September 2021

David Cole is a smart guy and worth reading.

I, too, am put off by the Trump cult. Certainly Trump is a good man, far better than any lizard president in the past few decades. But it’s not about him.

Why don’t the Republicans campaign about actual issues? Forget Trump.

I wrote a book on the philosophy of abortion, and judged the case of its moral permissibility inconclusive. I finished by arguing that ideally, Roe should be repealed and the matter be decided by individual states. Let this issue disappear from national politics. But since I have not proven to my satisfaction that abortion either is or is not lawful, I would not personally vote either for or against it in my state.

And I agree that it would be a mistake to focus on abortion in 2022 or 4 at the cost of so many formidable problems we are now facing. I feel that society is falling apart, and abortion is a trivial and irrelevant issue at this time.

Cole is right that Democrats are inveterate political entrepreneurs always seeking to profit from current events. Republicans should learn to do so, too.

Spartacus objects to the corona scam and pinpoints the underlying ideology:

The Elites are Neo-Malthusians and believe that we are overpopulated and that resource depletion will collapse civilization in a matter of a few short decades.

But he goes on to agree with it:

They are not necessarily incorrect in this belief. We are overpopulated, and we are consuming too many resources.

Now America is not overpopulated. But to the extent that India or China or Africa are, this is only relative to their inferior economic system. These people do not know how to cooperate socially correctly. If they had full-featured capitalism, their numbers would be a boon to them rather than a curse. Under laissez faire, each person is useful to his fellow men, and on the other hand society benefits each individual.

As for “resources,” they are partly subjective. A resource is something that participates in some entrepreneur’s plan of production. Technological and economic progress ensures that what was once useless becomes an important resource, and what once was a resource becomes obsolete and no longer important for human beings. If a certain resource gets close to being exhausted, its price will rise and give an incentive to people to find substitutes including through novel tech. In any case, an efficient economy will bring as many resources into use as possible. There is therefore no such thing as using “too many” resources.

The climate change non-issue is in addition a distraction from real environmental problems, such as oceans pollution (oceans will eventually need to be somehow privatized to stop it) or space trash or meds in the water. As I understand it, carbon, far from being a pollutant, is a highly beneficial substance, plant food. In fact, we don’t have enough of it in the atmosphere. Far from reducing carbon emissions, we need to increase them to make earth greener.

The salvation of the “Earth Mother” lies in the future as humans take more and more perfect and refined control over their environment. Crude methods of production that inflicted collateral damage will give way to more sophisticated ones as time goes on. The Mother is to be fully conquered and pacified and turned into a new Garden of Eden. The enviro-feudalism, by checking this process, is unnecessary and will bring about results opposite those the “elites” want to achieve.

“Artists are here to disturb the peace,” says Madonna.

Yeah, but not in an ugly way.

In any case, the bourgeoisie are completely used to being shocked by now. Madonna isn’t disturbing “order”; she’s being conventional. She is the establishment: the radical left is now the woke status quo.

Uskala Maki argues that money was established by human action not human design.

Gordon objects that

It isn’t a necessary condition for the process to come about that the people in that society didn’t intend it.

Imagine a large group of people on a desert island who are familiar with the concept of money but don’t have any money — all their dollars were lost at sea. They also have read Menger and Mises and want to create money, doing so through the process the Austrians describe. They could consciously set the process in motion, and money would result. The process need not be unintended.

Well, not quite. They could not aim at the establishment of money directly. Their desire for money would be a mere wish, incapable of being satisfied by any deliberate action.

Money would have to arise from people pursuing their self-interest in producing and exchanging on the market as per the usual story: a certain commodity with use-value would gradually acquire exchange-value until the latter came to dominate the former, etc.

Even if money’s creation is not unintended, it is unplanned and unexecuted. So Gordon’s point is strictly speaking correct, but repairing Maki’s argument is easy.

This guy says, “If you’re going to bravely refuse a vaccine, please bravely fight pneumonia at home. The internet got you this far, don’t give up now!”

Is this a libertarian argument, as against the welfare state? This is an exciting development from the left. If you’re fat or diabetic or deficient in vitamin D, why should other people pay for your treatment? It’s your own fault that you ruined your health. But how does it follow that one should stay at home while sick? If he can pay for his own treatment, what’s the problem?

Why, further, limit the argument specifically to the COVID vaccines? If you’re against government welfare, you should certainly target much more than this little aspect of it. Advocate its complete abolition. Otherwise you’re being insincere.

Given that the welfare state is as pervasive as it is, grumbling just about the COVID vaccine refuseniks stealing your hard-earned money seems pointless. The government after all has “legal obligations.” Maybe they actually don’t since a thief has no legal right to stolen property, and so the state does not legitimately own anything. Still, encouraging the state to randomly refuse to honor some commitments while keeping all others seems unhelpful.

This leftist argument that claims to be libertarian gets its passion from the idea that the unvaxxed refuse to sacrifice for the “greater good.” They viciously refuse to cooperate. Having thus proven themselves immoral, they’ve put themselves outside society, they’re virtual outlaws or even some disgusting “impure.” Coercion against them is then justified.

But that’s an illusion. The present vaccines don’t even stop the spread, and even if they did, the vaxxed should not care because they are presumably protected (they are not). And there are definite social costs to getting vaccinated. If one dies or is injured from the vaccine’s “side effects,” are the vaxxed prepared to compensate him for the coerced “sacrifice”? And in any case, it is the job of other people to protect themselves from the virus, not my job not to infect them.

World’s Economy Saved As Giant Crack In Earth Swallows Up All G7 Conference Attendees.

A beautiful fantasy, isn’t it?

Why do people submit to arbitrary power of another?

Do you think your master or ruler has your best interests at heart? Do you think he cares about any “general welfare”?

Are you really that naive?

Every day brings some fun and exciting development from the market, and some evil and depressing emanation from the state.

Re: Boris Kodjoe On His ‘Personal’ Mission To Help Black Men Beat Prostate Cancer.

Imagine a white guy being on a mission to help white men. Scandal! But why? There are two explanations.

First is that the white man is Very Good: it is his Moral Duty to work tirelessly to take care of all the lower races, such that he can’t look after himself alone.

Second is that the white man is Very Evil: any kind of racial friendship or solicitude for his own kind is illegitimate and must be stopped. Only black lives matter.

Probably both of these ideas have some influence.

Note also how neatly the feudalist ideology destroys Christianity. For Christianity is grace that perfects nature. The nature in question is the fact that all men are naturally friends to each other. Division of labor, division of productive activities between firms, the free market make each person profit from association with all others. Social cooperation benefits all as compared with autarkic existence. Individual creative initiative is the fount of progress.

Peace on earth and good will toward men are possible because they are in the long run profitable to all. This natural foundation eliminates violent hatred in the hearts of men that would prevail if everyone were in perpetual competition for the meager scarce resources whose supply could not be enlarged. Instead of hatred, the natural attitudes are mutual disinterestedness, non-aggression, natural-law justice and respect for human rights, bourgeois non-interference, eagerness to partake of the greater benefits of cooperation by paying the lesser costs.

On this Christianity builds by upgrading mere disinterestedness into love, as if pouring living water into a clean empty bottle.

But if, instead of being by nature friends, we are natural enemies of each other, no charity can be built on hatred. It’s just not possible. There is no room for it in the bottle because it is filled with filth. Lions and antelopes cannot love each other because their interests are diametrically opposed: life for one means death for the other. God’s grace is wasted and pointless, and God’s entire project, nonsensical.

The feudalist-environmentalist doctrine is Satanic in essence.