victims, under threat of death, a choice between two pills: one is poisonous, the other’s nothing. After the guy takes one pill, Hope takes the other. (This works for the first man; the second one refuses and is killed.) As he explains, he trusts God’s providence to protect him and destroy the offender.

Now consider the movie No Country for Old Men, where the criminal does the same, except that he is a psychopath and serial killer, who flips a coin which decides his victim’s fate, according to whether that victim calls it correctly or not. Now suppose the call is wrong. What if the serial killer asks before committing his crime, mocking the guy and adding insult to injury by enjoying the favor of his demonic providence, “Where is your God? How come He did not protect you?” What’s the right response?

Of course, this situation is familiar to us: “The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.’ The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’ There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS. One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!’” (Lk 23:35-39)

I would say therefore, “God did not help me, so that you may be condemned more easily, and I, glorified as a martyr. You can’t win. If you strike me down, you will seal your doom, and I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”

The Enlightenment was a shift of emphasis from virtue to happiness, an empowerment of the Artisan and Rational temperaments, as opposed to the Guardian and Idealist ones.

1. “The fruits of one’s labor should belong to the laborer.” 2. “The worker deserves his wages.” 3. “It is unjust to aggress or initiate violence against another person or justly acquired property.” These are arrived at by intuition. Libertarians claim that these are naturally attrictive to the vast majority of people. They “feel right” and are “self-evident from (the virtue of) justice.” The system of natural liberty seems lovely to all people; and those few to whom it does not so seem are spiritually sick.

Libertarianism then in one sense is faith seeking understanding. If we agree that the axioms are plausible, then we can enter into a conversation regarding their implications and complications that are vast in number. Can you kill a guy to save the world? Can you and should you shoot a mugger dead? Is taxation theft? At the same time, is local government praxeologically necessary and ought to be financed by taxes? Etc. But we must agree on these general principles before discussing anything.

In active life, qualities of character are split into 3 kinds: those for the sake of (1) acts, (2) themselves, and (3) relations. Thus, “being a doctor” is for the sake of curing illnesses. It is better to cure an illness than to be a doctor. Being a doctor (a state) has no value apart from the curing (an act).

On the other hand, it is better “not to be a glutton” than “on many occasions to have eaten in moderation.” A routine, such as not overeating, is for the sake of a state, not being a glutton. This virtue is contributes to the loveliness of the soul and is for its own sake.

Finally, some virtues are for the sake of relations between different individuals. “Not stealing” (act) is for the sake of and inferior to “hating theft” (state) which in its own turn is for the sake of and inferior to a “just society” in which people respect each other’s property rights and are related to each other according to justice.

It is interesting that in the speculative life, these distinctions are not present. To “know” something (an act) is to be able to recall it from memory and contemplate it. Which is exactly identical to “being knowledgeable” about something (a quality). Which again is identical to having a true belief, truth being defined as a correspondence relation between thought and reality.

It’s Easter. When I think about His birth, I feel dread. God the Father wanted to try His Son, try His claim that He loved us. The Father predicted what would happen to the Son. A perfect being born into the world, and what do we do with it? Brutalize and destroy it. The Father had a pretty good idea of what kind of beasts we were. He made us, after all. And He said to the Son: if you find yourself still loving the world after this, well, it’s yours. Salvage from it what you may. But I will not bequeath you even this pitiful world unless you see for yourself, through personal experience, what it is you claim to be so in love with.

That Jesus would accept the world even after being murdered was never certain. Not to us, not to Him, not to the Father. The fate of the world truly hanged in the balance. Our salvation was a contingent event, rooted fully in God’s 3rd-level goodness. He did not have to bless us after what we did to Him. Yet He did, and Easter celebrates this fact.

Christmas is just the beginning of the trial of Christ. The stakes were — are — infinite. And all good Christian men should tremble at this event.

Defenders of free markets do their cause no favor by claiming that the present status quo is a paragon of laissez-faire. Without fully private money and banking, capitalism is always in a precarious spot ideologically.

De-socializing both is by far the most important reform of our times one can fight for. Everything else is peanuts. Do this, and freedom will suddenly make sense.

James Livingston, whose book Against Thrift I just ordered, said in an NPR interview that we need to socialize business profits. His reason? Bank capital is already socialized.

This is true in a manner of speaking but is also a non sequitor. Why does the fact that money creation is in the hands of the state and the Fed entail that we must socialize everything else rather than de-socialize money and banking?

We must progress toward laissez-faire rather than slink back to serfdom.

Keynes’ The General Theory cannot be understood without first reading Rothbard’s The Mystery of Banking.

An interview on today’s FBN’s Power and Money has clearly revealed that no one has any idea what’s going on in the world of banking. Is it a global conspiracy to mislead the public about the real reasons for economic calamities?

I got news for you: all banks, both big and small, are corrupt and insolvent and badly “regulated,” by which I mean that the government has sanctioned fractional-reserve banking, fiat and credit money, and passed legal tender laws.

The answer is not Dodd-Frank, nor going back before the repeals of the Glass–Steagall provisions; it is (1) to protect the property rights of the banks’ customers which will entail (1a) destroying the Fed and (1b) mandating keeping 100% reserves for all demand deposits (not to be confused with loans), and (2) to privatize money creation. David Asman complains that the new bill is too complex. Of course, it’s complex, because it presumes to regulate all human profit-seeking in the financial industry. Once one allegedly “irresponsible” MO is plugged, there will arise ten more. In the end, we’ll have tied the system into German-style socialism, where property is nominally private but control of it is in the hands of the state. One regulation creates “reasons” for still more regulations, at which point the choice is either to go forward to freedom or backward to serfdom.

But the choice is not between the straitjacket of socialism and faux-capitalist interventionist chaos. The reform I, and countless others before me, are proposing, is so simple, so pro-freedom; and it will abolish the business cycle for good. It will harmonize the interests of the 1% and the 99%, countering the state’s ubiquitous divide and conquer strategy. It will limit the US empire which will be unable to monetize its debt and go to wars. All that it takes is a bit of thought about the fundamental nature of money and banking. The conclusion is inevitable: put the choice of money into hands of the people, and check credit expansion at the source, namely, the ability of banks to deceive their own customers by loaning out (multiple times) the cash entrusted to them for safekeeping.

Once the logic is understood, how can anyone not come to this very conclusion?

Is rap music for white people: just as stupid and mind-numbing.

The design looked like a gun. On Yahoo!, there are over 20,000 comments on this. But what these guys don’t understand is that politicians and their connected pressure groups do whatever they please (print money, start wars, …); bureaucrats robotically follow rules. TSA bureaucrats are not supposed to think. “The TSA says the design could be considered a ‘replica weapon’,” the article says. The TSA adheres rigidly to the rules, and for a bureaucrat, it is better to adhere too much than too little and risk his boss’ ire. The question is not whether the TSA should hire smarter people but whether the approach to airport security as contained in the laws is good. For example, we might consider privatizing the TSA, taking security out of the state’s hands.

Gingrich is. He is a zealous drug warrior.

I would continue current federal policy, largely because of the confusing signal that steps towards legalization sends to harder drugs. …

My general belief is that we ought to be much more aggressive about drug policy. In my mind it means having steeper economic penalties and it means having a willingness to do more drug testing.

… the number of parents I met with who said they did not want their children to get the signal from the government that it was acceptable behavior and that they were prepared to say as a matter of value that it was better to send a clear signal on no drug use at the risk of inconveniencing some people, than it was to be compassionate toward a small group at the risk of telling a much larger group that it was okay to use the drug.

Sometime in the next year we’ll have a comprehensive proposal on drugs and it will be designed to say that we want to minimize drug use in America and we’re very serious about it.

Signal from the government? This implies that the government is not a law-giver but an enforcer of morality. If the drug war ends then, you see, it will be a “signal” that there is no moral duty not to use drugs. The government is a holy avenger, punishing the unrighteous and saving people from themselves and from the evil drug pushers. If it fails in this duty, then souls will be lost.

What idiocy. First, the government right now creates incentives against drug use. It wants to deter it with punishment. It does not call users “evil.” It presumes that it knows better, that drug users will regret their actions; and so tries to increase the costs of drug use to prevent that. It therefore does not send any signals that drug use is immoral or “unacceptable”; the only signal it sends is “if you use drugs, we will hurt you.” Drug prohibition is supposed to contribute to the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Of course, it does not.

Second, if pleasure-inducing substances are used immoderately, then the user will probably suffer. Not using drugs for fun is a matter of individual prudence, calculation, temperance, and continence. For example, chastity is eminently achievable; so is a drug-free life.

Again with the freaking children. Look, alcohol is perfectly legal. Yet we do not see drunk children wallowing in their own filth on the streets. What a despicable emotional appeal. And I thought only the lefties used “it’s for the children” line.

On a TV show, Krauthammer described Gingrich as a very creative man with lots of ideas. But all his ideas involve increasing government repression! He is a statist, and considers the state to be the solution to every problem. Don’t vote for him!

The world seems designed, meticulously and admitting incredible complexity of creatures, to two kinds of people: the very simple and innocent; and the very wise. To the vast majority in between, it’s “evolution.”

Of course, there are free lunches. A thief mugs you on the street and makes off with your wallet. He got something for nothing. A pressure group steers government tax revenues its way, plundering the populace of its goods. The Pentagon receives enormous funding, such that the people are paying not for consumer goods they would enjoy but for destruction of such goods, when government bombs (themselves a cost) blast person and property. The generals and merchants of death benefit; the people lose.

In short, looters get a free lunch; the looted get their lunch stolen from them.

(I am aware of equilibrating tendencies, such that the revenues to a thief come closer, with time, to the costs to him of doing business. I also realize that thieves and plunderers benefit or lose only from changes to ideology and policy in the short run; in the long run, the benefits of big government go to those with a competitive advantage at positioning themselves comfortably in sucking the government’s tit. Nevertheless.)

This phrase makes sense in two ways. First, that the government can only diminish the total output of the economy, if it deviates from laissez-faire. The government cannot increase the marginal productivity of labor. It cannot make society as a whole prosperous. By “redistributing” goods through legal plunder, it makes the total “pie” smaller.

Thus, there is no free lunch for society.

Second, because of Lev 19:18, Mt 5:26, and 2 Tim 2:5. Admission into heaven entails loving others as much as oneself. If Smith has plundered Jones in this world, and Jones is part of the communion of saints, then Smith cannot join this communion, as well, until his debt to Jones has been repaid. Everything Smith has acquired illegally will have to be returned and then some. Smith will not be able to escape divine justice, even if human justice did not catch him.

In the end, for no individual, is there a free lunch, either.